There’s no honour in it for Iain Duncan Smith

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/30/theres-no-honour-in-it-for-iain-duncan-smith

Version 0 of 1.

Letters: The MP’s knighthood shows the contempt Theresa May had for the underprivileged in society, says Stephen Pacey, and Michael Guest is equally dismayed

The astonishing award of a knighthood to Iain Duncan Smith (Report, 28 December) shows the contempt Theresa May had for the most vulnerable and underprivileged in our society. As a retired social security commissioner and upper tribunal judge, I spent a judicial lifetime hearing thousands of appeals of decisions made by the Department for Work and Pensions. Under the Conservatives the already dysfunctional system became ever more punitive and of increasingly byzantine complexity. Universal credit has been an abject failure, and if Iain Duncan Smith had the merest inkling of the harm his changes had caused, he ought in honour and simple honesty to have declined the award. Still, I’m not surprised that he did not.Dr Stephen PaceyNorth Muskham, Nottinghamshire

• I was just beginning to become reconciled to Boris Johnson, Brexit and the Conservatives when I read that Iain Duncan Smith is to get a knighthood. That the architect of so much misery is to receive such an honour is almost equal to Kissinger’s Nobel peace prize 46 years ago.Michael GuestSwaffham, Norfolk

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition