Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell will enter a ballot of Labour members in their bid to succeed Angela Rayner as the party’s deputy leader.
Both women passed the threshold to make it on to the ballot on Friday thanks to trade union support and nominations from constituency Labour parties (CLPs).
Having secured the backing of at least 80 MPs, candidates for the deputy leadership needed to then gain support from either three Labour affiliate groups, including two trade unions, or 33 CLPs.
Ms Phillipson was the first to cross the line after the National Union of Mineworkers endorsed her candidacy, the third trade union to do so after Usdaw and Community.
The Education Secretary said she was “honoured to be the first candidate on the ballot paper” and pledged to be a “campaigning deputy leader at the Cabinet table”.
Late on Friday, Ms Powell’s campaign said they believed the former Commons leader had also made it on to the ballot thanks to support from CLPs.
A source in her campaign said two “very strong evenings” of CLP nominations showed Labour members were “supporting Lucy’s message of hope that we can unify our coalition and the country”.
The source added that Ms Powell would be “in touch with our movement and the communities they represent”, adding her candidacy had “already seen movement on issues like child poverty from the leadership”.
Earlier in the week, she told the BBC that ministers should be “clearer” about wanting to abolish the two-child benefit cap.
On Friday, Ms Phillipson said scrapping the “spiteful” policy was “on the table” in the battle against child poverty.
Describing the issue as “profoundly personal”, she said she wanted a “mandate to go further” as deputy leader and “make tackling child poverty the unbreakable moral mission of this Labour Government”.
Ms Phillipson’s intervention suggests an increasing willingness in the Cabinet to abolish the cap, given she is seen as Downing Street’s choice for the deputy leadership.
She is also co-chair of the child poverty taskforce established by the Government last year and is expected to report ahead of the Budget in November with a strategy including recommendations on the two-child cap.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said: “Hopefully there is now a clear understanding across Government that unless the two-child limit is scrapped, there will be more children in poverty at the end of this parliament than when Labour took office.
“The policy must go in the autumn child poverty strategy before the life chances of many more children are damaged on this Government’s watch.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has not committed to abolishing the cap, but he has consistently declined to rule it out as well.
Ms Phillipson and Ms Powell will take part in a hustings on the last day of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool before members vote in October.
The winner of the deputy leadership contest will be announced on October 25.
