Response to statement by UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, 16.11.18
On the day (16 November) that the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights delivered his final statement following his 12-day visit to the UK, I was chairing a seminar at LSE about the participation of people in poverty in research and policy-making. The four seminar presentations were given by two academics but also by a volunteer and a family member from ATD Fourth World, an international organisation which works with people living in long-term poverty and describes poverty as a denial of human rights.
This coincidence felt entirely appropriate, because Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur, made a point during his visit of listening not only to academic researchers but also to civil society, and in particular to those living in poverty and suffering the impact of austerity and benefit cuts themselves. And he was a good listener, as I found out during my own meeting with him and his team on 5 November.
His interim response will be augmented by a longer report for the UN Human Rights Council in June next year. But in my view, his statement already nails the situation in the UK now with great passion and clarity. He says, for example, that punitive benefit sanctions ‘succeed in instilling a fear and loathing of the system in many claimants’, whereas the social safety net, and supportive services that bring people together locally, are being cut back. And he describes universal credit, accurately, as ‘rapidly falling into universal discredit’. I discussed with him the gendered impact of universal credit, which I have been researching for some time, and he was subsequently quoted as saying that ‘there is a really remarkable gender dimension to many of the reforms’ (Daily Telegraph, 16 November 2018).
Alston’s suggestion that government policies are ‘entrenching high levels of poverty and inflicting unnecessary misery’ in the cause of ‘radical social re-engineering’ has already proved controversial. Ministers have denied that they are ‘in denial’, as he claims. But many would agree with the conclusion to his statement that there should be legislative recognition of social rights in the UK, and that social inclusion should be the guiding principle of social policy.
Fran Bennett and Aaron Reeves were among the academic researchers Philip Alston met during his visit to the UK. You can read his statement here.
