Sir Keir Starmer is under fresh pressure to scrap the two-child benefit cap if he becomes prime minister after Gordon Brown said it is condemning children to live in poverty.
The former Labour prime minister lashed out at the “inequities” of the policy and said it “should be scrapped” before the next general election.
But his call also piles pressure on Labour, which is currently backing the policy despite criticism. Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told The Independent that Labour would inherit a difficult set of public finances but would work to bringing down child poverty.
The policy prevents parents from claiming benefits for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
It was introduced by former chancellor George Osborne, who said removing benefits eligibility for parents with a third child would “incentivise” parents to move into work and take up more hours.
Mr Brown’s call for it to be scrapped came after right-wing former home secretary Suella Braverman also came out in opposition to the policy.
Sir Keir also said the policy should be scrapped while running for the Labour leadership, but has since u-turned and said he would not axe it if Labour wins power.
Embarrassingly for the Labour Party, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting was defending its policy just before Ms Braverman’s surprise intervention.
Mr Streeting said that he is a “product of a welfare state” but that dealing with child poverty was “more than just about handouts”.
He added: “We’ve got a difficult challenge to navigate, particularly in terms of public finances, but I just asked people to judge Labour on the record of lifting a million children and pensioners as well actually lifted out of poverty under the last Labour government.”
He said Sir Keir would bring down child poverty and work towards consigning it to the history books.
But, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Brown said the two-child benefit cap which Labour is committed to is “condemning children to poverty”.
Mr Brown said: “The tragedy is we are now writing the future history of our country by neglecting children who we have condemned to poverty and not being able to have a decent start in life who are going to fail in the future.”
Mr Brown explained that the entire family, not just the third or fourth child, is affected by the two-child limit, with the average family being left £60 worse off each week.
“A family on low pay or a family that is struggling cannot afford to lose £60 a week,” he said.
He added: “I think we have got to rethink that… just remember that poverty went up by about 600,000 in the last few years… it is going to continue to grow if we don’t do something about these problems.”
He also called for “root and branch” reform of the wider benefit system to address problems created by the bedroom tax, the housing benefit limit and other benefit caps.
In her own intervention, Ms Braverman praised the work of the late veteran Labour MP Frank Field towards eliminating poverty.
She said the two-child benefit limit is “aggravating child poverty” and urged the government to “do more to support families and children on lower incomes”.
Writing in The Telegraph, she said: “Let’s abolish the two-child limit, eradicate child poverty for good and make Frank Field proud.”
Abolishing the cap is thought to come with a price tag of around £2.5bn per year, which Ms Braverman said could be funded by getting more people claiming out-of-work benefits back into employment.
She added: “Do we support families or do we penalise them? That’s the real question of a compassionate welfare system.”
Sir Keir faced a major backlash last summer when he confirmed Labour was not planning to replace the policy.
Shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth has called the policy “heinous” and said it is “keeping children in poverty”.
Left-wing Labour MPs have vowed to keep pushing Sir Keir for a rethink on the policy.
