The first real test of Labour's hardline approach to public spending has surfaced within a week of the party taking office and it is a big one. The issue is child poverty and in particular the two-child benefit limit introduced by the Conservatives in April 2017.
Currently, this ambitious strategy does not extend to scrapping the two-child benefit cap, even though CPAG says doing so would lift 300,000 children out of poverty at a cost of 1.7bn a year. No other single measure the government could take would be as cost-effective in reducing the number of children living below the breadline.
Labour's line is that scrapping the two-child limit is something not currently budgeted for in its programme, so abolition will have to wait until there is money to spare. The argument is that this would open the floodgates to a host of other demands.
The two-child cap will not survive five years of a Labour government with such a commanding parliamentary majority, and so it is a question of when not if the policy originally brought in by George Osborne will be canned. Delaying that decision condemns more children to a life of misery and want.
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