Sir – It must surely be the case that this week’s The Oxford Times letters pages will have numerous letters on the death from starvation of 44-year-old Bampton resident, Mark Wood (GP not asked about health of dead man, March 6), a dreadful case of Atos assessment practices at their worst and of the malevolence which seems to lie at the heart and in the head of Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions and within David Cameron’s Downing Street.

As Mark Wood’s sister, Cathie, has commented: “This is not someone being inconvenienced — this is a death”, to which Tom Pollard, policy and campaigns manager at Mind, responded “Unfortunately this tragic case is not an isolated incident”.

Many readers of The Oxford Times will know personally of individuals and families whose benefits have been realigned or removed altogether, in some cases people who have sought refuge here from war zones and conflicts around the world, only then to find themselves confronted with the brutalism and cruelty of a system whereby benefits claimants are presumed to be guilty and have no opportunity to prove otherwise.

Cathie Wood has referred to Duncan Smith’s “moral crusade”, and what a bloody crusade it has been and is. It can only be hoped that the highly experienced, determined and compassionate Suzy Drohan, of Oxfordshire Welfare Rights, will help Mark Wood’s family at the very least to understand what happened when Atos “agents” visited Mr Wood at home briefly in January last year, and how that visit set in train the circumstances which led to his death last August.

It must be hoped that Mark Wood’s MP, David Cameron, will take note and accept the cosmopolitan imperative that the individual matters more than the system.

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington