Ditching two-child benefit cap would cut deaths and A&E admissions, study says

Curbing child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap would save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital, the largest study of its kind suggests.

Keir Starmer has faced repeated demands from within Labour ranks and opposition leaders to abolish the policy, which was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, then chancellor. Almost half of all children in some towns and cities now live below the breadline.

Now researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle have shown for the first time the extraordinary impact that reducing child poverty with measures such as ditching the two-child benefit cap could have in England.

Tackling it would substantially cut the number of infant deaths and children in care, as well as rates of childhood nutritional anaemia and emergency admissions, with the most deprived regions, especially in north-east England, likely to benefit the most, the projections indicate.

Changes were likely to have huge beneficial knock-on effects on local authorities and the NHS, the research concluded.