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

Exclusive: research shows benefits cut has barely changed fertility rates and pushed thousands of British families deeper into poverty

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."