ALL three of Barnsley’s MPs voted against scrapping the two-child benefit cap - just months after Barnsley Council unanimously agreed a cross-party plan to pull struggling families out of poverty.
A two-child limit on benefits means that families who have had a third or subsequent child after April 2017 are denied up to £3,235 per year per child compared with families whose kids were all born before that date.
It’s estimated that 6,240 children across 1,780 households in Barnsley more than one in ten are affected by the limit.
However, it’s believed 15,342 children the equivalent of 29.7 per cent are living in poverty across the borough.
The Liberal Democrat motion received support at May’s full council meeting at Barnsley Town Hall, although an amendment was made to the plan which notably included pleas to look at schools’ budgets, children’s homes’ placement costs and families with children with special needs.
After the cross-party support for the motion was signed off, it was confirmed that chief executive Sarah Norman would write to then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, as well as the town’s MPs to ask for their support to end the ‘cruel’ limit to benefit payments.
However, at a vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday all three of the Barnsley Labour MPs - Dan Jarvis, Stephanie Peacock and Marie Tidball - voted against a motion to scrap to cap.
The amendment failed by 363 votes to 103, a majority of 260 for Labour.
Seven MPs were suspended by the Labour Party after they supported the amendment.
Dan Jarvis, MP for Barnsley North, told the Chronicle: “Child poverty is an issue I take extremely seriously and have campaigned on throughout my time in Parliament.
“This included the introduction of my Private Members’ Bill whilst in opposition, only now - in government - do we have a chance to take the steps required to lift our children out of poverty.
“The progress of the last Labour government - which put the UK on course to eradicate child poverty by 2020 - has been methodically unpicked by successive Conservative governments, leaving 700,000 children in poverty and over four million children now growing up in a low-income family.
“We are now creating a new taskforce to drive cross-government action on child poverty, and whilst the financial circumstances we have inherited means we can’t make the immediate commitment to scrap the two-child benefit cap, it does not change our priorities on the reduction of child poverty.
“We will work tirelessly to reduce it.”
