What a sorry state.

It will not come as a surprise that some parts of Glasgow are among the areas in the UK with the highest number of people claiming benefits.

In three of the city’s seven Westminster constituencies, almost four in 10 households with people of working age are living with the help of one or more social security benefits.

Given that constituencies are large and take in affluent and less affluent areas, those communities within them with the highest deprivation will see more than half of people living on benefits.

The research, carried out by Joseph Rowntree Foundation using exact Government figures, shows how many households in every constituency across the UK are on Universal Credit and the number on working age means-tested benefits.

In a city of around 600,000 people, there are almost 100,000 homes where people are living on benefits.

Within that, there are almost 55,000 on Universal Credit, one of the cruelest systems ever devised.

The 100,000 households, which will account for even more people, are currently struggling with bills.

Tens of thousands are in work, but it is work that is not paying enough to live without some financial assistance.

Laying bare the lie that the reforms to the benefits system were about ‘making work pay’.

While benefits may help top-up insufficient income, it is still not enough for a decent standard of living.

For many of those on Universal Credit and those not in work the situation is dire, particularly families with children.

It is across the board, families with children, couples with no children and single people living on their own, are all facing hard budgeting choices.

This has been the case for a long time. The social security system has not been the safety net it should be and it has consigned people to poverty for generations in a city like Glasgow.

The last decade or so has been even worse with Universal Credit designed to push people further into poverty, with the barbaric sanctions regime leaving people with no money even for food.

It was designed by people who have never known what it is like to have to go without a meal or worry about heating.

Iain Duncan Smith, a former Tory work and pensions minister, was the original architect.

It is hard not to envisage him coming up with the idea while raising one eyebrow and stroking a white cat.

To the millions who have had to endure this downward spiral of despair, he can be forever remembered as nothing more than a political villain.

He has, I am certain, never sat at home thinking how long into the autumn when temperatures drop can I hold out without using the heating.

Duncan Smith, when in opposition as Tory leader in 2002, visited Easterhouse and said he was converted to a “compassionate conservatism” and wanted to improve life for the people he met there.

Eight years later, in Government as work and pensions secretary under David Cameron, when he had the chance to do something about it, he instead helped unleash the austerity, which has been found to have led to thousands of premature deaths and sealed the poverty-riddled fate of yet another generation.

It has since been embraced by the different incarnations of Tory Government since Cameron and George Osborne launched austerity on the country.

To the extent that now, in 2022, Glasgow East is home to 17,000 homes who are about to be plunged deeper into poverty, deeper into debt and deeper into despair.

Now, no longer having a Government position, the same man has had the effrontery to urge his own party to increase benefits in line with inflation.

He should be dragged back to the same streets he visited and forced to explain himself in public.

Meanwhile, his successors continue to peddle the lie that it is making work pay.

They continue to ignore the hardship it causes and the lives it ruins.

It has always been hard for anyone reliant on benefits but it is about to get even harder.

It is about to get even harder for most people in work as the cost of food, heating, housing, petrol and other bills are rising, some out of control.

Decisions will be made, spending on non-essentials cut back or cut out to ensure the essentials are paid for.

The Government tells us there is no money for wages to be increased in line with inflation.

So, millions who are working, and on top-up benefits will struggle.

And millions who are already in poverty will see themselves slide even further into financial despair.

For those who bought into the Government line and are trying their hardest to work their way out of poverty, they will see the light at the end of the tunnel they have been working towards get smaller and dimmer as they are dragged backward.

Governments and cabinet ministers have come and gone since Ian Duncan Smith came to Easterhouse but what remains is the millions of lives that don’t seem to matter to them.

The more things change the more they stay the same.