IT’S funny how a few short paragraphs in the newspaper can instantly take you back decades.

I’ve just been reading about files published last week by the National Archives, which give an insight into Margaret Thatcher’s government.

These latest documents date from the late 1980s and the run-up to the introduction of the Poll Tax.

I can remember this period almost like it was yesterday, and I’m sure many people reading this can as well.

In fact, the huge injustices of Margaret Thatcher’s government were a major motivation for me to get involved in politics in the first place.

The Poll Tax was a hated levy, which caused misery in hard-working communities across Scotland and was opposed across all sections of Scottish society.

But these documents released in the last few days reveal just how far the Tories were willing to go to ensure that nobody escaped.

It’s revealed that Margaret Thatcher’s Welsh Secretary Peter Walker wrote to her to complain that, as homeless people were to be exempt from paying the poll tax, there would be an ‘enormous loophole’ which would provide an incentive to people to sleep on the street.

He recommended that they therefore remove the exemption for homeless people.

Seemingly, it wasn’t the idea of people ending up sleeping on the streets that worried him – it was the fact that doing so would allow them to escape paying the Poll Tax.

Meanwhile, it’s disclosed that Norman Tebbit was worried about forcing students to pay the Poll Tax – but only because the Tories might lose the votes of their parents.

And the Environment Secretary, who was responsible for guiding the Poll Tax through Parliament, was alarmed by the increasing hostility to the proposals from councils – but the Prime Minister ignored his calls to rethink parts of the proposals.

One of the reasons that this Poll Tax story caught my eye was that there seemed to be a lot of parallels with the present Tory government.

Because all these years later, we’re once again faced with a government which seems determined to push through policies which are clearly so damaging to vulnerable people.

A few weeks ago, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Bedroom Tax was discriminatory, following a legal challenge by a domestic violence victim and the family of a disabled teenager.

Reflect on that for a moment.

A domestic violence victim and the family of a disabled teenager should be able to count on their government for support - but were instead forced to take them to court to challenge iniquitous cuts to their benefits.

This says it all about this Tory Government, but what’s even more shocking is that – rather than admit defeat - they intend to take this all the way to the Supreme Court.

Thankfully no one in Scotland has to pay the Bedroom Tax, as the SNP Government have taken action to fully mitigate it by investing £35 million a year.

And once the necessary powers are transferred to the Scottish Parliament, we will abolish it in Scotland completely - formally consigning this dreadful policy to the dustbin of history.

But frankly it should never have even got this far – the policy should never have happened in the first place.

Sadly, the Bedroom Tax is not the only Tory policy inflicting such damage to vulnerable people.

There’s the disastrous Work Capability Assessment, which has hit the headlines following a number of extremely distressing reports of people with significant physical or mental ill-health or disability being judged fit to work.

There’s the cut of over £300 million to disability benefits being inflicted on Scotland that comes with the roll-out of Personal Independence Payments.

And there was the disgraceful proposal to scrap working tax credits for families on low incomes – one on which the Tories had to backtrack on after the Lords threw the proposals out.

These are not minor changes – they’re part of the biggest assault on the welfare state since the 1980s, with potentially devastating consequences for those affected.

So a generation from now, I wonder what the National Archives will reveal to us about the present-day Tory government.

I’m willing to bet that we will discover that they were well aware of how much damage they were doing with their attack on the welfare state – but ploughed on regardless.

But I also hope that by then, Scotland will have chosen to become independent – and we’ll be making much better decisions about tax and benefits as a result.