GLASGOW residents will be more than £400 a year worse off under the new Tory welfare arrangements, a city MP has claimed.

Alison Thewliss made the remarks about the city's benefits claimants during a debate in the house of Commons yesterday.

The Glasgow Central MP said the city was being "consistently and brutally battered" by the Government's cuts and policies on welfare reform.

She spoke of research from Sheffield University which indicated benefits claimants would lose out by £420 a year in Glasgow, and said: "This is money that isn’t ringing in the tills in the communities I represent. It is money that ordinary people desperately need to put food on the table.

"It is money my constituents need to heat their homes.

"It is absolute wickedness; to punish people for the circumstances they are in, worse, because they’re people who don’t vote for Tory."

Ms Thewliss explained the "lasting effects of social policies" such as welfare reform have made an impact on the city, and said: "[There is] a hangover from the loss of heavy industry, of clumsy Scottish Office policy which built the new towns but left so many behind in poor quality housing.

"Government policy has much to answer for, and we must not make the same mistakes of policy now.

"If we don’t look after those who are struggling, support them to make their lives better, give them a decent wage and a decent standard of living, we will condemn them to poverty, and our society will be the worse for that."

The former Glasgow City Council SNP councillor was speaking during a debate on the Queen's speech made last week.

She made reference to the Scottish Government's attempt to mitigate some of the impacts of the Tory Government's welfare policies, such as offsetting the cost of the so-called bedroom tax.