UNITED NATIONS PROBE POVERTY
UN big hitter jets in to report on impact of austerity cuts on families on Tyneside
UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston is due in Newcastle tomorrow as part of a report into the impact of austerity on Britain.
The visit by the trouble shooter comes a week after Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Autumn Budget in which he claimed the “era of austerity is finally coming to an end”.
Mr Alston arrived in the UK yesterday for his two week fact finding trip and will visit the West End Food Bank, the largest in Britain.
Ahead of his arrival he received almost 300 submissions from people affected by poverty, civil society, government officials, academics, and human rights institutes - a record for a UN poverty audit.
They included a joint contribution from Newcastle City and Council and Newcastle University’s Institute of Health and Society, which explained why he should come to the North East due to the high levels of deprivation and to see the impact of Universal Credit.
Another submitted by Prof Deirdre McCann at Durham Law School identified the effect of zero hours contracts and the ‘gig economy.’
In her submission she wrote it was “essential to find new ways to protect casual workers and to avert the risk of poverty”.
Prof McCann said, as it stood, the legal protection of workers was too limited and meant they found it “difficult to secure a decent income for themselves and their families”.
She added: “They are deprived of the ‘just and favourable’ conditions of work required by Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Mr Alston, who is in the country until November 16, said: “The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, but millions of people are still living in poverty there.”
As well as Newcastle, he will visit Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow and London.
Mr Alston will examine the effects of austerity, including changes to benefits and to local government funding, and he will be meeting with Newcastle Council leader Nick Forbes.
Mr Alston will also look at the impact of an increasingly digital government on the most vulnerable.
This includes making access to benefits such as Universal Credit ‘digital by default’ and the use of automation within the benefits system.
He said: “Poverty is intertwined with human rights standards that the UK has ratified, including the right to food, housing, and an adequate standard of living and it affects access to civil and political rights.
“The Government has made significant changes to social protection in the past decade, and I will be looking closely at the impact that has had on people living in poverty and their realisation of basic rights.”
Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group Alison Garnham said: “The UN Special Rapporteur’s visit will shine a light on child poverty in Newcastle where more than a third of children are now living under the official poverty line. And most of these children have at least one parent in work.
“Nationally, the Special Rapporteur will find a country that is affluent, with high employment, but where if you’re on low wages, your job won’t necessarily get you out of hardship. The Special Rapporteur will see just how hard the struggle has become for low-income families after nearly £40bn a year of austerity cuts - with child benefit alone set to lose 23% of its value by 2020.
“We hope his visit will focus minds on the need to act now to avert a child poverty crisis. Ending the damaging freeze on family benefits must be a priority if we are to ensure children’s right to a decent childhood spent enjoying the things we all want for our kids.”
Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah said: “In my Budget speech I tried to list all the ways in which austerity has impacted constituents but I ran out of time.
“This visit by the UN special investigator demonstrates eloquently how poverty has grown in our city, and I hope that Mr Hammond and the Tories will listen to Mr Alston as they certainly haven’t listened to me or the people of Newcastle.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said it was “committed to upholding the rule of law and rules-based international systems”. It insisted on an absolute measure of poverty a million fewer people and children were living in hardship compared to 2010.
Mr Alston will share his preliminary observations and recommendations at a news conference to be held at the end of his mission on November 16.
His final report will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2019.