THIS week's Community Column is written by Ross Greer, Green MSP for the West of Scotland.

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Earlier this month, I took part in a very important debate in the Scottish Parliament about the impact that the announced closure of up to 23 Jobcentre Plus sites across Scotland by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Some of the proposed closures here in the West of Scotland and throughout the country are truly shocking. The implications have surely not been considered – the alternative is that the Westminster government knows the consequences and simply does not care.

The closure of the Alexandria job centre will mean that the most direct route to the nearest job centre in Dumbarton is an hour’s walk either way. For service users in areas like Haldane it is even further. It is scenic walk, given that it involves travelling through a field. I invited the UK Cabinet minister Damien Hinds to join me on this walk and I am still waiting for his reply.

Last month, the Scottish Greens organised a walk from Bridgeton to Shettleston in Glasgow.

Again, it is a walk of about an hour, or two buses if you are to get public transport. On this walk, Green activists spoke to a number of constituents, all of whom were shocked to hear that the job centre was closing. They had no idea.

An hour’s walk might not be a significant barrier for fit and healthy Scottish Green Party activists, but it is a different question altogether for anyone with young children or with a disability or health condition that makes mobility difficult

What the Tories have done to job seekers and others who rely on our social security system is nothing short of despicable. Job centres were meant to be institutions to help people, to help them into work, to access training, to start their own business and to help people claim the benefits they are entitled to. They have turned an institution designed to help people into an environment of hostility, mistrust and threats.

What the Tories have created is a system designed to block access to the support people are entitled to and one which makes their lives harder when they are most in need of support.

You do not need to watch Ken Loach’s new film – I, Daniel Blake – to know this. Though I do suggest that every MSP, especially those from the Tories, watches what is a devastatingly realistic story of life inside the UK welfare system.