Keir Starmer's migrant benefits splurge branded 'sick insult' - Labour ignores vital issue

When Sir Keir Starmer writes his memoirs, you can bet he will boast that two of his proudest moments as Prime Minister were (a) refusing to join President Trump in military strikes on Iran and (b) scrapping the benefit cap which meant for nearly a decade parents could only claim universal credit or tax credits for their first two children.

Reform UK and the Conservatives are on a mission to turn this welfare milestone into an electoral disaster. Zia Yusuf, the man who will be Home Secretary if Nigel Farage becomes Prime Minister, took to X to describe the axing of the cap as “a sick insult to British people”. He claimed the “big winners are foreign-born households”, and the “big losers are British taxpayers”.

Labour MPs will argue on the doorsteps in the weeks leading up to May 7 local elections that the big winners are the 450,000 children the Government says will be lifted out of poverty.

With Labour expected to perform catastrophically at the polls, Sir Keir will hope that scrapping the benefit cap will boost his chances of surviving as PM. Shortly after Labour took office, MPs lost the whip for daring to vote to end the cap. But the PM has now bowed to pressure from Left-wingers and a host of charities, and larger families can look forward to a windfall.

The highest number of children who will benefit from lifting the cap are found in areas where Labour cannot afford to lose MPs and councillors, including London (239,270), the North West (211,000) and the West Midlands (184,590). According to one analysis, around 480,000 families with three-plus children can look forward to an average rise of £4,100 a year.

The Conservatives have condemned this as a spending splurge which will “reward worklessness and leave working families picking up the tab”.

This comes at a time of high taxes when households across Britain face a new cost of living crisis with surging energy bills and yet more hikes in food prices. The Tories and Reform know many voters will doubt that this is the right moment to adopt a more generous benefits policy – especially when Sir Keir has failed to bring the UK’s rocketing welfare bill under control.

There are regular headlines about the urgent need to rebuild Britain’s armed forces in the face of a host of dangers but Sir Keir is now channeling taxpayers’ cash towards bigger families – a policy which is expected to cost £3billion in 2029-30.

Mr Yusuf claims 341,000 households with three or more children are “foreign-born”. Defenders of scrapping the cap will hit back, saying there is no guarantee these families are on benefits, that many of the heads of these households will be in well-paid jobs, and that British children should not be penalised for having an overseas-born parent.

Earlier this year the Department for Work and Pensions claimed the “proportion of Universal Credit claimants who are foreign nationals has fallen since October 2024, from 17.1% to 15.7%” while the share who are who are British or Irish increased.

But Reform and the Conservatives will continue to tap into the grievances of cash-strapped Brits whose living standards have stagnated, and whose money worries are deepening. Kemi Badenoch deployed one of the true zingers of her career when she accused Rachel Reeves of delivering a “Budget for Benefits Street”.

Reform’s outright opposition to the cap represents a moment of evolution for the party. There are worries on the Right that Britons have far too few children with the fertility rate for England and Wales declining to just 1.4 children per woman by 2024.

Last year Mr Farage said he wanted the cap scrapped “not because we support a benefits culture, but because we believe for lower paid workers this actually makes having children just a little bit easier for them”. He said his party wanted to go “much, much further to encourage people to have children”.

Reform could have crafted a manifesto inspired by the raft of family-encouraging policies rolled out in Hungary. But last month Robert Jenrick – the former Conservative cabinet minister who will serve as Mr Farage’s Chancellor if the party takes power – declared: “We want to help working families have more children. But right now, we just cannot afford to do so with welfare. So it has to go.”

There are working couples across the country who would love to start a family or have more children but who shudder at the punishing cost of childcare and the blitz of expenses a baby brings. A party which can tap into their aspirations could reap major rewards at the next election – and ensure that future governments are funded by an even bigger pool of taxpayers.