UN Report Reveals UK Living In Poverty
The United Nation’s envoy on extreme poverty has published a damning report, blasting the UK government’s policies as “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous”, which have inflicted “great misery” on millions.
The Conservative government has pushed for “radical social re-engineering”, the report said, with a “driving force that has not been economic”, as successive governments have chased to revolutionise the minimum levels of fairness. And, as Theresa May’s government faces huge pressure amid multiple cabinet resignations and Tory in-fighting, the report slams another nail in Brexit’s coffin.
However, the government has denied the accuracy of the report, which is backed up by evidence from the National Audit Office, the Institute of Fiscal Studies and numerous charities’ research. “We completely disagree with this analysis,” a spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said. “With this Government’s changes, household incomes have never been higher, income inequality has fallen, the number of children living in workless households is at a record low and there are now one million fewer people living in absolute poverty compared with 2010.”
But Philip Alston, the UN’s envoy on extreme poverty and human rights said “The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial” over its failure to protect those most in need. “For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one,” he wrote. The government’s benefits freeze for families, which only covers the first two children, where “in the same ball park” as China’s one child policy, he added.
Despite Britain being the fifth largest economy in the world, it is “patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty,” he wrote. And, as Brexit reaches a critical moment, the report warned the effects of “deep uncertainty”, and drops in growth anticipated by the IMF have been an “after-thought”
“In my meetings with the government, it was clear to me that the impact of Brexit on people in poverty is an after-thought, to be dealt with through manipulations of fiscal policy after the event, if at all,” wrote Mr Alston, an eminent human rights lawyer.
“If you got a group of misogynists in a room and said how can we make this system work for men and not for women they would not have come up with too many ideas that are not already in place,” he told a press conference in London, as policies have hit women disproportionately with massive cuts to support for single parents.
The report said the government’s policy using “employment as the cure all for poverty” has failed, as 60 per cent of households affected by poverty have someone in work, fuelled by an economy built on “low wages, insecure jobs and zero hours contracts”, as 10 per cent of all workers over 16 are on precarious contracts. The report comes at a time when the roll-out of the government’s new Universal Credit system has come under intense fire for leaving millions of people worse off.
Labour have been quick to condemn the Government for Professor Alston’s findings. Margaret Greenwood, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary said: “I am deeply concerned by the findings of the UN Special Rapporteur’s report. The Government should listen to the people being pushed into poverty by its policies.”
She added: “Universal Credit is failing miserably, leaving families in debt, rent arrears and at risk of becoming homeless. Three million children are growing up in poverty despite living in a working household. Labour will stop the roll out of Universal Credit, end the benefit freeze and transform the social security system so that it supports people instead of punishing them.”
Main points from the report
- The level of poverty and “despair” in Britain is obvious to anyone who sees the queues outside foodbanks and people sleeping rough, said the report.
- Austerity Britain is in breach of four UN human rights, relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights.
- 14 million people (one in five) are living in poverty
- 5 million are “destitute”
- Almost half of all children live below the poverty line.
- Homelessness has more than doubled since 2010
- A limit on benefits payments to only the first two children in a family is driving up the cost of off-setting benefits with other funds.
