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SCRAPPING the two-child benefit cap may not help with a child’s early development and being ready for school, a report says.

The new study says ending the policy would massively help reduce child poverty but it currently has “no adverse” impact on kids by the end of their reception year.

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Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to end the cap from ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.

But ending the policy that came into effect in 2017 would cost between £2 billion and £3.5 billion by the end of the decade.

The government has a goal of raising the proportion of children starting school ready to learn from the current 68 per cent to 75 per cent by 2030.

Report author Tom Waters, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “This suggests that it might be hard for the Government to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ – simultaneously reducing child poverty and raising school readiness – through scrapping the two-child limit.”

The government is expected to set out its strategy to tackle child poverty this Autumn.

Cabinet Minister Bridget Phillipson said scrapping the cap is “on the table” while drumming up support for her bid to be Labour’s deputy leader, following Angela Rayner leaving the role.

Vietnam’s declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas, while nationally, male births still outnumber female.

Vietnam has scrapped its longstanding two-child policy as it aims to reverse its declining birthrate and ease the pressure from an ageing society.

All restrictions were removed this week, and couples will be free to have as many children as they choose, according to Vietnamese media.

Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that a future shrinking population “threatens Vietnam’s sustainable economic and social development, as well as its national security and defence in the long term,” the Hanoi Times reported.

Between 1999 and 2022, Vietnam’s birthrate was about 2.1 children per woman, the replacement rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, but the rate has started to fall, the news outlet said.

In 2024, the country’s birthrate reached a record low of 1.91 children per woman.

Regional neighbours like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong all have declining birthrates, but their economies are more advanced than Vietnam’s.

Vietnam’s working-age population is expected to peak around 2040, according to the World Bank, and it aims to avoid the trap of “getting old before it gets rich”.

The country’s communist government introduced the two-child policy in 1988 to ensure it had adequate resources as it transitioned from a planned to a market economy. At the time, Vietnam was also still overcoming the effects of decades of war.

Vietnam’s two-child policy was most strictly enforced with members of Vietnam’s Communist Party, according to the Associated Press, but families everywhere could lose out on government subsidies and assistance if they had a third or fourth child.

As well as a declining birthrate, Vietnam is also facing significant imbalances across different regions and social groups, the Ministry of Health said.

The declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas such as Ho Chi Minh and the capital Hanoi, where the cost of living is highest. But there are also significant disparities in gender. Last year, Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth was 111 boys to every 100 girls.

The disparity between male and female births is most pronounced in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta and the Northern Midlands and Mountains, according to the World Bank, and lowest in the Central Highlands and Mekong River Delta.

Vietnam prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of their children to curb sex-selective abortions, but the practice continues, with doctors communicating via coded words, according to Vietnamese media.

Left unchecked, the General Statistics Office warned there could be a “surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 by 2039, rising to 2.5 million by 2059”.

In a bid to reverse this trend, the Health Ministry separately proposed tripling the fine for “foetal gender selection” to about $3,800.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has refused to confirm whether the government is planning to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

On Sunday, the Observer reported that Sir Keir Starmer had privately backed abolishing the limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so.

The policy prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017.

Asked on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg if she would like to see the cap go, Rayner said: “I’m not going to speculate on what our government is going to do.”

She pointed to the establishment of a Child Poverty Taskforce, which had been considering whether to remove it, among other measures.

“We’re looking in the round at the challenges. That is one element,” she said, giving plans to speed up housebuilding as an example.

It follows the delay of the government’s child poverty strategy – being worked on by the taskforce – which had been due for publication in the spring. The BBC has been told it could be set out in the autumn.

On Tuesday, a memo from Rayner’s department was leaked to the Daily Telegraph, which appeared to urge the chancellor to “claw back” child benefit payments from wealthier families, alongside several other suggestions.

Asked if she backed the proposal, Rayner refused to be drawn. She told Sunday with Laura Kuessberg that ministers were “looking at child poverty” and that she supported what the government had done so far.

She was also categoric in her denial of being behind the leak. “I do not leak. I think leaks are very damaging,” she said.

It was put to Rayner that some in Labour had characterised her as jostling for Sir Keir’s job as a result of the memo being shared.

“I do not want to run for leader of the Labour Party. I rule it out,” she said, adding that being the deputy prime minister was the “honour of my life”.

She also denied that there were splits in Sir Keir’s cabinet, saying: “I can reassure you the government is solid.”

Questions around the two-child benefit cap come after the prime minister announced a U-turn on cuts to winter fuel payments, following weeks of mounting pressure.

Sir Keir said the policy would be changed in the autumn Budget, adding that ministers would only “make decisions we can afford”.

Asked if any change would arrive before this winter, Rayner said it would be for Rachel Reeves to outline at the “next fiscal event”.

More than 10 million pensioners lost out on the top-up payments, worth up to £300 a year, when it was limited to those in receipt of pension credit only.

On Sunday, Nigel Farage said he would fully reinstate the allowance and scrap the two-child benefit cap, if Reform UK formed the next government.

“Farage says a lot of things,” Rayner said in response to a question about his intervention.

Asked about Farage’s intervention, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch later told the programme: “This is nonsense. People are just making promises, throwing out all sorts of things, but they won’t be delivered.”

The country could not afford to lift the two-child benefit cap, she said, adding the public are “sick and tired of politicians making promises they cannot keep”.

However, when asked about winter fuel payments, Badenoch urged the government to restore them in full.