I thought about summarising the United Nations High Commissioners Office for Human Rights Special Rapporteur's report on the UK, issued yesterday. But then I read the press release and thought they had already done the job and so I simply reproduce it here:
LONDON (16 November, 2018) — The UK Government's policies and drastic cuts to social support are entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting unnecessary misery in one of the richest countries in the world, a UN human rights expert said today.
“The United Kingdom's impending exit from the European Union poses particular risks for people in poverty, but the Government appears to be treating this as an afterthought,” the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said at the end of a 12-day visit to the country.
Almost all studies have shown that the UK economy will be worse off after Brexit. Consequences for inflation, real wages, and consumer prices will drive more people into poverty unless the Government takes action to shield those most vulnerable and replaces current EU funding for combatting poverty, he said.
In the United Kingdom, 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50 percent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials. After years of progress, poverty is rising again, with child poverty predicted to rise 7 percent between 2015 and 2022, homelessness is up 60 percent since 2010, and food banks rapidly multiplying. “In the fifth richest country in the world, this is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one,” Alston said.
“During my visit I have spoken with people who depend on food banks and charities for their next meal, who are sleeping on friends' couches because they are homeless and don't have a safe place for their children to sleep, who have sold sex for money or shelter, children who are growing up in poverty unsure of their future,” Alston said. “I've also met young people who feel gangs are the only way out of destitution, and people with disabilities who are being told they need to go back to work or lose benefits, against their doctor's orders,” Alston said.
Successive governments have presided over the systematic dismantling of the social safety net in the United Kingdom. The introduction of Universal Credit and significant reductions in the amount of and eligibility for important forms of support have undermined the capacity of benefits to loosen the grip of poverty. “British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach,” Alston said.
“As a ‘digital by default' benefit, Universal Credit has created an online barrier between people with poor digital literacy and their legal entitlements,” Alston said. “And the ‘test and learn' approach to the rollout treats claimants like guinea pigs and can wreak havoc in real peoples' lives.”
Local governments in England have seen a 49 percent real-terms reduction in Government funding since 2010, with hundreds of libraries closed, community and youth centres shrunk and underfunded, and public spaces and buildings including parks and recreation centres sold off.
“I was told time and again about important public services being pared down, the loss of institutions that would have previously protected vulnerable people, social care services that are at a breaking point, and local government and devolved administrations stretched far too thin,” Alston said. “The voluntary sector has done an admirable job of picking up the slack for those government functions, but that work does not relieve the Government of its obligations”.
“The Government has remained in a state of denial, and ministers insisted to me that all is well and running according to plan,” Alston said. “Despite making some reluctant tweaks to basic policy, there has been a determined resistance to change in response to the many problems which so many people at all levels have brought to my attention.”
During his visit, the Special Rapporteur traveled to nine cities in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and met with people affected by poverty, civil society, front line workers, and officials from a range of political parties in local, devolved and UK Governments.
“Government policies have inflicted great misery unnecessarily, especially on the working poor, on single mothers struggling against mighty odds, on people with disabilities who are already marginalised, and on millions of children who are locked into a cycle of poverty from which many will have great difficulty escaping,” Alston said.
If that does not make you ashamed of the policies of this decade, nothing will. And if it does not I think you need to worry about where your empathy has gone.
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[…] to know why Brexit happened read the press release from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights I have just republished. That is the only explanation […]
The UN Rapporteur has been criticised by the government for NOT looking at places like the Yemen where starvation is killing people. They however overlook the fact that if not for the UK (and other) support with direct participation on the ground, and the provision of arms to the invader there would be no starvation in Yemen.
Good point
It’s not denial imo. Tough decisions need making in tough times. So, you take the shot on a civilian aircraft about to be used as a bomb on a packed city. The Tories create a delusion of tough times – implying intent, not denial. They ramp up their own necessity as the tough decision-makers and cavalry-charge leaders, whilst always being hindmosts. The same rot is actually in Marx for lumpen-proles, Indians under the British Raj and negroes needed for the march of the economic laws of history. In Toryism, the poor are used pour encourage les autres – that is you stay in line to avoid being there. This is combined with tough-love and discipline notions that stroke many as strivers and automatically make things worse for those who won’t or can’t fit in, and a gratuitous self-congratulatory attitude in an elite. The institutional and organic structure of this is ideological and known since Plato’s two books on ideal societies (ideal for Greek toffs). This is the a religion Stoics noticed involved Priests who knew their gods were false or non-existent, masses who actually believed and a political class who knew this stuff was rot AND they could use it for control and power. The Tories are acting in flagrant and reckless intent.
British society is racked with such dire stuff in the day-to-day. Want to get on PIP? Live in Bolton? They’ll interview in Wigan. Get arrested and think there’s Legal Aid? Probably not and in both cases it will look as though you can contest these matters, the snag being the people involved already need early representation. Without representation this really develops into a rationing system. These days we should have systems in place beyond the averages people don’t live in. We do not. Have a look at a Western newsroom and ask how much of a cross-section of population you see in the staff and visiting pundits. You’ll see more faces from IEA and the Taxpayers’ Alliance than disabled.
Welfare is rationed by the Government through day-to-day obstacles, a climate of shame no one would want to walk into, false economics not supported by most even in the pernicious discipline itself, privatisation to create an “interested bureaucracy” at street-level, removal of medical decision-making and law and benefit advice centres – all this and more is intentional and in my view culpable. The tough choice is actually not to use these tried and trusted historical means of coercion and do the decent thing.
In an interview with Channel 4 News, Alston said that comparing Britain to other countries was not the point because this country had the money to put things right and was deliberately choosing not to, whereas places like Yemen did not actually have the means/infrastructure to address poverty if it wanted to.
That is the major difference.
And it is why the Tories should be ashamed as well as the Democrat/Clinton lovers in New Labour who imported workfare ideas etc., in order to win over swing voters so that they could shove white van man in the cul de sac.
However, after so may years of Thatcherism, we have a hardened mass of people for whom life is hard and that is just too bad. They accept their lot.
What they want instead of some sort of expectation of being helped as a means of fairness is for others to lose what they do not have. That is the new definition of fairness in Britain – levelling down to very little for ordinary people. That is how bad it is. There is nothing progressive about that.
And it shows what psychological damage has been done to the British people by an increasingly laissez faire political system. No one cares about them. So why they should they care about those who are not like them (I tell you though, they still have the capacity to care for each other – those like themselves – a ray of hope but it is very tribal out there).
The only way to deal with this is to get rid of expensive means testing processes and to reduce the rate at which benefit is withdrawn against income earnt (and even savings) – the latter has been a widely know problem in the benefit system for some time. The state pauperises you before it will help. It is not committed to you maintaining your level of life style if you hit hard times – even though that lifestyle is economically productive.
When you think that everyone’s income is someone else’s it is just so stupid and self-defeating of a nation to behave like this.
I also do not like the way benefit for housing costs and living costs seems to be being merged in order to create a blindness to the fact that rents are consuming more and more of any income (as well as utilities) and eating and travel are thus undermined. And you are meant to be seeking work!!
I tell you – this is one fucked up country we are living in at the moment.
this is the live streamed press conference from 16th Nov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mht1wI1WY6k
this format might be more suitable for those uncomfortable reading large amounts of text.
note the FT correspondent’s question during the Q&A session.
Thank you Matt. Now. When will Radio4 broadcast this?
I find it interesting that the leftists or progressives are always finding new ways to measure how badly a country is doing. Or more specifically how badly the government of the country is doing.
Take this article for instance where a gentleman is appointed to rapport ( is that even a verb? ) on extreme poverty, and spends his time looking at relative poverty, explores food bank dependency ( which the food banks don’t allow ) and encounters a brand new poverty measure based on 55% of median income requirements to get a 14 million figure for those living in poverty in the UK, and tells us that the UK is the 5th richest economy in the world based on multiplying population by how rich you are, and compares local government spending in the UK to the 2010 baseline when it was an all time high.
And in all that time the neoliberal side of the argument hasn’t come up with any new measure of the success of their policies and are still stuck in some late 20th century holding pattern where we use the declining number of people consuming less than $1.90 a day ( ppp adjusted ) to determine if a country is doing well.
I despair of your callousness
But as much I despair of your ignorance
You appear to have no clue that more equal societies are richer for everyone
Even if you are utterly selfish you should care about relative inequality because addressing it makes you better off
Unless, of course, the imposition of misery is your aim as it has been for government since 2010
You appear to have no clue that more equal societies are richer for everyone
Is that the case always and everywhere?
Have you ever heard of the thought experiment where everyone in that society is given an equal basket of goods and services – so all start out equal – and the moment two of those people trade with each other, then that society has become net richer because the two who made the trade are richer. Probably not.
Nevertheless, I care about equality of opportunity, not outcome. It is condescending to presume otherwise and that there is callousness to that view.
Why not look at the evidence?
It really will not take you long to find it
And your attitude is objectively callous in my opinion
No one expects total equality
Presuming only absolute poverty matters is callous
Id be interested in knowing how much coverage the report got. I didnt see or hear the news on the day it was issued but was amazed to see that it didnt feature on the Bbc news website on 17th , unless you searched for it, and only the Guardian lead on it. In addition to a lack of empathy a lack of information may also be an issue.
A devastating Press release – shamefully under-reported.
Even the Grauniad couldn’t get the word “unnecessary” – before “misery” – into its headline.
It can be boiled down to five jaw-droppingly awful sentences.
The UK Government’s policies and drastic cuts to social support are entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting unnecessary misery in one of the richest countries in the world. In the United Kingdom, 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50 percent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.
“In the fifth richest country in the world, this is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one. British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach. The Government has remained in a state of denial, and ministers insisted to me that all is well and running according to plan.”
Of these, perhaps the last sentence is the worst. They are doing this, in George Foulkes infamous phrase – deliberately.
There is no way that Scotland is going to go on enduring this and Brexit on top. Independence is coming and very soon indeed.
Agreed