Iain Duncan Smith is pushing through radical welfare reforms regarding child benefit.
He believed the current system encouraged people not to worry about the significant cost of a growing family.
The Work and Pensions Secretary condemned the “madness” of the state subsidising poor families with lots of children.
Most families make decisions about the number of children linked to what they can afford.
“People who are having support through welfare are often free from that decision,” the senior Conservative said.
“We want to support people if they have children when they are out of work … but what we also want to say is really ‘is there an endless point to this?’,” he said.
“Can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to remember you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and what finances you have?”
The Cabinet minister denied the number of families he is talking about is tiny, insisting it involved “large numbers”.
“This is madness…,” he said. “My view is that, if you did this, we would start it for those who begin to have more than, say, two children.”
He added that it had been accepted “for far too long” that people could just stay on benefits “and we write them off”.
“You can’t just sit there and gather more and more on benefits. Benefits should be, for many people – unless you are chronically sick – a temporary place, a place you then move on (from) and into work.”
George Osborne’s scheme to cut child benefit risks descending into chaos because the taxman is struggling to explain the complicated reforms to parents.
HM Revenue & Customs is planning to send letters to better-off taxpayers in the next few weeks to tell affected families what to do.
The controversial changes will see households where one parent earns more than £50,000 no longer receiving full child benefit. Families where a parent earns more than £60,000 will lose the money entirely.
