The roll out of the government’s Universal Credit is causing great hardship and inconvenience to many.

The implementation of the full service for new claimants comes to Clydebank in October this year. It is a shambles of a policy. The Tories have broken the initial approach that should have seen it act as an incentive to ensure nobody would lose out when going into employment.

Instead, the Tories reduced and removed the work allowance levels meaning many will be placed in hardship. The Scottish Government estimate that when all welfare changes are in place by 2020/21, family income will drop by £78 per week or £4,080 annually.

The biggest loss comes from the limit to the child element – around £2,836 – with £1,245 lost due to a freeze on Universal Credit rates, and £205 due to a freeze on Child Benefit. The policy to limit the child element to only two children will increase child poverty and also see the fuller introduction of the humiliating and degrading “rape clause”. Ruth Davidson and her Tory colleagues, including those on West Dunbartonshire Council, should hang their heads in shame.

The secretary of state for work and pensions is another Tory who knows no shame. When she was caught misleading the House of Commons about a National Audit Office report into Universal Credit she was made to make a grovelling, although clearly insincere, apology. The National Audit Office report revealed one in five claimants do not receive their full payment on time, and the DWP does not expect payment timeliness to improve significantly in 2018.

This is a government with no compassion and no commitment to providing a modern social security system fit for purpose. A large number of those affected by Universal Credit will already be in employment and its treatment of disabled people, who claim for the first time, is below an acceptable standard. The Tories will go on about work being the best way out of poverty but devise a system that breaks the incentive to work and preside over an economy that supports poverty pay and promotes zero hours contracts.

We are all a life change away from requiring support from our social security system. The Westminster Tories need to move away from the approach they are taking to Universal Credit and instead stop its roll out in Clydebank and across the country.