I spend so much time poring through often dense and dry financial rules from thumbing through DWP guidance to weighty tomes on HMRC tax thresholds and state pension loopholes. But one discovery, buried on the DWP benefits documents, left me open-mouthed with shock.

Somehow, the UK is not only paying specific benefits to people who are in multiple spouse marriages – one has to assume it’s more likely to be second wives than husbands, as how many cultures globally have second husbands? – but these benefits are being increased every April, just like the state pension and Universal Credit, as exclusively reported by yours truly for the Express.

It’s been going on since 1975, when a law was passed recognising ‘valid overseas marriages’ and, despite some attempts to scrap it such as by John Hutton in 2006, remains in place to this day. And gets increased each year!

As the DWP explains, the money per wife is less than they’d get if they were single, but a household of say a husband and two or three wives is going to be able to get more than a household of one husband and one wife thanks to these extra additional spouse payments for Housing Benefit or Pension Credit.

Personally, I’m not a big crusader against the benefits system. I do think social welfare has a place, perhaps more so than ever, given the rise of AI and the potential move towards Universal Basic Income that has been trialled in other countries already. But let’s face it, even the most progressive socialist would struggle to put together a good argument for introducing polygamy benefits today. This is money for something that’s not even legal to do in the UK. So why do we still have them?

Tory MP Katie Lam responded to my article, as she tweeted: “When people come to this country, they should abide by our norms. Allowing them not to and then giving them taxpayer money for it is mental.”

The thing is, she has a point. Loopholes like this in the system don’t look great. Even if, as the DWP says, the loophole is so niche that there can be barely anyone claiming it any more, it still exists, and some civil servant has still been paid to calculate the increase. Either it has so few claimants that abolishing it would make no real difference, or it has a lot of claimants, and should be abolished because we’re paying lots to second and third wife households. Either way, it makes sense to axe it.

Changing this is surely an easy win for an embattled Labour Party, a party for which the biggest problem at the moment is, in my view, its comms.

The economy grew 0.6% in the first quarter of 2026, which is good news. NHS waiting lists are down, falling to their lowest in 3.5 years, it was confirmed this week, which is good news. Meanwhile, net migration is also down by 66% in the most recent figures, for the year ending June 2025, the first year of Labour’s government, which is good news.

All of this good news is drowned out by leadership tussles between Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, and headlines about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs.

If Labour is serious about resisting the pincer movement of Reform on the right and the Greens on the left – two parties which are pretty much all-talk right now – it needs to learn the dark arts of grabbing headlines. And Rachel Reeves announcing she will abolish this bizarre bigamy benefit is a surefire no-brainer.