Damning indictment of Tory policies
The UK Government’s policies have led to the ‘systematic immiseration of millions across Great Britain’, the UN’s expert on poverty and human rights said in a report released on Wednesday. UN Rapporteur Philip Alston has called for a new vision that embodies compassion to end the unnecessary hardship.
The UK government has strongly criticised the report. The Department for Work and Pensions said the report a “barely believable documentation of Britain” and said it painted a “completely inaccurate picture” of its approach to tackling poverty. Work and Pensions secretary Amber Rudd plans to lodge an official complaint over the ‘biased’ document.
In a statement, the government said his report was “a barely believable documentation of Britain based on a tiny period of time spent here” and “a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty”.
“The results of the austerity experiment are crystal clear,” Philip Alston said in his report following an official visit to the UK in November last year.
“There are 14 million people living in poverty, record levels of hunger and homelessness, falling life expectancy for some groups, ever fewer community services, and greatly reduced policing, while access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid.
“The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry,” the expert said. “UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.
“The Government’s ‘work not welfare’ mantra conveys the message that individuals and families can seek charity but that the State will no longer provide the basic social safety net to which all political parties had been committed since 1945,” Alston said.
“It is hard to imagine a recipe better designed to exacerbate inequality and poverty and to undermine the life prospects of many millions,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. “But in response to this social calamity, the Government has doubled down on its policies.
“The endlessly repeated response that there are more people in employment than ever before overlooks inconvenient facts: largely as a result of slashed government spending on services, close to 40 percent of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now; 16 percent of people over 65 live in relative poverty; and millions of those who are in-work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope.”
Alston acknowledged that the Government had taken action on a number of the issues raised in his preliminary report.
“I welcome the moves to adopt a uniform poverty measure, to systematically survey food insecurity, and to further delay the rollout of Universal Credit. That programme will be improved by plans to provide more time to repay advances, to reduce debt payment limits, and to reduce extreme penalties. But, for all the talk that austerity is over, massive disinvestment in the social safety net continues unabated,” Alston said.
“It is difficult to see recent changes as more than window dressing to minimise political fallout,” he said. “The situation demands a new vision that embodies British compassion and places social rights and economic security front and centre.”
The UN expert said Brexit is clearly an issue of utmost concern to all sides but it has also become a tragic distraction from the social and economic policies that in the meantime are shaping a Britain that it is hard to believe any political parties really want. “It certainly won’t be a prouder, stronger, and more self-confident British community that emerges unless attention is given to the crisis of destitution and the chronic insecurity of low-income earners,” Alston said.
“Given the significant resources available in the country, the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have caused so much pain and misery, amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the United Kingdom’s human rights obligations,” Alston said. “The Government should restore local government funding to ensure crucial social protection can help people escape poverty, reverse particularly regressive measures such as the benefits cap and two-child limit, and audit the impact of tax and spending decisions on different groups.”
The Scottish government has again called on Westminster to reverse their austerity programme following the report’s publication. Communities Secretary Aileen Campbell said: “The United Nations report is a devastating analysis of the UK Government’s austerity programme.
“The UK Government has presided over an economy which has become increasingly divisive with many people unable to obtain fair work and fair pay whilst salaries for those at the top only increase.
“The special rapporteur is clear the UK Government has been failing to listen and is ‘determinedly in denial’ in regards to poverty in the UK. The role of governments should be to help their citizens not fail them. It’s time the UK Government finally recognises the harm and damage they are causing and change direction.”
UN Special Rapporteur report on UK Poverty
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