CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond should scrap the two-child limit for low-income families’ benefits, Unison said ahead of tomorrow’s Spring Statement.

Parents currently on universal credit (UC) only get the tax-credit elements for the first two children if their younger sons or daughters were born on or after April 6 2017.

Unison says the policy is unfair, causing financial hardship for Britain’s most hard-up families.

Working families with three children are worse-off by up to £2,780 per year as a result of the policy and those with four children miss out on up to £5,560 per year.

The two-child policy will lead to an extra 200,000 children living in poverty, the Child Poverty Action Group has estimated.

In January, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd made a U-turn on plans to retrospectively extend the two-child limit to children born before the cap was brought in.

Unison welcomed the move but said it “didn’t go far enough.”

General secretary Dave Prentis said: “Universal credit should not be causing poverty and hardship, but that’s exactly what the two-child limit is doing.

“It’s harsh, punitive and unfair. The government has already shown it understands the damage being caused by the two-child limit by axing plans to backdate it. Now ministers should do the right thing and ditch this morally wrong cap.”

The union is supporting a petition — see petition.parliament.uk/petitions/233887 — created by its former president Margaret McKee. It calls on the government to get rid of the two-child limit.