THE TORIES’ two-child benefit cap will condemn an extra 200,000 youngsters to poverty and should be scrapped, religious leaders told the government today.

Sixty Church of England bishops and senior figures from other Christian, Jewish and Muslim bodies published an open letter on the first anniversary of the government imposing its widely criticised benefits cap on families with more than two children.

They said the two-child limit “conveys the regrettable message that some children matter less than others, depending on their place in the sibling birth order.”

Bishop of Durham Paul Butler said: “It is simply not right that some children get support and others don’t.

“We urge the Prime Minister to address this burning injustice.”

The letter coincides with a new report by the End Child Poverty Coalition, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Church of England warning that the full effect of the cap may not be felt “for at least a decade.”

Already, some 160,000 families with newborn babies are up to £2,780 a year worse off, the report said, and an estimated 640,000 families, including about two million children, will be affected by 2020-2.

From next February, the two-child limit will also apply to families with three or more children who make a new claim for universal credit, irrespective of when their children were born.

This will mean they have “substantially less to live on than universal credit first promised,” the report pointed out.

The Child Poverty Action Group challenged the legality of the two-child cap at the High Court in February on behalf of two lone mothers. Judgement in the case is awaited.

The report argues that the two-child limit, the benefit cap and the freeze in local housing allowance rates all “severely undermine the basic principle that entitlement to support should be based on need.”

It also said that the government’s two-child limit was unique, adding: “The majority of developed countries offer extra support to subsequent children, not less.”

Child Poverty Action Group chief executive Alison Garnham called on the government to “reconsider this policy before more families are pulled below the poverty line.”

She added: “We know that it is putting some mothers in the impossible position of deciding whether to continue with an unplanned pregnancy and see their family fall into poverty or to have an abortion.”