Sir Keir Starmer said there is “no silver bullet” to end child poverty but that “it’s good that we’re having a debate about it” as he faces growing pressure for the two-child benefit cap to be dropped.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the “passion” of Labour MPs considering rebelling over the continuation of the policy that affects some 1.6 million children.
Against the background of rising child poverty – with more than four million now living in low-income households – he has been urged by charities, opposition parties and some of his own backbenchers to abolish the limit.
But Sir Keir declined to repeat Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s earlier suggestion that scrapping the two-child benefit cap will be “considered” by the Government.
The Labour leadership has so far suggested the state of the public finances means they cannot afford to axe the benefit limit unless economic growth is secured first.
Left-wing Labour and opposition MPs are expected to criticise the policy in Monday’s King’s Speech debate, with a possible vote if Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle selects an amendment on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Farnborough International Airshow, Sir Keir said: “I’m not surprised that there’s a real passion about this in the Labour Party, you’d expect there to be.
“Child poverty is something that we need to eradicate. And there’s a very strong feeling in the Labour Party, Labour movement about that.”
That was why he set up a new taskforce to tackle child poverty, he said, but added: “There is no silver bullet. If there was a silver bullet it would have been shot a very long time ago.”
There was a “complicated set of factors” including pay, benefits, work, housing, education and health “and that is why you need a strategy to deal with it”.
He evaded a question about whether he agreed with Ms Phillipson, who earlier said ditching the limit would be looked at “as one of a number of ways” to lift children out of poverty.
The Prime Minister said: “What the Education Secretary said this morning I agree with, which is she’s passionate about tackling poverty and child poverty in particular.”
Pointing to Ms Phillipson’s background growing up in hardship, he said: “I’m very pleased that she’s one of the chairs of our taskforce on tackling child poverty, and we will make sure that the strategy covers all the bases to drive down child poverty.”
Ms Phillipson earlier said the possible scrapping of the limit would be part of a review by the taskforce she is spearheading with Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.
The Cabinet minister told Sky News: “Unfortunately it’s also a very expensive measure, but we will need to consider it as one of a number of levers in terms of how we make sure we lift children out of poverty.
“Housing is a big factor… The fact that for lots of families work doesn’t pay in the way that it should, and that increasingly what we see is that children are growing up in poverty where there is at least one person in that household in work.
“We will look at every measure in terms of how we can address this terrible blight that scars the life chances of too many children.”
The cap was introduced by then-Conservative chancellor George Osborne in 2015 and restricts child welfare payments to the first two children born to most families.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn urged Scottish Labour MPs to back his party’s amendment to remove the cap.
It is understood to have the support of former Labour leader and now Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn as well as the Green and Plaid Cymru MPs.
Mr Flynn said ahead of the debate: “The two-child cap was the Tories operating at their worst, so scrapping the cap would deliver on the promise made to the public for real change.”
The debate comes after Labour MP Rosie Duffield said in a Sunday newspaper the two-child benefit cap amounts to “social cleansing” and is an “anti-feminist and unequal piece of legislation”.
“It legislates against women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the exact opposite of anything that could possibly be described as a Labour Party value,” she wrote in an article for The Sunday Times.