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£1 billion resilience fund announced as government set to remove two-child limit

ended 03. February 2026

Historic legislation to end the two-child limit and lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty has moved a step closer to reality today, the government has announced.

As the bill to scrap the two-child limit reaches second reading stage in Parliament, the government has announced a new £1 billion Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF).

Launching in April and split across Local Authorities throughout England, the Crisis and Resilience Fund will replace the Household Support Fund and brings together Discretionary Housing Payments into a single, streamlined grant.

Minister for Employment Dame Diana Johnson, said: “Families deserve support before a crisis hits, not after. By scrapping the two-child limit and launching a £1 billion Crisis and Resilience Fund, we’re giving councils the tools to help families build real financial security.

“Growing up in poverty has a significant impact on health, education and employment and lifting 550,000 children out of these circumstances isn’t just about fairness today, it’s about building a stronger Britain for the future.”

  • What is your reaction to the lifting of the two-child limit for benefits.
  • What is your reaction to the new £1 billion Crisis and Resilience Fund?
  • How important is lifting families out of poverty? Or is this beyond what we can afford as a country?

Responses asap.

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate UnderwoodVerified
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Scrapping the two-child limit isn’t some fluffy handout. It’s a pressure release valve for working families, and that helps small businesses too.
When home life is constant crisis mode, it spills into work. Stress, sickness, lateness, sudden absences, brain fog. In a small team, one person wobbling can wobble the whole business. So this matters in real life, not just on paper.
If lifting the limit genuinely pulls hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, that’s huge. Morally, yes. But also economically. Parents who aren’t in survival mode show up better, stay longer, and cope more.
The £1bn Crisis and Resilience Fund could be a smart move too, if it’s fast and consistent. Councils helping before things blow up is exactly the point. My only eyebrow raise is delivery. If it turns into a postcode lottery or a paperwork marathon, families still won’t get help when they actually need it.
Can we afford it? We can’t afford not to. Poverty isn’t free. It just invoices you later.
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Michelle LawsonVerified
Director at Lawson Financial
Nobody wants to see a child or family in poverty. What we have to be mindful of though is how families spend the money given to them. Are they truly lifting the family out of poverty or is this funding tobacco, alcohol or tattoos? What we need to do is look at the root cause of the problems rather than chucking more money at it. Some families will also see this as a good reason to expand their family further when they are already struggling to feed the mouths that they have. We should be championing work and success rather than funding and growing the welfare sector further as the costs of implementing this are knocking on further to the people it is designed to support. Many families do struggle but many also live beyond their means and still find the money for the things they deem important often by saddling themselves with debt along the way. Financial education is needed early on and this would be the greater investment for all.
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Rohit Parmar-MistryVerified
Founder at Pattrn Data
Scrapping the two-child limit isn't just a win for social justice; it’s a long-overdue correction. Punishing children for their parents' circumstances was always a recipe for long-term economic stagnation.

The £1 billion Crisis and Resilience Fund offers a vital bridge, but we must be careful not to mistake a safety net for a solution. A permanent crisis fund is an admission that the system is broken. We are still trapped in a Thatcherite neoliberal cycle that prioritises austerity over human potential, and the UK’s Gini coefficient reflects that deepening inequality.

Lifting 550,000 children out of poverty isn't 'unaffordable', what's actually unaffordable is the downstream cost of a generation raised in deprivation. We need to move beyond sticking-plaster economics and embrace Keynesian investment in public goods and consumption. If we want a resilient economy, we have to stop managing decline and start funding the baseline that allows people to actually participate in the market.