I WISH to deplore the latest outrage from Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Many thousands of people with long-term chronic and degenerative diseases are having their benefits slashed, allegedly as an incentive to encourage them back to work.

Those targeted include people with motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson’s disease.

Explain to me how cutting the benefits of those with progressive degenerative conditions, and pretending that they will recover, serves either those suffering or wider society.

I know someone in these circumstances. People are being subjected to repeated assessments even though it is well understood that their medical prognosis will not improve. This indignity is bringing stress and anxiety to people who are already unwell.

To explain this policy by saying, “It’s not fair to write someone off as unable to work if they are at the early stages of a progressive condition” – as a Department of Work and Pensions spokesman has done – is ugly double-speak.

Coming after the bedroom tax and a just week after another senior Tory declared that the disabled should work for a quarter of the minimum wage, this attack on the vulnerable is deeply shameful.

Christian Vassie, Blake Court,