Mrs Badenoch: Reeves has delivered Budget for Benefits Street

Kemi Badenoch has dismissed Rachel Reeves’s welfare giveaways as “a Budget for Benefits Street”.

The Conservative leader hit out at the Chancellor’s decision to abolish the two-child benefit cap and warned that working people would end up paying the price.

Ms Reeves scrapped the two-child limit at a cost of £3bn a year following more than a year of pressure from backbench Labour MPs on the Left of the party.

Welfare spending is expected to climb £16bn higher by 2030 as a result of the Government’s policy changes and higher-than-expected unemployment.

In a highly personal response to Ms Reeves’s speech, Mrs Badenoch told the Commons: “At the last Budget, she said she was proud to be the country’s first ever female Chancellor.

“After this Budget, she will go down as the country’s worst ever Chancellor. Labour are hiking taxes to pay for welfare.

“This is a Budget for Benefits Street, paid for by working people. This Budget increases benefits for 560,000 families by an average of £5,000.”

Benefits Street was a controversial Channel 4 documentary first aired in 2014, which followed the lives of welfare claimants in Birmingham and Stockton-on-Tees.

In a phone-in on Wednesday night, Mrs Badenoch dismissed claims from callers that her remarks were “offensive” and “fuelled stigma”.

She told LBC: “This money is being borrowed from future generations and we are paying more and more money to pay off the debt interest.

“We can’t afford it, the Government has to live within its means. And I do understand that your personal circumstances are difficult, but there is no limit on child benefit, there is no limit on the amount of child benefit you can claim, on the number of children.

“We are purely talking about the Universal Credit element of child benefit. And I do think it is fair that families who are struggling don’t have to pay for other families.”

Mrs Badenoch confirmed a Tory administration led by her would reinstate the two-child benefit cap, arguing it was “fair to draw a limit”.

The abolition of the cap had long been a key demand of Labour’s Left, with campaigners saying it would lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

Lucy Powell, Labour’s new deputy leader, said the Budget showed “our Labour values in practice”.

Tribune, a caucus of Labour MPs including Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh, urged Ms Reeves to go further in targeting “unearned income and wealth” at future financial events.

It said: “In particular, we are pleased to see the decision to remove the two-child limit on benefits – a reform that is not only the right and moral choice, but also economically sensible.”

But calling on Ms Reeves to take more money from the wealthiest Britons, it continued: “While today’s announcements mark real progress, this must be the start of a wider programme of modernisation.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]