ATTACKING the vulnerable has been “encouraged and rewarded” by the Establishment, disability-rights campaigners claimed today after it was announced that Iain Duncan Smith will be knighted.

Disabled people’s advocates expressed their horror at the news that Mr Duncan Smith, who was the architect of the hated universal credit (UC) policy, has featured in the New Year’s Honours list.

Mr Duncan Smith, who was the Tory Party leader from 2001 to 2003 before being replaced by Michael Howard, was awarded the knighthood for his contributions to “public and political service.”

In the past few years, he has come under sustained criticism for his role in creating UC, a reformed system of benefits that merged six different benefits into one.

The system has been blamed for scores of suicides and stress-induced deaths from disabled, unemployed and older people.

In every area of the country that UC was being implemented, there was a 30 per cent increase in demand for foodbanks, a report from the Trussell Trust charity in September concluded.

Mr Duncan Smith headed the Department for Work and Pensions from 2010-16, presiding over the destruction of Britain’s Remploy factories that helped disabled people into employment and over a brutal “fit-for-work” regime whose lethal consequences — with thousands dying after being found fit for work — he sought to hide, denying statistics even existed until forced to publish them in 2015.

The public anger at Mr Duncan Smith’s policies has led to his majority in his constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green being sliced from over 8,000 in the 2015 general election to a mere 1,262 in the election earlier this month.

Mr Duncan Smith’s Tory colleague Bob Neill is also set to be knighted.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) Sheffield activist Jennifer Jones told the Morning Star: “There can be no doubt at this news that intentionally bringing about suffering and a hostile environment for poorly, sick and disabled people in Britain is being encouraged and rewarded by both the state and the crown.”

She said that knighting “this horrible excuse of a human being is an insult” to the people who have died as a result of policies that he championed and implemented.

“If the human cost were not so extreme then we could point and laugh. But we can’t do that, as millions of lives have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have died.”

“Arise, Sir Grave and Systemic Violations of the Rights of Disabled People. You truly have earned your title.”

Ms Jones added that disabled campaigners need to “be as relentless as the ruling classes are,” and that disability-rights campaigners must “organise where [the Tories] demonise, to tell the truth where they lie, to build solidarity where they create division.”

Labour MP Charlotte Nichols told the Star: “It speaks to the contempt that this government holds working-class and disabled people in that the architect of UC, which has inflicted misery on so many of my constituents, is being rewarded with a knighthood. 

"It makes a mockery of the whole system that someone who has caused so much needless distress is to be gifted one of our country’s highest honours."

Labour MP Diana Johnson, who campaigned on behalf of victims of the NHS contaminated-blood scandal, is to be made a dame, while senior Labour MEP Claude Moraes, a longstanding campaigner for refugees and on justice and civil liberties issues, will be made an OBE.