Budget 2024: A Step Forward, but More Needed for Women

Rachel Reeves promised a cost-of-living budget, and on some measures, she delivered.

The chancellor used her budget speech this week to announce an end to the two-child limit on benefits, remove levies from energy bills, freeze NHS prescription charges and rail fares in England, and raise the minimum wage. All of this will make a difference, especially for women, who often struggle with rising living costs – balancing unpaid care, low wages, and increasing household bills.

However, in other areas, the Labor goverment didn’t go far enough to reduce hardships that women feel strongly. Reeves didn’t introduce measures to help with homelessness, address inequalities in the tax system, or redistribute the UK’s wealth.

Removing the two-child limit on Universal Credit is a major step towards tackling child poverty. Since it began in 2017, this policy has kept families in hardship.For years, people have argued that punishing children for having siblings isn’t right, and doesn’t make economic sense, considering the cost of child poverty to their future and public services.

Our analysis at the Women’s Budget Group shows that ending the limit will lift over half a million children out of poverty by the end of the decade – giving them back their dignity, hope, and opportunities. This will especially help single parents, who are most affected by the policy and are usually women. Many have gone into debt or skipped meals to make up for the money lost as of the limit. Ending it also removes a cruel requirement: the ‘rape clause,’ which forced survivors to prove their trauma to get help.

Even this important step has a downside. For some families, the relief will be temporary as