SCOTLAND’S social security minister has vowed that the new Scottish welfare system will not demonise claimants as benefit cheats.

Jeane Freeman claimed the UK benefits regime has an inbuilt assumption that people are seeking to abuse it.

Ill health and disability benefits are being devolved to Holyrood, while unemployment payments and pensions remain reserved to Westminster.

Freeman said the Scottish system would aim to root out abuse. However, she also made clear the new system it would take a different approach to claimants than the UK social security system.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Freeman said: "We are setting up a system that treats the citizens of the country with respect. It would not presume that every single one of them is going to try to abuse the system.

"I'm far too long in the tooth to be naive enough to think that noone will try to abuse the system. But we would aim to pick up attempts at abuse without assuming that everybody is trying to abuse it.

"It will change the frame of debate, and challenges the perception that people who are on benefits are abusing the system. That view completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of people who receive benefits are in work.

"So I fundamentally disagree with the Conservative view in our parliament that we are dealing with workless households. It's positively Dickensian in my view. All of that leads to people being made to feel ashamed.

"We are working on an assumption that everyone who comes through our door is entitled to it and is not trying to do us."

Freeman said the UK benefits system was geared towards cutting welfare payments and imposing sanctions on claimants.

She added: "The vast majority of people in this country want to work and taking money away from them and penalising them for the situation they are in, which is what the UK welfare system does, is absolutely not the way to have a decent society."

Freeman said the Scottish Government was taking advice from spending watchdog Audit Scotland about setting up the new system.

She said that advice would help deliver a more efficient service.

Freeman said: "We are building into the system an alertness to glitches and things not always working the way you want them to. If you are alert to that then you are also alert to quickly fixing it. You learn from all the investigations and reports about where things have gone wrong."

Freeman said the Scottish system would mirror the founding principle of the welfare state set up after the Second World War, based on need rather than the ability to pay.

She said: "What they did at the end of the Second World War was to say that there are certain fundamentals that people should have as a right to a decent life like health and housing support in times of need. And the way that we are going to deliver it is to collectively pay for it. Whether or not you've got the money to pay for it doesn't matter."

Freeman said the Scottish system of social security would be run along similar principles to entitlement to free health care.

She added: "Our starting point is that social security is an investment that we collectively as citizens make in ourselves and each other. It's there to help us when life events happen that you can't anticipate and need additional help.

"You create a system that says it's rights based and that you are entitled to that support. It's not unlike an entitlement to our health service. We collectively decide this is important to be able to access this whether or not you can afford it. That runs underneath everything we are doing."

In response a UK Government spokesman said: “Our reforms will ensure we have a welfare system that’s fair to those use it as well as those who pay for it. The best way to help people support their families is to help them into work, and we now have record numbers of people in employment."