THE new benefit cap level, set at £20,000, means for many families living on low incomes who rely on state support to help pay their rent it’s just got even harder to make ends meet and for some to eat.

The lowering of the limit has made a difficult situation worse for families affected by an unrelenting stream of welfare cuts and austerity policies.

It is OPFS experience that the Benefit Cap has pushed families into ever deeper poverty, to foodbanks and often homelessness, with devastating impacts on family well-being and health.

This cut to social security particularly unfairly affects single parents with young children, including babies. It is these parents who find it the most difficult to escape the cap.

Nationally nearly 80% of those affected were single parents, mainly mothers, and of these over a third had children under two.

We know from our work with parents across Scotland that the high cost of childcare as well as the lack of flexible work makes it difficult – and often impossible – for single parents with under-fives to move into paid work.

There is a shortage of part-time work, and when vacancies arise they are often at unsuitable times or for fewer than the 16 hours required to escape the cap.

The only way to escape the cap is to work a certain a number of hours but, as the Government itself recognises in the rest of the benefits system, this is practically impossible for those with children under school age. They are trapped with nowhere to go.

The benefit cap is a cruel policy that’s been mis-sold to the public.

Ministers say it is about getting the unemployed into work, but most of the families made poorer by the benefit cap are led by adults who cannot work because they are single parents, often with very young children, or cannot work due to illness or disability.

The cap is impoverishing more and more young families, and putting parents who the DWP knows can’t work through untold stress, but it isn’t helping people into employment.

But we already know the impact on work incentives of the cap is relatively small.

The government’s own evaluation showed about 16 per cent of people moved into work shortly after being capped and that 11 per cent of people would have moved into work anyway.

We know that as children get older, fewer parents are capped, suggesting that parents are already highly motivated to work, but often find it’s just not feasible with pre-schoolchildren.

The results – including evictions, unemployment, and poor health – also all place an additional burden on other parts of the public services.

Real misery is being caused to no good purpose. Given the unaffordability of housing in the private sector, no family should have to make a choice between paying the rent or putting food on the table.

It is difficult to see how the best interests of the child have been properly considered in this policy decision. We believe the cap should be abolished.

Marion Davis is Head of Policy at One Parent Families Scotland