And just like that, the two-child benefit limit was finally abolished.

“I don’t intend to preside over a status quo that punishes children for the circumstances of their birth,” the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told the Commons, as she used the budget to scrap, from April 2026, one of Britain’s most controversial policies.

Four hundred and fifty thousand children will be lifted out of poverty as a result. That means 450,000 children who won’t go to bed hungry any more or walk to school with holes in the soles of their shoes. That means Keir Starmer’s government, after 16 months in power and endless will-they-won’t-they procrastination, has – at last – done the right thing.

Introduced by the Conservatives in 2017 to curb public spending and teach low-income parents that “children cost money”, the policy means parents can claim universal credit or tax credits only for their first two offspring. As of this summer, a staggering 1.7 million children lived in households affected by the policy. That’s one in nine kids who miss out on help worth £3,514 a year.

Over nearly a decade, the cap has become a key part of the “war on welfare” narrative – and the key driver of worsening child poverty. The........

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