CARDENDEN and Kinglassie SNP MP, Peter Grant, has again spoken out against the UK Government’s two-child tax credit limit and its attached rape clause.

The new policy, which came into force earlier this month, limits child tax credit payments to just two children per family and requires claimants whose third or subsequent child was conceived as a result of rape, to prove this to social workers and health professionals in order to qualify for an exemption.

Faith leaders, women’s welfare groups, trade unions and child poverty campaigners have all condemned the policy, with many sexual violence support charities refusing to act as third party verifiers.

This week the Scottish Parliament debated the issue. The SNP were joined by MSPs from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens to vote by 91 to 31 in favour of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s motion that the Scottish Parliament is "fundamentally opposed to the UK Government's imposition of the two-child limit", as it "will push families into poverty" and “utterly condemns the disgraceful and repugnant ‘rape clause’” as “unfair, unequal, morally unacceptable and deeply harmful to women and their children and a fundamental violation of women’s human rights”.

Speaking in the final week before Parliament was dissolved Glenrothes and Central Fife MP, Peter Grant, said: “The UK Government promised to allow time for Parliament to debate the rape clause, then they went back on their word and railroaded this appalling policy through using a statutory instrument which meant MPs couldn’t vote upon or debate it. "I’m astounded that when the Scottish Parliament gave all representatives the opportunity to debate this inhumane approach, every single Tory MSP voted in favour of making rape victims go through a traumatic assessment in order to claim financial support they are rightly entitled to. The Tories have stooped to a new low, even by their austerity obsessed standards.”

Prior to the Scottish Parliament debate, First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said: “The rape clause is an abomination – it is a grotesque policy, which must be scrapped.

"Making women who have been raped relive the trauma of that experience to access child tax credits is utterly appalling – and railroading this policy through the House of Commons is illustrative of the damage a Tory Government can do. The Prime Minister once said that people often saw the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ – now they seem determined to live up to that name and have abandoned all pretence of trying to build a fair society.”

Leader of the Scottish Conservatives at Holyrood, Ruth Davidson, has made it plan that her stance on this issue is that Ms Sturgeon and the SNP Government have the powers to chance the legislation for Scotland.