Two-child policy hasn’t made UK families smaller, only poorer, finds report

‘The two-child limit is a brutal policy that punishes children simply for having brothers and sisters’ – Sara Ogilvie, Child Poverty Action Group. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty

It was one of the Conservatives’ most controversial cuts: waging war on the UK’s “benefit culture” by restricting social security payments that supposedly enabled “welfare scroungers” to have large families they could ill-afford.

The two-child policy – which limits benefits payments to the first two children born to the poorest households – would, proponents argued, cut the welfare bill and bring “feckless” parents to heel by – as one minister put it – teaching them “the reality that children cost money.”