The UN's special rapporteur Philip Alston said Tory policies and cuts to benefits are 'entrenching' poverty and inflicting misery its most vulnerable
The UN's controversial poverty envoy today accused Britain of swapping compassion for a 'punitive, mean-spirited and callous approach' to its poor, a damning UN report said today.
Special rapporteur Philip Alston said Tory policies and cuts to benefits are 'entrenching' poverty and inflicting misery on its most vulnerable people.
Australian Mr Alston is on a two-week ‘human rights fact-finding visit’ to the UK to ‘investigate Government efforts to eradicate poverty’.
In particular he has been looking at the rollout of Universal Credit, child poverty, and the implications on poverty of Brexit.
And now he has released a report claiming 14million people - a fifth of the population - live in poverty.
He added that four million of these are more than 50 per cent below the poverty line, and 1.5million are classed as destitute because they are unable to afford basic essentials.
He said: 'British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach apparently designed to instill discipline where it is least useful'.
He accused the Government of choosing to 'impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping with today’s world, and elevating the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest levels of British society'.
The UN expert is on an official visit to the UK to examine what poverty exists in the country, its causes and the impact it has on people's human rights
Prof Alston 'human rights fact-finding visit' to the UK is taking in : Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow, Jaywick, London, and Newcastle - to 'investigate Government efforts to eradicate poverty'
This week he went to the poorest village in Britain and then met Londoners who said they have been left 'homeless and hungry' in the wake of welfare cuts.
On his tour, Prof Alston is to speak to pressure groups, academics, trade unions, food bank organisers, and homelessness campaigners while also visiting Cardiff, Oxford, Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast.
At the meeting in Newham, east London, on Monday, Prof Alston heard from a West African mother how she had to wait for 20 hours outside social services after fleeing an abusive relationship .
She said while waiting she was left so hungry she had to drink her child's milk.
Another disabled man said he was fined for making a mistake on his universal credit application, and he heard how a new mother was placed in a hostel with her three-day-old son.
After hearing the witness statements Newham's mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, apologised 'on behalf of myself as mayor of Newham and on behalf of the council.'
She told the meeting: 'This treatment of our residents, regardless of their circumstances, their backgrounds, of how long they've been here, has to stop.'
He also paid a visit to the seaside village of Jaywick in Essex.
Despite its tiny size and a population of less than 5000 people, the village has become the ultimate symbol of decline after finding itself at the centre of a furious row involving the US elections.
An old image of Jawick Sands was used in the recent mid-term elections by an American political candidate to illustrate extreme poverty much to the anger of residents and local officials.
Residents in east London told the United Nations meeting how they have been left homeless and hungry in the wake of stringent welfare cuts
An old image of Jaywick Sands was used in the recent mid-term elections by an American political candidate to illustrate extreme poverty much to the anger of residents and local officials
The UN envoy has sparked outrage among some, who are questioning why it has come to the UK
Prof Alston went to Jawick, a post-war settlement of bungalows once described as a shanty town just a mile from Clacton on Sea, and met senior members of Tendring District Council who have in recent years launced a number of multi-million pound improvement schemes for the seaside community.
UN envoys have produced a series of controversial reports about the UK.
As well as comments about Brexit, the UN special rapporteur on racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Tendayi Achiume, said UK immigration policy was so discriminatory it might even violate international human rights laws. She had been in the UK for 12 days.
Prof Alston's trip to Britain is the second mission to a Western European country by a poverty rapporteur in the last 100 years, the first being to Ireland in 2011.
David Gordon, director of the Townsend Center for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, said: 'There's an oddity to this, obviously.
'When you think of the special rapporteurs on extreme poverty and human rights, you expect them to be visiting sub-Saharan Africa or Haiti. You don't expect them to be visiting the U.K.'
Visits by the UN-appointed envoys have a long history of controversy in the UK.
In 2014, a visit from the UN’s inspector Raquel Rolnik caused a political row after she was accused of producing a ‘misleading Marxist diatribe’.
Then-work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith criticised her report as ‘utterly ridiculous’ following her demands for better housing for travellers.
Earlier this year, a UN envoy sparked fury from Theresa May after criticising Tory policies and immigration policy.
Tendayi Achiume also said the Brexit vote had made Britain more racist, and slammed the ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants and the anti-terrorism programme Prevent.
But Downing Street pointed out she had welcomed many of Mrs May’s initiatives to bring about racial equality, while Mr Duncan Smith said her report was ‘complete rubbish’.
Last week Mr Duncan Smith questioned the impartiality of the UN envoys, saying: ‘The issue isn’t that [racist reportage].
‘The issue is about the nature of the self-appointed groups who using the UN’s title are often invited in by political opponents for short term political gain.
‘Too often they come with the outcome of their visit already set which makes them far from impartial.’
Linkhienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2018/11/16/un-slams-british-governments-mean-spirited-approach-to-the-poor/
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The UN’s special rapporteur Philip Alston said Tory policies and cuts to benefits are ‘entrenching’ poverty and inflicting misery its most vulnerable
The UN’s controversial poverty envoy today accused Britain of swapping compassion for a ‘punitive,...
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Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
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