Kinship carer benefits policy scrapped after court ruling

The government has scrapped its policy of withholding benefits from kinship carers who fall foul of the two-child limit after having a child of their own.

The U-turn by the work and pensions secretary, Esther McVey, on Friday comes a week after a high court judge ruled that the policy as it applied to carers who look after younger siblings to prevent them from being taken into care was “perverse and unlawful”.