SINGLE mums make up the overwhelming majority of those hit by the government’s benefit cap, Labour analysis of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data shows.

Women living alone with at least one dependent child account for over 85 per cent of all households who have had their benefits capped.

They comprise 114,337 out of a total of 134,044 households who have had benefits limited to £20,000 a year and £23,000 a year in Greater London.

This number is more than double the 50,000 single parents that were reported in August last year to be facing a drop in income due to the cap.

Labour said that the statistics show ministers are failing to assess the impact of their policies upon vulnerable children whose parents are being pushed into poverty.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Margaret Greenwood said: “The Conservatives have pushed ahead with their austerity agenda with scant regard for the impact on low-income families.

“Labour will build a social security system that is there for any of us in our time of need.”

The latest figures were released on the DWP’s Stat-Xplore website in November.

They also show that 120,297 single women claimants, the vast majority mothers of dependent children, had their benefits capped, compared with just 13,743 single men up to August last year.

The cap stood at £26,000 a year when first implemented in 2013 by then chancellor George Osborne, but was lowered to the current level in November 2016, which led to the number of families affected increasing fourfold.

Single parent families charity Gingerbread’s policy pfficer Laura Dewar said: “The benefit cap was designed to ‘improve work incentives’ but instead it is pushing many single parents and their children into further poverty.

“The Government's own figures show that the majority of single parents are not securing work to escape the cap, hardly surprising, as most of them have young children.

“Without sustainable work, reasonable childcare or affordable housing these families face a shortfall in rent, leaving them exposed to eviction and poverty.  With the New Year, children’s well-being must be put first and the benefit cap scrapped, for single parents particularly for those with pre-school aged children.”