A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 5 to 16 November 2018. The purpose of the visit was to report to the Human Rights Council on the extent to which the Government’s policies and programmes relating to extreme poverty are consistent with its human rights obligations and to offer constructive recommendations to the Government and other stakeholders. The Special Rapporteur is grateful to the Government for inviting him and facilitating his visit and for its continuing cooperation with the Council’s accountability mechanisms.1 The report is submitted in accordance with Council resolution 35/19. 2. The Special Rapporteur received over 300 written submissions 2 and held consultations in London, Oxford, Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne, Clacton-on-Sea and Jaywick (all in England), Cardiff (Wales), Edinburgh and Glasgow (Scotland) and Belfast (Northern Ireland). II. Overview 3. The United Kingdom, the world’s fifth largest economy, is a leading centre of global finance, boasts a “fundamentally strong” economy and currently enjoys record low levels of unemployment. But despite such prosperity, one fifth of its population (14 million people) live in poverty. Four million of those are more than 50 per cent below the poverty line 3 and 1.5 million experienced destitution in 2017, unable to afford basic essentials.4 Following drastic changes in government economic policy beginning in 2010, the two preceding decades of progress in tackling child and pensioner poverty have begun to unravel and poverty is again on the rise.5 Relative child poverty rates are expected to increase by 7 per cent between 2015 and 2021 and overall child poverty rates to reach close to 40 per cent. 6 For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain would not just be a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster rolled into one. 4. But statistics alone cannot capture the full picture of poverty in the United Kingdom, much of it the direct result of government policies (unless otherwise indicated, “Government” in the present report refers to the United Kingdom Government). Official denials notwithstanding, it is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes. There has been a shocking increase in the number of food banks and major increases in homelessness and rough sleeping; a growing number of homeless families – 24,000 between April and June of 2018 – have been dispatched to live in accommodation far from their schools, jobs and community networks;7 life expectancy is falling for certain groups; and the legal aid system has been decimated, thus shutting out large numbers of low-income persons from the onceproud justice system. Government reforms have often denied benefits to people with severe disabilities and pushed them into unsuitable work, single mothers struggling to cope in very difficult circumstances have been left far worse off, care for those with mental illnesses has deteriorated dramatically, and teachers’ real salaries have been slashed. 8 The number of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 The Special Rapporteur is grateful for the research and analysis undertaken by Anna Bulman, Bassam Khawaja, Rebecca Riddell, Christiaan van Veen and staff of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Available at ww.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/UKVisitSubmissions.aspx. Social Metrics Commission, A New Measure of Poverty for the UK, September 2018, p. 97. Suzanne Fitzpatrick and others, Destitution in the UK 2018, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, pp. 2–3. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, p. 12. Andrew Hood and Tom Waters, “Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2017–2018 to 2021–2022”, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2 November 2017, p. 15. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Statutory Homelessness, April to June (Q2) 2018: England, 13 December 2018, p. 17. Howard Reed and Jonathan Portes, The Cumulative Impact on Living Standards of Public Spending Changes, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Research Report 120, 2018, p. 37. 3