THE UK Government's determination to help the rich and hammer the poor appears unstoppable.

Last week, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards unleashed an excoriating report on the three executives who led HBOS to the brink of collapse. Sir James Crosby, Andy Hornby and Lord Stevenson were pilloried for the "toxic" errors that prompted a £20bn taxpayer bailout.

Yet the Government's ire was directed at people who are struggling to survive on a miniscule fraction of those bankers' incomes. Days after the introduction of the so-called bedroom tax, George Osborne was eyeing up the minimum wage, hinting darkly of the need to "make sure that it's working". Still more disturbingly, he lent weight to attempts to draw a link between welfare and the appalling crimes committed by Mick Philpott, saying there are questions about the welfare state "subsidising lifestyles like that". He also defended his reform of the "broken" benefits system, telling supermarket workers that claimants were merely being asked to make "some of the same choices working families have to make every day".

The language of skivers and shirkers is beginning to resemble hate-speak. The UK Government appears to condone prejudice against the most vulnerable in society, justifying it because some ordinary people on low incomes support their attacks on so-called scroungers. The fact that some "ordinary people" have objectionable views about immigrants or homosexuals does not justify those attitudes. At a time of financial crisis it is natural for people who are struggling to look around for someone to blame. But it is disgraceful that Government ministers should lend support to victimisation.

Those who are truly to blame for the parlous state of the nation's finances – such as the bank executives condemned for their "colossal" management failure – have yet to be held accountable. They continue to be rewarded for their crimes and misdemeanours. The Government's welfare reforms constitute an assault on the poorest in society at the very moment when those earning more than £1 million are getting a tax cut worth tens of thousands of pounds. It makes a nonsense of David Cameron's claim that we are all in this together.

It is to the credit of the Scottish Government that it has distanced itself from the war on scroungers and promised to reverse the bedroom tax. All political parties in Scotland should set aside their differences, unite in opposition to these reforms and make clear that they are not in our name.