As Bishop Auckland’s MP, nothing matters more to me than ending the scourge of child poverty, whether at home or abroad. It is a cause to which I have committed incalculable amounts of time and energy for decades, in both my work life and personal life.

I care deeply about the futures of children and youth in our area. It is why I walked with blistered feet from the Irish to the North Sea to raise money for Children North East and why my first constituency visit as an MP was to a school.

Since arriving parliament 3 weeks ago, I have not stopped pushing for measures to tackle child poverty and increase opportunity for young people. This has included:

1. Joining school children and the National Education Union for a picnic-protest outside parliament promoting universal free school meals, because, while I am proud of this new Labour government’s commitment to introduce free breakfast clubs in every school, I would like to see us go further. Far too many children are malnourished and too many working parents on low incomes, who do not qualify for free school dinners, are struggling.

2. Meeting with representatives from UK Youth to offer support hosting an event in parliament to highlight the need to properly fund youth services and have a cross-departmental strategy to improve youth provision.

3. Holding numerous conversations with with fellow MPs, including ministers, and expressing openly my opposition to the two-child welfare cap and desire to see reform to Universal Credit.

4. Attending a meeting with the Ministers for Education and Work & Pensions to discuss the Child Poverty Task Force they are creating to look holistically and across government ministries at ending child poverty. I raised questions about how as a constituency MP I can engage with that process, and how organisations and individuals in the Bishop Auckland constituency – including children and youth themselves – can engage with the process.

This brings me to the issues surrounding the 2-child benefit limit:

I do not know any Labour MPs, including Keir Starmer and the cabinet, who did not oppose this policy when it was introduced by the Tories in 2015, nor who do not wish to see a new and better welfare settlement to lift children out of poverty.

However, while it is obviously true that giving low income families more universal credit makes them less poor, doing so does nothing to address the root-causes of child poverty and does nothing for families with less than three children, or with three or more children where the youngest child was born after 2015.

A better approach is to look holistically at how to (a) grow the economy and strengthen employment rights so parents are more likely to be in secure better-paid jobs, (b) take targeted actions to cut the costs of living, including measures to cut mortgages and rents, energy prices, child care costs, food bills, and so on, (c) make evidence-based investments in public services that improve education, health, and wellbeing outcomes for children.

Labour have committed to an ambitious child poverty strategy, which we have set to work on immediately. This is being overseen by a new Ministerial Taskforce to drive cross-government action on child poverty. And this work will happen at the heart of government, through a new specialist Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office, bringing together officials with external experts, and leaving no stone unturned in Labour’s mission to improve children’s lives.

In addition, we have already laid out a series of concrete and significant actions our manifesto to support children and families. These include free breakfast clubs in every primary school, expanding government funded childcare, cutting school uniform costs, placing Young Futures hubs in every community, renters reform to give families security and delivering our Child Health Action Plan.

We are also committed to the New Deal for Working People, ensuring that the minimum wage is a genuine living wage, and reformed employment support will mean that many more people can benefit from the dignity and purpose of employment.

And finally – importantly in the context of the debate on the two-child benefits limit – alongside this, we will be reviewing Universal Credit so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty.

In other words, contrary to what has been reported, no Labour MP voted in favour of the status quo. Rather, we voted to stick to the manifesto we stood on at the General Election and not be derailed by the SNP’s calls to “immediately” spend billions of pounds of public money, without identifying where that money would come from, on a policy that would not address the causes of child poverty and would only benefit a minority of children living in poverty.

I stood as Labour, so it should come as no surprise that I have chosen to work constructively with my party on a cause I deeply care about. My judgement is that this is the best way for me to influence government in the best interests of my constituents.