Kemi Badenoch has sharply criticised the government's decision to scrap the two-child benefit cap, arguing that it will increase the number of children growing up in families where nobody works. She highlighted that the number of children in workless UK households is now higher than the entire population of Estonia. The comments have intensified a national debate around welfare, child poverty and long-term economic incentives. This video covers the statement, reactions, and what the policy shift means for the UK moving forward.
00:00Labour believe that the way to end poverty is give money to people in poverty and give them more money until they're not in poverty anymore.
00:08This has never worked. The best way to get children out of poverty is for their parents to have jobs and for those jobs to pay well.
00:19But Conservatives also need to challenge bad metrics and wrong assumptions that create a flawed policy.
00:25Let us start with the metric of relative poverty which Labour use.
00:31Relative poverty just tells you what proportion of households earn below 60% of median income.
00:40That is not a measure of poverty at all.
00:43It is a bad measure because in a booming economy, as incomes rise, more people can be classed as being in poverty even though their real income is rising.
00:56And then during a recession, like we had under the last Labour government where GDP collapsed and unemployment went through the roof,
01:04relative poverty fell even though we were all poorer.
01:08So it is not enough for us to challenge the policy.
01:11We have to challenge the thinking that underpins it.
01:14We need something better.
01:16I have long said that Britain is at risk of becoming a welfare state with an economy attached.
01:23While under Labour, there will be an economy to attach for much longer, not the way that we're going.
01:28So in Hackney alone, 1,000 families on benefits with five or six children stand to gain £74 million from the lifting of the two-child benefit cap.
01:41Some of those families will be getting more than £14,000 a year.
01:47At the budget, income tax thresholds were frozen.
01:51So do you know how many people's thresholds were frozen just to pay for those families in Hackney?
01:58We're not talking about the whole country, just the families in Hackney.
02:02The number we have found is 340,000 taxpayers.
02:09That is where that threshold money is going to come from.
02:13340,000 taxpayers to pay for just 1,000 families.
02:18It's no wonder people are angry.
02:21At the same time that those on the minimum wage are agonising over whether or not they can afford another child,
02:29people on benefits will get paid an extra £3,500 for every child they have
02:36because Labour is lifting the two-child benefit cap.
02:41We know that worklessness is often passed down through generations.
02:45Last year, just last year, we saw the fastest increase of children in workless households that we have ever had.
02:55There are now more children in the UK growing up in households where no one works than the entire population of Estonia.
03:05That is correct.
03:06That is correct.
03:06More people, more children growing up in a household where no one works than every single person in Estonia.
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