‘This is a brilliant day, Rachel Reeves has lifted 450,000 kids out of poverty and more’

Britain’s first woman chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has ended the barbaric rape clause introduced by the last Tory government.

This was a landmark day for a Labour government.

Britain’s first woman chancellor has ended the barbaric rape clause introduced by the last Tory government. The daughter of primary school teachers has lifted 1.5 million children out of poverty.

In a gutsy performance, Rachel Reeves told the House of Commons: “I joined the Labour party because I believe every child has equal worth.”

Whoever is holding the red box, every fiscal statement comes down to political choices. And for all the kerfuffle about the OBR’s leaked maths homework and a ‘smorgasbord’ of taxes, Rachel Reeves’ Budget has a Labour heart.

The Chancellor’s choice has been to end the two-child limit that affects a staggering one in nine children – lifting 450,000 children out of poverty and reducing the depth of poverty for a further 800,000 children. And making life just a little bit easier for thousands more.

And then there is the appalling, ‘rape clause’, highlighted by the Mirror just a fortnight ago. A policy that requires women to have to prove their child has been conceived non-consensually to receive support.

Yesterday, a clearly angered Reeves went a step further. She called the policy “vile”.

“I’m proud to be Britain’s first female Chancellor of the Exchequer,” she said. “And I will not tolerate the grotesque indignity of the rape clause any longer. It is dehumanising, it is cruel, and I will remove it from the statute book.”

She spoke wearing a white ribbon around her neck that – consciously or unconsciously – echoed the one worn yesterday by many of her colleagues in the chamber to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls.

A fortnight ago, I wrote about the horrendous effect of the rape clause on one woman’s life. For Maria, it has meant being forced to repeatedly recount her attack to different DWP staff – even after being diagnosed with PTSD.

“I was promised support and protection after everything I went through,” Maria said. “Instead, I’ve been retraumatised again and again. I’ve had to fight for payments I’m entitled to by explaining the sexual assault to strangers and dealing with male staff despite my repeated requests to only be in contact with female staff.

“Each time this happens, it sends me back to the trauma I suffered and threatens to undo the progress I have fought so hard to make to move on with my life.”

After the Chancellor’s speech today, the process of removing this Victorian policy from the statute book can finally begin. And Maria can finally look forward to the day she will never have to recount her sexual assault to a DWP official, ever again.

The Mirror has been campaigning against the cruel two-child measure for a decade – since it was introduced in the Tories’ 2015 Summer Budget, tearing a hole in the safety net for Britain’s poorest children.

Like so much of Tory welfare reform, it is badly misunderstood. For a start, 59 per cent of the children affected have at least one parent in work. Meanwhile, the common thread is not mums trying to get council homes or not caring how many children they have, but the simple fact that families, however well planned, change.

Marriages split up. Partners leave. Parents die or become disabled. People have children they can afford and then life changes.

And, as Reeves said yesterday: “It’s the kids who have paid the price.”

The Chancellor spoke of children going to school hungry and waking up in a cold home, and of wasted talent. She said: “I don’t intend to preside over a government that punishes children for the circumstances of their birth.”

But she also spoke up for all children with money for libraries in every secondary school, and for playgrounds to be upgraded across the nation.

This was not a full-blooded socialist Budget. Reeves remains a cautious Chancellor. But there was plenty in there that a Tory government would never even think of doing. Clawing back the money from Covid contracts. Getting rid of failed police and crime commissioners. Taking on the gambling companies – but abolishing ‘bingo duty’.

Labour will transfer the investment reserve from the British Coal fund to its members, she said, ending a miners’ pension fund injustice. Payments from the blood infection compensation fund will be exempt from inheritance tax.

She even allowed herself a joke. “We are ramping up sanctions on Russia and we are freezing known Russian assets,” Reeves said. “But let me be clear, I don’t actually mean the Right Honourable Member for Clacton.”

Keir Starmer introduced the Budget by saying: “I know what it’s like to sit around a kitchen table with bills that can’t be paid.” Reeves spoke of her own childhood in a school where textbooks were shared and lessons were held in portacabins. And in the end, the Prime Minister and his Chancellor understand more than most politicians what it’s like to grow up in an ordinary family.

Opposite them, the leader of the opposition – who comes from the same party as Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng – responded by saying Reeves would go down as the “worst Chancellor in history”.

Making Tory leader Kemi Badenoch look even more foolish than the poor person at the OBR who accidentally hit ‘upload’.

There can be no greater act as a Chancellor than to lift children out of poverty. And Chancellor Rachel Reeves leaves a lasting legacy for 1.5 million children by scrapping the two-child cap, and makes history by ending one of the most misogynist and barbarous policies ever enacted.

Recently, Reeves revealed her mum reads the Daily Mail for its puzzles and crosswords, and hides it when she comes around.

Today, I hope she buys her a copy of the Daily Mirror.

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