Current status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 17 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any impact on child poverty in Scotland, what its estimate is of the number of households in Scotland affected by the UK Government's two-child benefit cap.
The latest official two-child limit statistics show that in April 2025 there were 29,340 households in Scotland affected by the policy.
Over time, the number of households affected by the two-child limit will increase. Scottish Government microsimulation modelling published in March 2025 estimated that our planned mitigation of the two-child limit will result in 20,000 fewer children living in relative poverty in Scotland in 2026-27.
We continue to press the UK Government to remove the two-child limit at source; the limit withheld an estimated cumulative total of £377 million by the end of 2024-25 from Scottish households according to our analysis.