Number of children in workless households hits 10-year high

Yahoo

28-05-2025

The number of children growing up in homes without a working adult has hit its highest in a decade amid growing concern about Britain's benefits crisis.
A total 1.45m children – or around one in nine – lived in a workless household in the first three months of 2025, up 169,000 compared to a year ago, official data showed.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said this was the highest level since the end of 2015, just after former Chancellor George Osborne announced he would limit welfare claims to a family's first two children.
Rachel Reeves is facing mounting pressure to scrap the cap at a cost of around £3.5bn a year, with the Prime Minister reportedly asking the Chancellor to explore how it could be funded.
Labour backbenchers have also vowed to rebel against £5bn in health and disability welfare cuts even as the cost of these benefits is on course to approach £100bn a year by 2030.
Nigel Farage has pledged to remove the so-called two-child benefit cap as the Reform leader attempts to woo traditional voters in Labour's heartlands across the north of England and Wales.
In a worrying trend, the ONS data also showed that children were now much more likely to be growing up in a household where the adults are not even looking for a job.
The number of children growing up in a household in which all adults are economically inactive stood at 1.17m in the first quarter of the year. This is 137,000 higher than a year ago and roughly 100,000 more than a decade ago, when far more adults were seeking work.
Around 1.6m children are living in roughly 440,000 households affected by the two-child benefit cap, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
The Resolution Foundation think tank has previously estimated that axing the policy would lift 470,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £3.5bn a year.
Speaking at an event on Tuesday, Mr Farage said he wanted to scrap the cap 'not because we support the benefits culture, but because we believe that for lower paid workers, this actually makes having children just a little bit easier'.
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has also called for the cap to be removed, funded by a tax on gambling sites or a further raid on banks.
However, official data also show that around two in five households – or around 180,000 – who are affected by the two-child limit are not currently in work
Sir Keir Starmer ruled out scrapping the cap in 2023 and even suspended half a dozen MPs from his own party for voting with the SNP to remove it.
The Prime Minister has since softened his approach, saying Labour would remove it but only when there was money to pay for it.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, delivered the strongest signal yet that ministers intend to end the cap.
Speaking on Tuesday, she said: 'We want to make this change happen, and it will be the moral mission of this Labour Government to ensure that fewer children grow up in poverty.'
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