Two-faced two-child policy

Further to my reference to Malthus yesterday, I note that Mark Durkan SDLP MP for Foyle, NI, picked up on a prime piece of Tory hypocrisy. In the debate on the Welfare Bill yesterday, he pointed out: "the fact is that the Conservative party was not saying there should be a two-child limit when it came to the child tax allowances that it put through in legislation in the last Parliament. There, £2,000 of childcare payments a year can be paid for every single child; there are no limits on the number of children for that, and of course we know that 80% of the beneficiaries of those childcare payments will be in the top 40% of the income bracket. No, it is two children only here, and people have to think about their choice when they are not in that income bracket. That is why this Bill is fundamentally unjust."

In fact, as Peter Black pointed out in the article which I linked to, the childcare assistance was a coalition policy and the Conservatives have postponed its implementation. But they have not restricted it to two children.