I have often spoken about the contrast between the social security system we are building in Scotland and the one currently delivered at a UK level through the Department for Work and Pensions.

Westminster oversees a system that seems designed to vilify and humiliate those who need help and that delivers inadequate levels of financial support. A system that has been described as “grossly insufficient” by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty.

We saw only a few weeks ago how the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was cheered by the Tory backbenches for proposing further punitive measures for those who are deemed not to be actively looking for work due to long-term sickness or disability, such as access to free prescriptions, legal aid, and discounted bus travel, as well as to tell people they must find remote jobs or risk losing their benefits.

There are currently 2.5 million working-age people in the UK who are disabled or have long-term health conditions that prevent or restrict their ability to work. Instead of using the financial headroom available to him, the Chancellor sought to promote reforms to social security which were described as “all carrot and no stick” by leading disability charities.

When the Scottish Government set up Social Security Scotland, we put the principles which we wanted to guide our social security system in the very first section of the Bill. That ensured that dignity, fairness, and respect would be at the very heart of the delivery of social security in Scotland, reinforcing our belief that social security and support are human rights and necessary to ensure the realisation of other human rights.

Last week saw the publication of the latest paper in the Building a New Scotland series. This one focused on social security in an independent Scotland. It outlines how, with the powers of an independent nation, we can build a social security system designed to meet the needs of folk in Orkney and across the country and end the vicious cycle of poverty.

This new system could build and expand on the strong human rights principles which underpin our current system. By focusing on these principles we would be able to support folk and build a thriving economy and a fair, more equal society.

The paper of course offers up a range of potential policy directions Scotland could take if it had full control of its own social security system. We could abolish the rape clause, we could scrap the bedroom tax, instead of mitigating it, we could remove the young parent penalty, to name just a few.

Imagine being able to remove these negative impacts of the UK Government’s current welfare policies on poverty levels and building on the progress the Scottish Government has already made in creating a fairer system with its limited powers.

An independent Scotland of course would be able to go so much further, but we would do so from a sound foundation. One which puts human rights at its centre and champions dignity, fairness, and respect.

This is a regular column by SNP MSP Emma Roddick. All Highlands and Islands Regional MSPs have been offered the same space in The Orkney News to share their personal views.