Camron Aref-Adib speaking at Monday’s meeting

LABOUR councillors have been let off the leash to say what many have only said privately before this week: The two-child benefit cap has to go.

Finance chief Councillor Camron Aref-Adib said the cap – introduced by the Conservatives and retained by Sir Keir Starmer’s government in his first 18 months as prime minister – needed to be removed in its entirety.

He said: “I am acutely aware that in spite of our efforts as a local authority, without measures at a national level we won’t be able to fully tackle child poverty in our borough. There are at least 3,500 children in Camden living in households affected by the two-child limit on benefits payments.”

He was speaking at the child poverty debate on Monday night at which a series of guest speakers said there was a desperate need for a change of approach on the limit.

Cllr Aref-Adib may have sounded combative towards Mr Starmer and Rachel Reeves, but many Labour councillors believe the chancellor has already made up her mind to end the policy – or at least recognise the distress it has caused by reforming it in some way.

Cllr Aref-Adib told Monday’s meeting: “Any measures that ease the burden on these families at the autumn budget through reforming the two-child limit will be hugely welcome. But I want to be clear that if we want to get serious about tackling child poverty, if we want to get those numbers down in areas like Camden, the cap needs to go in its entirety. No half measures.”

When asked about the cap before last year’s general election and over the first phase of the new government, loyal councillors and MPs had generally not wanted to cause public friction with their national counterparts and instead talked about difficult financial choices due to the financial inheritance from the outgoing Conservative administration.

But on Monday night, Labour councillors were almost queuing up to share their thoughts about how unfair they thought it was on struggling families. Cabinet member Anna Wright said she wanted everyone “to join the Labour council in asking the government to scrap the cap” and schools chief, Councillor Marcus Boyland, said this was being done “in the strongest possible terms”.

Kentish Town councillor James Slater described the cap as “abhorrent”.

Sceptics in Town Hall corridors suggested that these punchy comments were designed for election leaflets that would say Labour councillors had been campaigning for its removal – even though the glut of public comments had only come in the week before Ms Reeves’ budget announcements.

The Liberal Democrats had arrived at Monday’s meeting armed with a demand for the cap to be lifted – including a motion.

Group leader Councillor Tom Simon said he was concerned that Ms Reeves would “fail to take decisive action” and end up setting a taskforce to look into the effects of the cap, rather than simply removing it.

“People in this country have been denied improvements to their living situations for no good reason,” he said. “Liberal Democrats in government – in the coalition – championed those on low wages by raising the threshold at which people started paying tax, a progressive and liberal policy that reduced the tax burden on those least able to pay.”

His party’s motion text was watered down by Labour changes.

Backbench Labour councillor Edmund Frondigoun said: “What we are trying to be clear in saying is that the two-child cap is not a good policy. It should never have been introduced in the first place, but it is not the only cause of poverty – it’s because of cuts that were made 10, 15 years ago and not by this government.

“It’s because of investments that should have been made 10, 15 years ago and were not by the government.”