Now UN meddlers to probe austerity policies
THE United Nations’ special rapporteur on ‘extreme poverty and human rights’ has launched an inquiry into Tory austerity policies.
Professor Philip Alston will visit the UK after angering the Donald Trump administration earlier this month with a scathing report on the United States.
The ‘fact-finding mission’ is the latest in a string of UN investigations into the UK that have proved highly controversial.
last month, a UN envoy infuriated Downing Street by claiming Tory policies and the Brexit vote had made Britain more racist.
Professor Alston, who is scheduled to visit the UK this autumn, last night launched his investigation with an interview in The Guardian.
The Australian international human rights law expert declared: ‘The UK has gone through a period of pretty deep budget cuts, first under the coalition and then the Conservatives, and I am interested to see what the outcome of that has been.
‘I am also interested to look at what seems to be a renewed debate on all sides about the need to increase spending at least for some of the key programmes.’
He said the challenges facing the UK were different to the US, where he concluded that the White House’s contempt for the poor was driving ‘cruel policies’. In his report on America, he claimed that Mr Trump’s policies were ‘tailor-made to maximise inequality and to plunge millions of working Americans, and those unable to work, into penury’.
Professor Alston last night said: ‘In the UK, things are at a different place where there is no great budget surplus to be mobilised.
‘Welfare cuts have taken place but there is now an interesting debate on whether they have gone too far and what measures need to be taken to shore up the NHS and other programmes.’
He added: ‘No one is suggesting the conditions in the UK are those of a poor developing country, but every rich country, as my mission to the US showed, has pockets of poverty everywhere.
‘The government statistics and a diverse array of civil society organisations would suggest the UK does have important challenges dealing with poverty.’
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.
Five years ago, Raquel Rolnik, the UN rapporteur on housing, called for ministers to abandon the spare room subsidy, which was labelled the ‘bedroom tax’. Her report was dismissed as ‘a Marxist diatribe’ by the thenhousing minister Kris Hopkins. j.stevens@dailymail.co.uk
‘Important challenges’