Chancellor Keir Starmer is under further pressure to remove the cap on second child benefit after another member of his House of Commons described the policy as “heinous”.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield said the cap, introduced in 2017 under then-treasury minister George Osborne, was “sinister and blatantly sexist” and was a key reason she decided to run for parliament.
More than 10 MPs are thought to support the proposed amendments to the King’s Speech.
The SNP has also tabled an amendment to remove the restrictions that prevent parents from claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit for their third child, with some exceptions.
“The obvious target is a caricature of ‘irresponsible’ people who abandon their children every few minutes and can’t pay child support, but the underlying message is more insidious – it’s an attack on a woman’s right to choose how many children she has,” Duffield said.
He criticised the so-called “rape clause” which makes an exception for children conceived as a result of rape, saying: “The architects of this policy are telling women: ‘Just tell stranger after stranger that your third and subsequent children are the result of rape, and we’ll end up paying you.”
The UK government says the number of children living in poverty is four million, an increase of 700,000 since 2010.
The latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show the second child benefit cap will affect 1.6 million children.
Ms Duffield likened the policy to the dystopian society of Margaret Atwood’s novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are disenfranchised and “oppressed according to their social class.”
The new government has announced a taskforce to develop a strategy to tackle child poverty, led by Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall and Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson.
Many of the charities Kendall consulted with earlier this week are also calling for the cap to be lifted.
Ministers have previously suggested the state of the nation’s finances means they cannot afford to remove the cap.
Commons Leader Lucy Powell told MPs on Thursday: “As a new Labour government we are committed to tackling child poverty and all of its root causes, which is why the Chancellor yesterday announced a Government taskforce to look at these issues.”
“We made it very clear in our manifesto that in the current economic situation we cannot remove the cap.
“Economic stability is the biggest thing we can do to keep children from falling into poverty, because when the economy collapses, it’s the poorest people in society who pay the highest price.”
