THE figures involved and the sheer incompetence revealed by the National Audit Office’s report into the underpayment of employment and support allowance (ESA) obscure the real effect of the scandal.

Tens of thousands of disabled people, already forced to rely on meagre government benefits, have been forced into further hardship by the callous and unthinking officials of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

It boggles the mind that the problem has rumbled on for so many years, starting in 2010. The auditors put this politely, writing that the DWP “process for converting people’s benefits to ESA … did not reflect its own legislation.”

In plain language, they broke the law. This was made clear to DWP chiefs by tribunal decisions in 2014 and 2015. What did they do? What action did they take to make amends to the people whose lives had been worsened by their incompetence?

The DWP “did not recognise” that the rulings should prompt action “to identify people whose legal entitlements might be affected.” A 2015 judgement “prompted discussion but no clear action.”

Whatever tosh the Tories and all those on the right, including still far too many in the Labour Party, might spew about benefits, people do not go to the DWP for some bonus dosh so they can live a lavish life.

Its benefits are our society’s safety net, though at this point worn and ragged and full of gaping holes.

So while any common-sense person might reasonably try, when confronted with evidence that their actions had been depriving people for years, to make some kind of amends for their mistake, it appears that this never occurred to DWP chiefs.

Not in 2013 when the mistake was spotted in individual cases, not in 2014 when it was clear the problem was systemic, not after the 2014 and 2015 tribunal rulings.

Not even in early 2017, when ministers were briefed that they should still hold off while they checked with the lawyers. Unsurprisingly, the lawyers came back in the summer and made clear they were on the hook.

But, thanks to a 1998 law, only on the hook for repayments back to the 2014 tribunal ruling, meaning that, while £340 million is to be paid out, another nearly £150m of underpayments from beforehand will simply be swept under the rug.

It may seem tedious to till over this ground when the headline figures are shocking enough, forming “a measure of the government’s utter incompetence” in the words of Labour’s Margaret Greenwood.

But it is instructive as to the approach taken by the government — this one, the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition and, yes, the Blair-Brown New Labour administration, along with their predecessors for years.

The sheer reluctance to act, to make things right, to help those already clearly in need shows the entrenched view that those forced to go hat in hand to the DWP are scroungers, that they are unworthy of anything but contempt.

It is the disgusting anti-social ideology of the capitalist class, where only profit and the means with which to make it are valued in any way.

We have seen this poison driven deeper into the heart of our vital and treasured institutions for decades — the NHS, schools and universities, the railways, the probation service, you name it.

It is not a matter of swapping a bunch of incompetents for people who know what they are doing, but a more fundamental reconstruction of the bodies on which our society relies.