The Scottish disability campaign group Black Triangle has compiled a dossier of more than 80 deaths linked to welfare reform.

The campaign was set up to oppose the “vicious attack” of benefits cuts on the disabled after writer Paul Reekie, from Edinburgh, who suffered from depression and had a heart condition, took his own life in 2010 at the age of just 48. Friends said letters informing him his benefits were being stopped were found close to his body.

The cases compiled by Black Triangle include a 44-year-old man with mental health conditions whose benefits were cut after he was deemed fit for work. He was left with £40 a week to live on and was badly malnourished when he died, weighing just 5st 8lbs.

Another involved a 49-year-old woman - a double heart and lung transplant patient - who was found fit for work and had her benefits work. She died nine days later.

John McArdle, co-founder of the Black Triangle campaign, said in any society there would be a proportion of people who would be unable to work due to sickness and disability.

He added: “It is irrefutable that cuts have been targeted at the most vulnerable. We began our campaign because Paul Reekie took his own life and it has been going from bad to worse.

“The Conservative government is just hell-bent on cutting. It seems to be impervious to the suffering it is causing.”