Austerity has a shameful legacy

Sir, – The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world, yet a fifth of British citizens live in poverty, and, of these, four million are more than 50% below the poverty line, with 1.5 million destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.

Meanwhile, three million children of working parents live in poverty.

Homelessness is up 60% since 2010, and 1.3 million people have been referred to foodbanks over the last year, a rise of 50% in five years.

Just this week it was reported in the Lancet that poor people in the UK die almost 10 years earlier than the rich.

Yet as the poor get poorer, the rich get ever richer.

The UK is the fourth most unequal country in Europe, and seventh in the developed world, with the top 10% owning 53% of the wealth – and it is getting worse.

The OECD say that the rich in the UK earn 12 times as much as the poor, up from eight times more 30 years ago.

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston, recently spent 12 days in the UK, only the second time the UN has felt it necessary for a Western European nation to have an investigation into poverty.

His report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next year, but his preliminary findings state that the UK Government has inflicted “great misery” on its people, with “punitive, mean spirited, and often callous” austerity policies.

He declared that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”, and concluded that, in the UK, “poverty is a political choice”, breaching several UN human rights agreements.

All of this is, as Mr Alston said, “a disgrace”, and the Westminster Government should be thoroughly ashamed. Les Mackay. 5 Carmichael Gardens, Dundee.

I have to ask – what is the point of a sheriff taking time to consider all the relevant factors of a crime to enable him pass a sentence which is commensurate to the severity of the crime when the offender has only got to serve half of the sentence?