UN expert calls out Tory policies that led to 'systematic' UK poverty
By Caoimhe Toman
Date: Wednesday 22 May 2019
(Sharecast News) - UN poverty expert Philip Alston said in a report that the "ideological" cuts to public services in the UK since 2010 have led to "tragic consequences" and continue "largely unabated".
In the report, he stated that the UK government had violated its human rights obligations by "deliberately removing" the social safety net and have it "replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos".
"The social safety net has been badly damaged by drastic cuts to local authorities' budgets, which have eliminated many social services, reduced policing services, closed libraries in record numbers, shrunk community and youth centres, and sold off public spaces and buildings," he said.
"A booming economy, high employment and a budget surplus have not reversed austerity, a policy pursued more as an ideological than an economic agenda," he added.
In the summary of his report, Alston said that, despite the UK being the world's fifth largest economy, one-fifth of its population (14m people) live in poverty, and 1.5m experienced destitution in 2017.
He claimed some of the policies since 2010 have been "particularly regressive" such as the benefit freeze, the two-child limit, the benefit cap, and reduction in housing benefit.
As a result, the UK's poorest people face lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
The government on the other hand reportedly hit back at the report, describing it as a "barely believable documentation of Britain" and said it painted a "completely inaccurate picture" of its approach to tackling poverty.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) reportedly said that the £95bn spent on welfare and the maintenance of the state pension showed the government took tackling poverty "extremely seriously".
Alston's report urged the government to restore local government funding to provide social protection and tackle poverty.
It also warned that the worst of this "systematic immiseration" could be yet to come after the impact of Brexit hits the UK.
Alston said leaving the EU was "a tragic distraction from the social and economic policies shaping a Britain that it's hard to believe any political parties really want".
He will present his report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next month and will argue that the recent Conservative-led governments persisted with austerity and welfare cuts ignoring the high levels of employment and a growing economy and persisting poverty.
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