PRESSURE on Sir Keir Starmer to act over child poverty appeared to be paying off, as the Prime Minister gave the strongest signal yet that the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped in the forthcoming Budget. 

The move will be popular with Labour backbenchers who have long campaigned for the move, with at least one child in three in Britain living in poverty, a record.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is backing the move, which she hopes will deflect from attacks over the rise in income tax which is expected to be announced.

Sir Keir said today: “I’m determined to drive child poverty down. It is what the last Labour government did.”

He indicated that lifting the cruel benefit cap would form part of his strategy without being explicit that it would be scrapped entirely.

“You won’t have to wait much longer to see what the measures are. Some of them are already in place; the free school meals, the breakfast clubs, free childcare,” he said.

“But we need to do more than that. I’m personally committed to driving down child poverty,” the premier claimed.

He declined to pre-empt Ms Reeves’s Budget, due to be unveiled on November 26,  but broadly hinted that the cap, introduced by the Tories, would go:

“You won’t have to wait much longer. But I wouldn’t be telling you that we’re going to drive down child poverty if I wasn’t clear that we will be taking a number of measures in order to do so,” he said.

It is quite the turnaround for Sir Keir, who removed the Labour whip from seven MPs who voted to remove the cap last year.  Six have since had the whip restored, while the seventh, Zarah Sultana, has left the party.

One of the suspended seven, John McDonnell, said: “For those of us who lost the whip for voting to scrap the two-child limit this is a clear vindication of the stand we took. I pay tribute to all who have campaigned for this but we recognise this is just the first step in eradicating poverty in our society.”

Ms Reeves set out her thinking earlier this week. She told BBC Radio: “I don’t think we can lose sight of the costs to our economy in allowing child poverty to go unchecked. 

“A child should not be penalised because their parents don’t have very much money.

“There are plenty of reasons why people make decisions to have three, four children, but then find themselves in difficult times. 

“I don’t think that it’s right that a child is penalised because they are in a bigger family, through no fault of their own,” the Chancellor added.

Her shift comes despite repeatedly pressing the alarm bell about the state of the public finances, which will be used to justify the anticipated tax hikes. 

Removing the cap in full would cost about £3.5 billion a year.