Should the two-child benefit cap be scrapped?

The two-child cap survives this vote, but only just: 46% backed scrapping it against 54% who didn't, a margin thin enough to call this a live argument rather than a settled one. On a question that touches welfare, family size and the state's role in both, an eight-point gap is closer to a shrug than a verdict.

The generational pattern is the story here, and it doesn't run the way you'd expect. It's not a simple young-versus-old split: 25-64 year-olds were fairly uniformly unpersuaded, with 25-34s, 35-44s and 45-54s all clustering around 33-40% yes. The 55-64 bracket bucked that entirely, tipping 56% in favour of scrapping the cap, the only sizeable group to back abolition.

That the age group nearing retirement — furthest removed from the policy's direct bite — proved most sympathetic to reform cuts against the instinct that self-interest drives welfare votes. It suggests something closer to a values divide than a means-tested one, echoing the wider tension in British welfare politics between fiscal restraint and child poverty as the frame through which the cap gets judged.

Gender told a quieter story: men split 46-54, women 40-60, a modest but consistent gap that tracks the broader pattern of women leaning more sceptical of benefit cuts across these debates. Small margins, then, but a chamber clearly still arguing rather than agreeing.