Responding to the Budget 2025, Natalie Perera, EPI’s Chief Executive, said:
“Abolishing the two-child limit is a vital correction to a policy that plunged thousands of children into poverty, impacting their development, opportunities, and outcomes, while creating cost pressures elsewhere in public services. This direct poverty alleviation is a crucial reversal, and it is right that the Government has acted on the advice of experts and campaigners across the sector.
“The Government has also confirmed plans to meet future funding for SEND from within the existing government departmental envelope. However, while there is a clear and imminent need to address the rising costs of SEND provision, the Government must not cut school funding to meet these pressures. Schools are only just emerging from a decade of real-terms cuts and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Further cuts to per-pupil funding risk widening inequalities and compromising schools’ ability to deliver a world-class education, particularly for disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils.
“The Government needs to invest in long-term reform of the SEND system. This requires investment in the workforce and targeted funding for early identification and intervention. The only way to stem the rising cost of Education, Health and Care plans is to build an education system where most children’s needs can genuinely be met in mainstream schools – a system that builds parents’ trust without requiring a long and resource-intensive diagnostic process.
“The Government has acknowledged the need to tackle child poverty. Lifting the two-child benefit limit is an important and impactful decision, but it must be delivered alongside investment in wider services for children.”
