The coalition government has slashed billions from the welfare budget to reduce the financial deficits made by politicians and financiers. Its Cabinet, dominated by millionaires and the privileged from Oxbridge, has imposed the most punitive welfare system this country has seen, yet its members are distanced from their victims.

I would like to introduce them to some of my friends from Easterhouse, Glasgow, one of the most deprived places in Scotland, who have to survive on low wages and slashed benefits.

Low wages

All political parties insist that work is the way out of poverty. Great if you are an MP with a huge salary and expenses plus subsidised food and booze. Very different if you are a low-wage earner.

Consider a good friend of mine for 24 years. He has always worked. A hotel assistant, a cook, a porter, a security guard. At present he labours six days a week with one week's holiday which he spends in the cookhouse of a children's camp.

He has been on the minimum wage ever since it started. Last year it went up by a mere 12p to £6.13 an hour. To support his family he has got into debt with one of the obnoxious payday loan shops. There are three of them plus a pawn shop in Easterhouse's shopping centre.

In Britain 287,000 workers receive less than the minimum wage. It's illegal but prosecutions are rare. Then there are the over one million on zero-hours contracts.

Over Christmas, two caring parents and their children came to our home for snacks and games. They struggle to survive on these contracts. An expensive bus ride, which they cannot claim, to an outsourced caring agency. No pay until they are actually called out on a visit. No holiday pay. Often less than the minimum wage.

To cut child care costs they try to ensure that one parent is always at home. Impossible because they are always on call.

Benefits

What about those in receipt of benefits? Sneered at by George Osborne as those who stay in bed and live a life of luxury at the taxpayers' expense, he is ignorant of people like a friend of mine who brought up a family on her own.

She always worked, for a long time as the popular crossing lady. Then severe angina and cardiac operations made work impossible. Now officials have ordered her to work.

I could go on. Friends struggling under the bedroom tax, husbands having to work down south but unable to afford accommodation for their families who remain in Scotland, parents who cannot afford both heating and food.

Long delays in getting benefits. Not least, those sanctioned - all benefits removed - for minor matters. I regularly take a man out for a meal who has been sanctioned for six months.

Those on low wages and benefits have been further impoverished by the virtual freeze on their incomes and the sharp rise in costs.

According to the SNP, bread has gone up 37 per cent in five years, potatoes 30 per cent, energy bills by 61 per cent and so on.

The Conservatives have the cheek to claim that the rich have borne the brunt of the fall in living standards because they lose more money than the poor.

Yes, but it does not affect their lifestyles. As a recent study by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies shows, the poor lose much more because the bulk of their spending is on food and fuel.

In Scotland, the richest 10 per cent are now 273 times more wealthy than the bottom 10 per cent. They still feast in top restaurants not foodbanks.

Equality

Seeing at first hand the cruel impact of the government's welfare policies, I want them abolished and replaced with a system that promotes equality.

Research by Professors Wilkinson and Pickett, authors of The Spirit Level, shows that more equal countries, with wage differences between the top and bottom 20 per cent of no more than three-to-one, have far fewer social problems than unequal ones - like Britain.

Yet the Labour Party, which I joined 53 years ago, supports many of the present welfare policies. Its attitude towards greater equality was reflected in Ed Balls's proposed 50p tax rate on the rich. As soon as they protested, he said it would be temporary.

The possibility of an independent Scotland is crucial. The SNP points out in its white paper Scotland's Future that independence would give the newly independent Holyrood powers to control welfare, to promote equality, to abolish poverty and more.

I will vote for independence but not for the SNP. My hope is that, once freed from the British Labour Party, the Scottish one would embrace independence and win votes by out-radicalising the SNP.

A Labour Scotland could introduce the kind of financial equality that exists in Norway, could replace the worst welfare ever by the best ever, expand social housing, ensure that social services are in public control and support co-operative bodies. Who knows, the British Labour Party might learn from it.

Bob Holman is the author of Keir Hardie: Labour's Greatest Leader? (Lion Hudson, 2010)