Felicity EvansWales money editor
BBC
Danielle has four children aged between two and 13 but only receives Universal Credit payments for two of them
A mother-of-four says her children have to go without because she only receives benefit payments for two of them.
Danielle, whose 15-year relationship with her children’s father ended in January, said she’d had to tell them she may not be able to give them much for Christmas.
She previously worked, but had to stop because one of her children has a disability.
The chancellor has hinted she might review the two-child cap, which means low-income families can only claim extra for their two eldest children, in Wednesday’s budget. On Tuesday, Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan said she wanted to see the cap scrapped.
Danielle called on the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to pull more children out of poverty by scrapping the rule that people can only claim benefits for two of their children.
But supporters of the policy warn that would further increase welfare costs.
“Now I’m on my own and it’s hard,” Danielle said.
“I’ve gone from working to not working.”
When Danielle split from her partner, she and her children, aged between two and 13, were supported by homelessness charity The Wallich.
The family was moved into temporary accommodation, but the move meant she “lost a bit of her support network”, said Jamie-Lee Cole from the charity.
“And now I’m in this situation where I can’t go to work, but hopefully one day I will be back in work,” Danielle, who is 32, added.
She said there were “a lot of things” her children go without and she’s worried about Christmas.
“Nothing’s cheap these days,” she said.
“I told them they can have what I can afford and if they haven’t got it there’s nothing I can do.”
How many families in Wales are affected by the two-child limit?
- 21,610 households claiming universal credit had a third or subsequent child after 6 April 2017
- 53% percent have at least one parent/carer in work.
- 26,270 children in those households are not receiving a UC payment.
Source: Department for Work and Pensions, April 2025
The cap was introduced by the then Conservative government in 2017.
Children born before 6 April 2017 are unaffected and there are some exceptions to the rule for reasons such as multiple births and “non-consensual conceptions”.
The child-related element of universal credit is worth £339 per month for a first child born before 6 April 2017.
For first children born after that date and second or other eligible children the payment is £292.18 per month.
Jamie-Lee Cole of the homelessness charity The Wallich says cost of living pressures are intensifying for many people
Jamie-Lee Cole said The Wallich would “love to see a lift” in the cap because “lifting children out of poverty should be a real priority for the Chancellor”.
She said the cost of living had increased to a point where “things that are basic, housing, warmth, food in the cupboard are becoming hard to manage for people”.
In a recent interview the Chancellor said she did not think it was fair for larger families to be “penalised” through “no fault of their own”.
But polling by YouGov in July suggested that 59% of voters wanted to see the cap remain in place.
Laura Dunn
Political consultant Laura Dunn believes the cap should stay in place to keep welfare costs down.
The Institute for Fiscal studies has estimated that abolishing the cap could lift more than 600,000 children out of poverty across the UK at a cost of about £3.6bn a year.
Laura Dunn, a former adviser to Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May and now a political consultant, believes the cap should stay to limit increasing welfare costs.
She said “there are only two ways” for the UK government to fund lifting the cap “extra borrowing or tax increases”.
She also suggested it would be unfair to ask families who refrain from having more children because of affordability to subsidise others.
“If people are expected to cut their cloth according to their own finances,” she said many would question why they should be “paying for others who are not prepared to do the same”.
Eluned Morgan repeated her call for the cap to be scrapped, in First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday, saying she also wanted “more money for public services and support with the cost-of-living crisis” in Rachel Reeves’ budget.
Welsh Conservative Senedd leader Millar accused her of rattling off “a few small ticket items” rather than “shouting from the rooftops” demands, as he said Welsh Labour had done when Tory ministers had held power at Westminster.
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth told Morgan his party’s demands included reclassifying “unfair spending decisions that deny Wales billions” and unlocking “Wales’ borrowing powers to address historic underinvestment”.
