A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 22. These are not just anecdotes. They are reflected in the numbers. In England, homelessness rose 60 per cent between 2011 and 2017 and rough sleeping rose 165 per cent from 2010 to 2018.23 The charity Shelter estimates that 320,000 people in Britain are now homeless,24 and recent research by Crisis suggests that 24,000 people are sleeping rough or on public transportation – more than twice government estimates. 25 Almost 600 people died homeless in England and Wales in 2017 alone, a 24 per cent increase in the past five years.26 There were 1.2 million people on the social housing waiting list in 2017, but less than 6,000 homes were built that year.27 And 2.5 million households in England, or 11 per cent of the population, experienced fuel poverty in 2016.28 Food bank use increased almost fourfold between 2012–2013 and 2017–2018,29 and there are now over 2,000 food banks in the United Kingdom, up from just 29 at the height of the financial crisis. 30 23. Living in poverty can also take a severe toll on physical and mental health. More than a quarter of working-age people in the poorest fifth of the population – roughly those in poverty – experience depression or anxiety. 31 The Special Rapporteur heard story after story from people who considered, and even attempted, suicide, and met with multiple organizations that have for the first time instituted suicide prevention training for front-line staff. Life expectancy rates have stalled,32 and the gap in life expectancy between the most deprived and most affluent communities increased steadily from 2001 to 2016 and is now 7.9 years for women and 9.7 years for men. 33 A. Measuring and monitoring poverty 24. To address poverty effectively it is essential to know its extent and character. Yet the United Kingdom does not have an official measure of poverty. Instead, it produces four different measures of people who live on “below average income”. 34 This allows the Government to choose which numbers to use and to claim that “absolute” poverty is falling. However, independent measures show that progress in reducing poverty has flatlined and poverty is again rising. 25. The “new poverty measure” proposed by the bipartisan Social Metrics Commission represents an attempt to create a single comprehensive measure of poverty and these are the numbers the Special Rapporteur references here, unless otherwise noted. The Government should adopt the Commission’s approach, which has received an impressive degree of cross-party support. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 National Audit Office, Homelessness, 13 September 2017, p. 14; and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Rough Sleeping Statistics, Autumn 2018, England (Revised), 25 February 2019. See https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/articles/320,000_people_in_britain _are_now_homeless_as_numbers_keep_rising. See www.crisis.org.uk/about-us/latest-news/more-than-24-000-people-facing-christmas-sleepingrough-or-in-cars-trains-buses-and-tents/. Office of National Statistics, “Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales: 2013 to 2017”, 20 December 2018. Angel Strachan, “Building more affordable homes”, Shelter briefing, 19 October 2018. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics Report, 2018 (2016 Data). The Trussell Trust, “End of year stats”, 2018. Simon Duffy and Claudia Gillberg, Extreme Poverty in a Time of Austerity (Sheffield, Centre for Welfare Reform, 2018), pp. 11–12. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, p. 5. Office for National Statistics, “National life tables, UK: 2015 to 2017”, 25 September 2018. James Bennett and others, “Contributions of diseases and injuries to widening life expectancy inequalities in England from 2001 to 2016”, Lancet Public Health, vol. 3, No. 12 (December 2018), pp. 586 and 590. Department for Work and Pensions, “Households below average income: 1994/95 to 2017/18”, 28 March 2019. 7