Read: Scrap two-child limit on benefits, urge government’s social mobility advisers

The government’s social mobility advisers have called for a £14bn overhaul of the UK benefits system, including scrapping the two-child limit on benefits and raising child benefit by £10 a week, to cut poverty and narrow the growing gulf between rich and poor.

The eye-catching recommendation on benefits is part of a wider set of Social Mobility Commission (SMC) proposals to put disadvantaged youngsters at the heart of the UK’s pandemic recovery, and comes a fortnight after ministers confirmed they would end the £20 a week universal credit top-up in the autumn.

The commission also proposes extra investment in childcare and education to provide more financial and practical support for disadvantaged students, including an expansion of “catch-up” tutoring to narrow soaring school attainment gaps between disadvantaged and privileged children.

Bold action to tackle rising poverty and inequalities fuelled by Covid-19 was urgently needed. It said: “The pandemic will have a profound impact on the UK over the next decades. There is a huge risk that the gulf between the rich and poor will continue to grow ever wider and deeper.”

Failure to act would consign the next generation of deprived youngsters to “decades of hardship” with the risk that social mobility would grind to a halt in the face of widening inequalities, it said in its annual State of the Nation report.

It justified what it admitted would be a “hefty price tag” for its proposals on the grounds that taking 1.5 million children out of poverty would lead to better education outcomes, increased earnings and improved life expectancy. “Ultimately, it benefits everyone in society when we are better off,” it said.

Read the full story in The Guardian.

Strong Foundations in Early Years is one of the 14 Levelling Up Goals launched to set out clear objectives for the UK's Levelling Up challenge in the wake of Covid-19.