THE two-child benefit cap introduced by the last government is an unjust policy. The only reason every child should not be given equal benefits can only be seen as discriminatory and a coarse stab at population manipulation.

It is surely a human rights issue. Why should every child not be treated equally? To keep families small to encourage women back into the workplace? To keep less advantaged children in poverty? The Child Poverty Action Group blames the policy directly for plunging hundreds of thousands of children in larger families into poverty.

Why is this shameful policy not at the very top of the new Chancellor’s agenda? By the sounds of the clamouring from her own backbenchers, it may soon be. To correct this wrong would cost 0.14 per cent of total government spending. But this is not a financial issue; it is a moral issue.

READ MORE: Lothian East MP defends voting against scrapping two-child benefit cap

My great-grandmother’s generation in Naples in the 1930s was paid by the fascist government to have more children. That blatant social engineering was a deliberate policy to increase the birth rate. It has, in the end, spectacularly backfired. The Italian birth rate today is one of the lowest in the Western world.

Other examples of recent clumsy policy were the changes in state pension, targeting women born between April 6, 1950, and April 5, 1960. Their retiral expectations were abruptly changed, leaving many impoverished. They are waiting for compensation.

Or the eligibility for the shingles vaccine, clinically proven to help avoid serious illness in the older population. You are eligible at 65 years, but if you are over 65 you must wait until you are 71! Who thought that through?

Not to mention the illogical 20 per cent value added tax (VAT) being applied to private education. This policy will mainly hit aspiring middle-income families, not the very rich.

I appreciate the new Government’s budgets are constrained and hard choices must be made. Everything can’t be fixed at once, but we must surely strive to be a society that treats everyone equally, not some more equally than others.