The new strategy has gaps. But ministers have shown that they are serious and capable of listening

If the government’s long-awaited child poverty strategy, launched on Friday, was a bit of a damp squib, that is because the best bit had been absorbed by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in last month’s budget. The decision to remove the two-child limit, which prevented parents from claiming child-linked benefits for third or subsequent children, is expected to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of this parliament. It is the best welfare decision taken by Labour since they were elected. Ms Reeves was correct to press the point that “potential suffocated by limited life chances” is a blight on society as well as on those who experience it directly.

No wonder that Labour ministers

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