The Welsh Government have again been urged to lobby the UK Government to lift the two-child benefit cap after it was revealed that nearly 1,000 children living in Powys have been affected by the policy.

Welsh Lib Dem leader Jane Dodds has called on the First Minister Eluned Morgan to petition her Westminster Labour colleagues to scrap the controversial cap.Introduced in 2017, the cap limits parents from claiming a payment from the government to only their first two children.

According to the “End Child Poverty Coalition”, a total of 990 children were impacted by the two-child benefit cap last year. Representing nine per cent of all children in her Powys constituency.

Statistics from the Welsh Government have also revealed that 43 per cent of children in households containing of three or more young people are now at risk of relative poverty, meaning that 100,000 children who are living in poverty come from households affected by the child benefit cap.

Several members of the current Welsh Government cabinet have previously advocated for the policy’s abolition, including the current cabinet secretary for finance who described the two-child limit as “the single greatest driver of child poverty”.

Speaking in the Siambr on Tuesday, Mid and West Wales MS Jane Dodds said that “Over the past six years, we here in Wales have seen a startling increase in the number of larger families living in relative poverty, which has been worsened by Labour’s baffling commitment to the child benefit cap.

“This is especially prevalent in my own constituency, where a worryingly high number of children are being affected by a policy which has widely been criticised as ‘cruel’ and a violation of children’s rights by numerous charities.Nearly 1,000 children were affected by the cap last year, and that should not just be viewed as a faceless statistic but as 65,000 young lives growing up in hardship due to no fault of their own.

“This problem will only worsen if the Welsh Government continues to bury their heads in the sand. The First Minister must use her position to lobby the Prime Minister for the immediate abolition of this cap before even more Welsh Children fall into the grip of poverty.”