A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 them, removing the “welfare cliff” that deterred beneficiaries from seeking work and a desire to provide more skills training. 11. But in the area of poverty-related policy, the evidence suggests that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving radical social re-engineering – a dramatic restructuring of the relationship between people and the State. Successive Governments have brought revolutionary change in both the system for delivering minimum levels of fairness and social justice to the British people, and especially in the values underpinning it. Key elements of the post-war “Beveridge social contract” are being overturned. In the process, some good outcomes have certainly been achieved, but great misery has been inflicted unnecessarily. 12. Far-reaching changes to the role of Government in supporting people in distress are almost always “sold” as part of an unavoidable fiscal “austerity” programme needed to save the country from bankruptcy. In fact, the reforms have almost certainly cost far more than their proponents will admit. The many billions extracted from the benefits system since 2010 have been offset by additional resources required, by local government, by doctors and hospital accident and emergency centres, and even by the ever-shrinking, overworked and underfunded police force to fund the increasing need for emergency services. 13. The Government has made no secret of its determination to change the value system to focus more on individual responsibility, to place major limits on government support and to pursue a single-minded focus on getting people into employment. Many aspects of this programme are legitimate matters for political contestation, but it is the mentality informing many of the reforms that has brought the most misery and wrought the most harm to the fabric of British society. British compassion has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach apparently designed to impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping, and elevate the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest economic levels of British society. It might seem to some observers that the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the nineteenth 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. III. Government’s reaction to preliminary findings 14. The Government’s response to the Special Rapporteur’s preliminary findings has been mixed. The Prime Minister “disagreed” with the preliminary statement, 13 and the Secretary for Work and Pensions was “disappointed”14 by its language, though the UnderSecretary of State promised the Government would seriously consider the present report. 15 15. Since the Special Rapporteur’s visit, however, the Secretary of State has indicated an intention to soften a number of the harshest aspects of existing policies, has conceded that the rollout of UC terms was linked to increased reliance on food banks and has delayed the transition of 3 million people to UC. 16 And the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, after initially denying any link, acknowledged that the Government’s policies may have played a role in rising homelessness. 17 13 14 15 16 17 Brian Wheeler, “Prime Minister’s Questions: the key bits and the verdict”, BBC, 5 December 2018. Peter Walker, “Amber Rudd condemns UN poverty report in combative return to frontline politics,” Guardian, 19 November 2018. Parliament, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, 7 January 2019. Laura Hughes, “Amber Rudd begins universal credit reforms amid High Court blow”, Financial Times, 11 January 2019. Jack Blanchard, “POLITICO London playbook: time to pause – Happy Brexmas (war is over) – Brokenshire exclusive”, Politico, 24 December 2018. 5