UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, has published a damning report on the cuts to public funding that have led to “tragic consequences”.
Written by BBC News
The UK’s social safety net has been “deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”, a report commissioned by the UN has said.
Special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said “ideological” cuts to public services since 2010 have led to “tragic consequences”.
The report comes after Professor Alston visited UK towns and cities and made preliminary findings last November.
The government said his final report was “barely believable”.
The £95bn spent on welfare and the maintenance of the state pension showed the government took tackling poverty “extremely seriously”, a person for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has said.
Professor Alston is an independent expert in human rights law and was appointed to the unpaid role by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2014. He spent nearly two weeks travelling in Britain and Northern Ireland and received more than 300 written submissions for his report.
He concluded: “The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately moved and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.”
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