High Court rejects challenge to 2-child benefit cap exception

25/07/25

The High Court has, this week, rejected a human rights challenge brought by two women to the operation of an exception to the 2-child benefit cap.

By the 2-child benefit policy, child tax credit or Universal Credit cannot be obtained in respect of more than two children. An outright challenge was brought to that policy several years ago and was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court in R (SC) v SSWP [2021] UKSC 26. But the 2-child benefit policy has always contained exceptions. One of these is where the third child in a family was conceived non-consensually. In R (LMN and EFG) v SSWP [2025] EWHC 1849, the claimants had been the victims of serious domestic violence and had conceived multiple children non-consensually but their third children had not qualified for the exception as they had been conceived consensually. The claimants argued that this ordering rule breached their Article 3, 8, 14 and A1P1 ECHR rights.

Handing down judgment this week, Collins Rice J rejected the challenged. She came to a similar conclusion as the Supreme Court in stating the following:

“138…There is no legal analysis, or standards, by which a court can decide whether or not UC recipients who are mothers of two non-consensually conceived children should receive additional financial support from the state by excepting them from the ‘two child benefit cap’ and paying the child element of UC for a further one or two consensually-conceived children. It is a policy question dealing in social, economic, moral and ethical subject matter. It is also a question with potential resonances in family law more generally. It is a political law reform question.”

The judgment can be found here.

News articles on the case can be found on BBC News and the Guardian.