Arise, Sir Iain Duncan Smith – the man whose welfare reforms shame Britain | Faiza Shaheen

I’ve seen the suffering caused by his universal credit scheme. This knighthood lays bare our country’s moral bankruptcy

Iain Duncan Smith, the architect of welfare reform and therefore a man responsible for so much pain and suffering, especially among sick and disabled people, was on the Queen’s new year honours list. What sort of message does this send to families plunged into poverty by his cruel welfare policies? Their hardship is effectively being celebrated.

I stood as the Labour party candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green against IDS at the general election. My motivation was that my mum had been in the direct firing line of his welfare reforms. She was reassessed when he was secretary of state for work and pensions. The stress it caused her, how terrified she was, is something I can never forget. In her 50s at the time, she kept telling the rude and aggressive DWP assessors: “I don’t want to be sick. I want to work.” When she died in 2017, her house was full of letters fighting for her benefits. It’s a common story, but as I have since learned, she was relatively lucky.

I won’t accept awful people doing awful things at the top of our political system – why should I? Why should any of us?

Related: There’s a lesson in Boris Johnson’s jolliness. Liberal miserabilism is a turn-off | Anne McElvoy

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