Britain’s biggest jobless families are in line for taxpayer-funded windfalls worth an average £25,000 by the end of the decade when Labour lifts the two-child benefit cap.
Ministers will bring forward legislation on Tuesday to lift the limit on benefit payments which was imposed in 2017.
The government claims the move will lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
But the Conservatives said the plan will add billions to the benefits bill – and warned it risks ‘punishing work’.
Official estimates suggest the cost of scrapping the cap will total £13.6 billion over the next five years.
The Tories said families currently affected by the cap are in line to receive windfalls worth an average £25,000 each over that period.
But the biggest families will gain far more. Thousands of families with five children will receive around £10,900 a year while those with six children will get an extra £16,600 a year.
Almost half of the families involved have no one in work.
Around 470,000 families with three or more children will gain thousands of pounds from the end of the two-child benefit cap
Tory welfare spokesman Helen Whately accused Labour of ‘rewarding worklessness’
Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: ‘Labour are unleashing a £14 billion benefits spending spree. Worse, this shovels nearly half the cash to jobless households with average payouts of £25,000.
‘Work is being punished while worklessness is rewarded. Keir Starmer was happy to take money away from pensioners, but he doesn’t have the backbone to say no to his own MPs when they demand runaway welfare spending.’
Labour sources said on Monday the figures did not include the ‘lifelong cost’ to children of growing up in poverty. Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden will argue today that growing up poor means children are less likely to do well at school – and cost them £1 million over their lifetime.
However, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year suggested that the introduction of the cap had ‘no significant effect’ on children’s readiness for school at age five.
The benefit cap limits means-tested benefits like universal credit and child tax credit payments to the first two children, costing families a typical £3,455 in lost benefits for each additional child.
Figures produced by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show that 470,000 families are now affected by the policy. Around 40 per cent live in households where no one works.
Almost two-thirds (297,000) have three children, while a quarter (117,000) have four. A further 37,000 affected families have five children, while 18,260 are listed as having ‘six or more’.
The DWP does not provide a breakdown of the largest families. But separate figures held by HM Revenue and Customs show that child benefit, which is not subject to the cap, was paid to more than 16,000 families with six children, more than 5,000 with seven children and even to 15 families with 13 children or more.
The total benefits received by a family is covered by a separate ‘benefits cap’ of £25,320 in London and £22,020 outside – although Labour MPs are also pushing to lift this.
A Labour spokesman defended the decision to lift the cap, saying: ‘The welfare bill rocketed by nearly £60 billion under the Tories. They’re delusional to think anyone would take advice from them.
‘Labour is lifting nearly half a million kids out of poverty. Reform and the Tories would cruelly plunge them back into that misery.’
Nigel Farage suggested last year that Reform would also lift the two-child cap. But Reform have now clarified that this will only apply to families where both parents are British born and in full time work. A Reform source suggested the cap would only be lifted for around 3,700 families.
