WHAT THE DICKENS!
Rudd hits out at UN envoy as he likens Tory welfare to Victorian workhouses
A UN report claiming Britons suffer widespread extreme poverty was dismissed by ministers as ‘barely believable’ yesterday.
Envoy Philip Alston claimed welfare policies had been deliberately designed to harm the poor.
Professor Alston, an Australian lawyer based in New York, said that ministers have brought back the Victorian workhouse, teachers rely on food banks and families are losing their children because they cannot afford lawyers.
A Government led by a woman prime minister has ‘intentionally targeted’ women as victims of poverty and dismissed record low levels of unemployment as ‘insufficient’, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights claimed, adding that Brexit ‘is likely to have a major adverse impact on the most vulnerable’.
But the Department of Work and Pensions said: ‘This is a barely believable documentation of Britain, based on a tiny period of time spent here. It paints a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty.’
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd is considering complaining to the UN over the Alston report. She is said to be particularly angry over a UN press release that said the Government’s policies ‘have led to the systematic immiseration of millions’.
Former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said visits by UN poverty rapporteurs should be blocked as they produce biased, pre-prepared reports.
‘This report is total biased nonsense... I would stick it in the bin,’ he added. Sources close to Miss Rudd said that the Alston report followed a request from a pressure group, Disabled People Against Cuts.
Professor Alston is the latest in a series of UN figures who have visited Britain to condemn living standards and attack governments. He spent 11 days in Britain in November, speaking to ‘civil society, front line workers, and work coaches’ and visited community organisations, social housing, a Jobcentre, a food bank, an advice centre, a library and a primary school.
He travelled to London, Oxford, Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and the Essex resort of Clacton- on- Sea – where the notorious suburb of Jaywick, a settlement of 1930s holiday chalets, has long been rated the poorest district in England.
Professor Alston said yesterday: ‘There are 14million people living in poverty, record levels of hunger and homelessness, falling life expectancy for some groups, ever fewer community services, and greatly reduced policing, while access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid.
‘The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry. UK standards of wellbeing have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.’
His report said of the benefit reforms and local authority spending cuts that were first introduced by David Cameron’s Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 that ‘ the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens, rather than seeking to respond creatively and compassionately to the real needs of those facing widespread economic insecurity in an age of deep and rapid transformation brought about by automation, zero-hour contracts and rapidly growing inequality’.
Professor Alston said spread of food banks is ‘ shocking’ and claimed some teachers may rely on them. He also attacked the benefits cap.
His contentious figure of 14million in poverty is based on numbers thought to be living on or below 60 per cent of average income.
The DWP said: ‘The UN’s own data shows the UK is one of the happiest places in the world to live, and other countries have come here to find out more about how we support people to improve their lives.
‘ We take tackling poverty extremely seriously which is why we spend £95billion a year on welfare and maintain a state pension system that supports people into retirement.’
‘His report is total biased nonsense’