WATCH as UN Rapporteur urges people to ensure report isn’t swept under the carpet

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Guest Contribution

By Lizzie Fletcher & Lucy Wood of Unity News

As I’m unwell my fellow independent journalists have stepped in to help me out. I am very grateful for their kindness.

The United Nations previously reported on the poverty crisis affecting the UK as a result of the Tories austerity policies but the Government have ignored it. This time Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur told everyone he was coming to do another report and we all organised for him to meet the people who were actually suffering this time.

Still, we realise the government will do its best to ignore this report too. So we asked him to advise us what we can do to ensure that this report gets the hearing it needs and deserves.

Here’s what Professor Alston had to tell Lucy Wood when he visited Essex.

In September 2017 the UN released a report stating that austerity policies violated both UK legislation and a UN Convention. Yet our Conservative Government denied the truth of that report and our media allowed it to be swept under the carpet.

We can’t rely on mainstream media to do the job it is supposed to do and hold those in power to account, so we have to rely on ourselves, the people to do that along with our independent media. The then Work and Pensions Secretary, Damien Green said that the UN had;

“an outdated view of disability which is patronising and offensive.”

What he was unwilling to admit was that disabled rights, which had been proudly won after hard-fought campaigns over the years, making the UK a global leader in driving forward disability rights, were rapidly being reversed in only several years of rule.

It was heard that at least 18% of disabled people were sanctioned a year and that the recurring theme of the report was the UK’s failure to adequately adhere to its own Human Rights legislation for disabled people.

It is likely that this report by Professor Alston, the UN appointed Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, will find similar recurring themes due to Tory policies which destroy people’s lives and cause extreme poverty.

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