00:00What are your thoughts on the two child benefit cap that is causing debate in Parliament and within the Labour Party?
00:07As I said a moment ago in there, look, I am really pleased we are having a debate as a country about child poverty
00:12because for 14 years, frankly, we haven't had enough of a debate about child poverty.
00:17Look, people have different views about the two child cap and ultimately we all want to address child poverty.
00:23That's why we've invested in South Yorkshire ÂŁ2.2 million in this scheme
00:27because we know that it's fundamentally important.
00:30But what we need actually is a long-term plan to address not just the consequences of child poverty
00:36but the causes of child poverty and that's going to take more than two weeks.
00:40The Labour government have been in office for just a couple of weeks now.
00:43I think we've got to give them a bit of time, a bit of space to understand what the challenges look like,
00:47understand what the finances look like and then develop that long-term plan
00:50that allows us to actually fundamentally change how those systems and those outcomes work.
00:55Was there a topic of conversation when you visited Downing Street yesterday?
00:58I was down talking to the policy team, I was talking to them about some of the challenges we face specifically in South Yorkshire.
01:04I was actually talking about things like public transport, I was talking about the airport,
01:07I was talking about the opportunities of South Yorkshire when it comes to things like advanced manufacturing,
01:11small modular nuclear reactors, I was talking about energy, hydrogen, you name it
01:15and we were talking about what we could do together.
01:17But we will talk about those things with the government from here on
01:20because we're now having much better conversations with this government.
01:23I've seen more of this government in the last two weeks than I saw of the last government in two years.
01:27So it's a great time to be a mayor and hopefully we'll be able to, with the government,
01:31address a number of these challenges that we face and grab some of the opportunities that we've got as well.
01:35Just to wrap up then, do you think they should scrap the two-by-child benefit cap?
01:38I think they should come up with a fundamentally different approach to child poverty.
01:43Is that a yes?
01:44That is what they have committed to do.
01:46What the Labour government said before they were elected was these are the things that we think we can do
01:50and these are the things that we want to do longer term.
01:53And I think, as they have said, they've got to do those things they promised the country first and foremost.
01:57They've got to understand what the finances look like longer term
02:00and then come up with those longer term strategies for absolutely really important things like child poverty.
02:05But it's been two weeks so let's give them a bit of time and space
02:08and let them come up with those strategies and we will support them all the way.
02:11Thanks Oliver.
02:12Thank you.
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