Theresa May’s pledge of £20bn for the NHS without any evidence of how she’d pay for it other than the phantom “Brexit dividend” is the sort of fudging of numbers we’ve become used to seeing from Conservative ministers. The National Audit Office released a damning report last week into the ever-delayed universal credit, finding, among other failings, that it might actually cost more than the previous system of benefits it replaces. Current running costs are at £699 a claim – about £500 more than the government’s long-term ambition.

This is ineptitude soaked in hypocrisy. While the feckless poor can go to food banks and be told it’s because they’re “not best able to manage their finances”, ministers can waste billions of pounds of public money with impunity.

The Conservatives are overseeing one of the most economically illiterate social programmes in living memory

What’s happening with universal credit echoes what’s happening elsewhere in the social security system. Across the board social security is in crisis, with sweeping so-called reforms not only causing misery, but also wasting a fortune. Ministers spend more than half a billion and counting outsourcing on disability assessments to private firms, while claimants with disabilities become housebound and hungry after losing their benefits. As of this month, the successful appeal rate is now at a record high of 70% for both flagship disability benefits. The government’s response? Rewarding its providers by extending their contracts for another two years.

Meanwhile, a combination of a chronic shortage of social housing is seeing private landlords pocket vast sums of public money for temporary accommodation while more than 1 million renters are teetering on eviction. It means the finances of local government – already on a knife-edge – are mopping up the result of high rents and squeezed wages as rising homelessness pushes people into crisis.

A vast removal of state support has taken place over the past decade, much of it under the guise of prudent management of a so-called bloated “welfare” bill. And yet, from David Cameron to May, the government has been the one guilty of a brazen waste of taxpayers’ money. It is the ultimate betrayal underneath the austerity lie: create a narrative that says it is benefit claimants who are bleeding the public purse dry, and then throw away billions of pounds engineering ever-counterproductive ways to cut their support.

Be it for housing, low wages, parenting or ill-health, safety nets work because they pay for themselves in multiple ways: in-work “top-up” benefits enable low-income workers or young parents to stay in employment and pay into the economy; while anything from disability benefits to child tax credits help nurture healthy citizens, ultimately taking the burden off the NHS, police and child social care. Remove them and not only do families suffer; the other parts of society take the pressure. This week, the MS Society found benefit cuts are costing the NHS at least an additional £7.7m a year in GP and A&E services for people with MS, alone. These are disabled people who used to maintain their health with the support of social security, but, after losing their benefits, are having to turn up to hospitals for emergency help.

It’s official: universal credit is a colossal, costly, hellish catastrophe | Polly Toynbee Read more

When a social security system is in disarray, maximising the value of the welfare state becomes ever more difficult. Rightwing politicians talk of so-called “welfare dependency” when, in fact, it is poorly constructed social security systems such as universal credit that prevent families flourishing. Withhold the benefits a low-paid care assistant needs to help her pay her rent to avoid eviction, and you’re pushing a secure person into crisis, meaning she will ultimately need more support from the state. Take away wheelchair users’ mobility vehicles, and they’ve lost their transport to get to work or even engage in society. The government claims its “welfare reform” is intended to “make work pay”, but their policies have just made it harder for workers to make ends meet while penalising those, such as chronically ill people, who are in need of a safety net through no fault of their own.

We are repeatedly told it’s the left that is irresponsible with budgets. That there is “no magic money tree”. That somehow one of the richest nations on Earth can’t afford a safety net that adequately helps people when they are starving or in ill health. In reality, the Conservatives are overseeing one of the most economically illiterate social programmes in living memory. Universal credit stands out because of the sheer scale of its failing, but it is not a lone error in an otherwise workable system. Rather, it is reflective of a decade in which ministers have crowed over “welfare savings” at the expense of human beings’ lives – and have actually cost the public more in the process. Britain’s broken welfare state is increasingly a costly lesson: zealot ideology and incompetence can be dangerous traits for a government but, together, they are a disaster.

• Frances Ryan is a regular Guardian contributor