High court approves judicial review of rules denying some women exception to two-child limit on universal credit.
Two mothers who had children as a result of rape or coercion by former partners have been given permission to take the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to court for being denied exception to the two-child limit on universal credit.
The limit, which restricts support through universal credit (UC) to the first two children in a family, has an exception when a child has been conceived non-consensually, but this only applies to third or subsequent children in a household.
One of the mothers granted permission by the high court to bring a judicial review challenging the UK-wide rules said: “If I had been raped after my first two children were born, the exceptions would be applied, so basically [the DWP ministers] are telling me that I was raped at the wrong time.”