Nick Clegg has launched a furious assault on "Chinese-style" welfare reforms being floated by the Tories.
The Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister condemned the idea of "penalising the young" by limiting benefits to the first two children.
The intervention came after Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith backed proposals for a fresh crackdown on welfare.
Mr Duncan Smith told a Sunday newspaper he would like EU immigrants to have to wait up to two years to claim benefits - rather than the three-month period introduced on January 1.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said Germany, Italy and the Netherlands were supportive of the move.
Sources close to the Cabinet minister stressed that he was expressing an aspiration for the future, not spelling out a policy.
London Mayor Boris Johnson mooted a similar move last week, but Downing Street insisted it would need treaty change and could not be done immediately.
Mr Duncan Smith said limiting child benefit to two children was "brilliant", and rethinking housing benefit for under-25s could encourage people to take jobs.
On the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Clegg yesterday insisted he was "no slouch" on reforming benefits.
He backed further immigrant welfare restrictions, and would "look at" other proposals from the Tories.
But he added: "I am not in favour of penalising the young. I am not in favour of a sort of Chinese-style family policy saying that the state says it is okay to have two children, it is not okay to have three children."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article