The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves MP announced the scrapping of the two-child limit in Universal Credit in her Autumn Budget 2025 speech. The two-child limit will be scrapped from April 2026. This is testament to many years of campaigning by the women’s sector and the wider Community and Voluntary sector.
The two-child limit has a greater impact in Northern Ireland as there are more larger families here. In NI 1 in 10 children live in households impacted by the two-child limit. Figures show that as of August 2025 there were 13,780 households and 17,600 children across NI impacted by the two-child limit. Of course, it is not just the children who are directly impacted by the two-child limit who feel the effects of this cruel policy, it affects all the children in the household and there were over 48,000 children living in these impacted households.
The scrapping of the two-child limit will make a significant difference to the households who were impacted as the loss of the child limit element is worth over £3,500 per child per year. Scrapping it will help to address rising child poverty levels and will make a difference to children, families and local communities. As the Chancellor said every child has equal worth and deserves an equal chance to achieve their goals.
Since the announcement of the scrapping of the two-child limit there has been some negative press about the Chancellor’s decision to scrap it. Some of the discussion is around people not having to “pay for other families” and that people should “not have children if they can’t afford them”. But we know that circumstances can change. People can lose their jobs, a relationship can break down, people get sick and it is at these times that the social security system should provide a safety net to protect people from poverty. The two-child limit punished children for a situation not of their making pushing families into cold, hunger, financial insecurity and stress. Poverty in childhood has long-term, serious impacts on children and costs the country far more than providing support from the start. Scrapping the two-child will help to provide children with food, heat and security and helps to create a society where families are not abandoned in difficult situations. We hugely welcome the Chancellor’s action in scrapping the two-child limit.
You can listen to Siobhán speaking briefly about the scrapping of the two-child limit on BBC Good Morning Ulster here (from 1:18mins):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002mp67
You can read more about the scrapping of the two-child limit here:
