The United Nations will send a Special Rapporteur to the UK to investigate if Tory welfare cuts caused “grave or systematic violations” of the human rights of disabled people.

Inclusion Scotland, a leading disability charity, say the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have contacted them as part of an investigation into human rights abuses against disabled people in the UK, The Independent reports.

Inclusion Scotland have said the UN committee told them they will send a Special Rapportuer to the UK in the “near future”.

Bill Scott, director of policy at Inclusion Scotland, told The Herald: “The UN have notified us they will be visiting Britain to investigate ... and want to meet with us when they come, sometime in the next few months.”

The investigation comes after the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions released figures  showing that, between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,380 people had died within the first six weeks after they were declared ‘fit to work’ by the government. The figures do not include the cause of death.

The department resisted releasing the figures for several months, with its chief minister Iain Duncan Smith at one point telling the UK Parliament that the figures did not exist.

The statistics were released following an order from the Information Commissioner’s Office. The figures showed that 2,380 people died within six weeks of being told they must look for work, The Independent reports. The figures – roughly 90 people dying per month – have led to calls from the Labour party and disability campaigners to call for an overhaul of the British welfare regime.

Government ministers said the figures were not reliable proof of a link between deaths and the change in welfare status, the Guardian reports.

Dr Simon Duffy, director of think tank The Centre for Welfare Reform, told The Herald that independent research carried out since 2010 shows: “the people with the most severe disabilities have faced cuts several times greater than those faced by cuts to the average citizen” and "we are seeing worrying signs that they are increasing rates of illness, suicide and poverty.”

A UN report in 2014 called on the UK government to makes several changes in their housing policy, including scrapping the bedroom tax and ensuring more rights for tenants. British Housing Minister Kris Hopkins said of the report: "it is disappointing that the United Nations has allowed itself to be associated with a misleading Marxist diatribe."