UK austerity has inflicted 'great misery' on citizens, UN says

Poverty envoy says callous policies driven by political desire for social re-engineering

The UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity, the United Nations poverty envoy has found.

Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that despite being the world’s fifth largest economy, levels of child poverty are “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”.

Related: It took a UN envoy to hear how austerity is destroying lives | Aditya Chakrabortty

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2DHKcOP