LET'S be clear: the Tories know exactly what their benefits cuts mean to the poor of these islands.

The guidance given by the Department of Work and Pensions to benefits agency staff on how to deal with suicidal claimants who have been sanctioned and left penniless, is a clear giveaway.

They know that their austerity programme will ruin lives, and in some cases could end lives.

The Tories are at war with the poor and the low waged. Today, the Sunday Herald carries a litany of stories that show just how dire the times are getting: not only are benefit cuts driving people to think of killing themselves, but low wages and welfare sanctions are making people ill, shortening people's lives.

Between predatory corporations, Tory ruthlessness and the echo chamber of the right-wing press, life is becoming truly Hobbesian for the poor and vulnerable in this country.

Think about this 'suicide' guidance given to benefits agency staff. It doesn't just present a terrible and cold face to the poor - the very people any government should prioritise for lifting up and helping - it also asks state employees to carry out a job no-one should be asked to do.

Benefits agency staff are relatively low paid themselves. Yet they are being asked to break devastating news to sanctioned claimants - in effect rendering them and their children penniless - and then to compound the sin, they are being asked to assume a role that is part social worker, part psychologist, part nurse.

No-one but those trained in emergency mental health should be asked to deal with a suicidal member of the public. The Tory government is putting their own staff at risk. Who knows how a benefits agency worker may react to hearing someone threatening to kill themselves? The emotional impact on them could be devastating.

The Tories often talk of trickle-down economics - well here we have trickle-down suffering. The administration of the cruel treatment Tory ministers are handing down to the poor has been devolved to low-paid state workers.

Perhaps, Iain Duncan Smith or even David Cameron himself should man the phones in a Glasgow call centre and listen to weeping parents say that they are thinking of killing themselves because the state has reduced them to penury - often on the most flimsy, misguided and kafkaesque basis. That may fix their conscience - though it is doubtful.

The future is bleak. Westminster is broken. It has an official opposition, in the shape of the Labour Party, which is not only incapable to standing up to the Tories but colludes with them over the austerity regime.

If we wish to help the poor, then one is left with few answers - except this: Scotland has to look after its own weak and vulnerable, and there is only one way to achieve that.