Almost one in three food parcels now goes to families with three or more children. This isn’t random. The Two-Child Limit policy is pushing these families to food banks, and Trussell has launched a campaign calling on the UK government to scrap it before the Autumn Budget on 26 November. We need your help to make this happen.
The Conservative government introduced the Two-Child Limit in 2017. If you’re a family claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit, you only get support for your first two children. Any children after that get nothing, even if both parents are working.
That leaves families around £3,500 worse off per year for each additional child above two. Think about what £3,500 means when you’re already struggling to pay rent and buy food. It’s the difference between managing and crisis.
Right now, 3.8 million children across the UK are growing up in households facing hunger. That’s up from 3.2 million in 2022. Data from food banks in the Trussell network shows that 29% of all food parcels now go to families with three or more children.
These families aren’t making bad choices. They’re being punished by a policy that says children with two siblings don’t deserve the same support. We see these families every week at our outlets, and the strain is clear.
But here’s what gives us hope. Scrapping the Two-Child Limit would lift 350,000 children out of hardship immediately, and another 700,000 children would see their family’s financial situation improve. That’s over a million children whose lives would change.
Some people think policies like the Two-Child Limit save money, but that’s not how it works in real life. Emma Revie, Trussell’s CEO, has shown that scrapping this policy would actually benefit the UK government by £3.1bn in economic and fiscal savings.
Children who grow up without enough food are more likely to develop health problems that need treatment from our already stretched NHS. This policy doesn’t protect the public purse. It creates bigger bills down the line.
The government has committed to ending the mass distribution of emergency food and pledged to deliver an ambitious child poverty strategy. Those are good words, but words alone won’t feed children. Removing the Two-Child Limit is one of the simplest and most effective steps they can take to back up what they’ve said with action.
We’ve got five weeks until the Autumn Budget. That’s not much time, but it’s enough if we act now.
Trussell has created a tool that makes emailing your MP easy. You can find it at the button below, and it takes about five minutes. Your MP needs to hear from you because they’ll only push for this change if they know their constituents care.
Many MPs already support scrapping the policy, but they won’t act unless they feel people in their communities want it. That’s where you come in. Send that email, then share the link with friends and family and talk about why it matters.
The more voices the government hears, the harder it becomes to ignore. This campaign can work, but only if enough of us speak up. Together, we can push for a change that transforms the lives of over a million children.
