Iain Duncan Smith appeared tearful as he described how meeting a single mother reminded him of his own daughter, a new documentary has revealed.

The emotional interview was filmed in December 2015 – months before the former Work and Pensions Secretary resigned – and is part of an upcoming BBC series on benefits in the Victorian era by Ian Hislop.

"I remember visiting a lone parent a few years ago in an estate which had a very high number of single parents, young women,” the former Work and Pensions Secretary said.

He continued: "When I sat and talked to her I sensed that she wanted to do something, she wanted to be better than her circumstances. But she had no skills, she had fallen out of school, she didn’t know where to go.

"And I remember leaving there thinking very simply this is my daughter.

"I’m sorry I’m quite emotional about these…19 years old…My aspiration for my daughter was boundless. And here I’m sitting with a 19-year-old girl who had written off her life and had no aspiration and no self-worth. She was a product of a system."

Mr Duncan Smith sparked tensions in his own party with an astonishing attack on the government’s record on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show last week. He warned that David Cameron and George Osborne risk “diving society” with their cuts to welfare.

In his resignation letter Mr Duncan Smith wrote: "I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they've been made are a compromise too far.

"While they are defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit, they are not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers.

"I hope as the government goes forward you can look again, however, at the balance of the cuts you have insisted upon and wonder if enough has been done to ensure "we are all in this together".