Amelia Gentleman’s eloquent refocusing on the two-child benefit cap, and the imperative to end this morally untenable attack on so many already-fragile families, is timely and urgent (‘I have £7 in my bank account’: how the two-child benefit cap changed Britain, 25 September). The policy targets the poorest families and those with cultural and religious traditions of larger families, and is thus inherently both discriminatory and racist. And, as she discovers in talking to women struggling to cope with its impact on the wellbeing of their children, it also targets those who become pregnant “by accident” – which can often involve coercion.
For people on the edge of poverty, a third pregnancy raises the immediate prospect of impoverishment of the existing two children and, for some, the excruciating dilemma of whether to go ahead and sentence the family to poverty, or terminate the pregnancy. Gentleman quotes the former Tory minister for welfare reform David Freud’s condemnation of this policy as “vicious” and an “excrescence”. Even this savage judgment fails to convey the depravity of a policy whose logical outcome is the termination of an unplanned third or subsequent pregnancy.
