Iain Duncan Smith blows £8.5m on fluffy animated monster as he slashes vital help for disabled people

Meet Workie. He's the "physical embodiment of the workplace pension", and he was very, very costly

Iain Duncan Smith spent more than £8.5 million on an ad campaign featuring a giant fluffy monster - as his department makes savage cuts to disability benefit.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will tonight launch the bizarre new ad campaign featuring the character, known as Workie.

Mr Duncan Smith has been tasked with slashing the welfare bill, axeing vital help for disabled people, reducing the welfare cap and banning young people from claiming housing benefit.

In June, the Work and Pensions Secretary choked off government cash for the Independent Living Fund (ILF), which helped 18,000 disabled people live at home instead of in care homes.

The services the fund used to pay for will now be the responsibility of local authorities, many of whom have had their budgets cut by millions, and at least 30 of whom have not ringfenced money for disabled support.

A DWP spokesperson said: “More than £260m will be made available to former ILF users in 2015/16. This is the same amount that would have been allocated to the ILF in that year had responsibility remained within DWP.”

But some disabled people say the reality is their care has been cut by half as a result of ILF being scrapped.

The DWP confirmed this morning that the campaign, which will premiere after tonight's episode of Coronation Street, cost £8.54m.

Labour's shadow pensions minister Nick Thomas-Symonds MP said: “Getting workplace pensions right is an important job and auto-enrolment brings great benefits, so the government is right to do some public awareness campaigning.

"But perhaps spending £8.45m on the UK’s most expensive monster is not the most effective or efficient way to do this”

Here's everything you need to know about IDS' bizarre and costly creation.

Workie is a Pixar-esque fluffy monster character. He's about nine feet tall, has a mix of blue and purple fur and horns.

In the ad, he's seen bumbling around in a park trying to get the attention of small business owners, only for them to turn their backs and ignore him.

The only attention he gets is from a small French bulldog, who looks quizzically at him.

Tonight's Workie ad, which will play in the costly commercial break between Coronation Street and Emmerdale , is the first of a series of spots promoting the policy.