The United Nations’ poverty envoy has warned Rishi Sunak that unleashing a new wave of austerity in this month’s budget could violate the UK’s international human rights obligations and increase hunger and malnutrition.
Olivier de Schutter, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, said he was “extremely troubled” by likely multibillion-pound spending cuts – including possible real-terms reductions in welfare payments to millions of the nation’s poorest families.
The government is due to unveil a crunch budget on 17 November to fill an estimated £40bn black hole in the public finances using tax rises as well as spending cuts.
Speaking to the Guardian, the UN-appointed official, who has recently been investigating extreme poverty in Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Nepal, said: “This is the worst time to impose such cuts. You do not impose austerity measures when the whole population is facing a cost of living crisis. What you do is you raise taxes on the rich, you raise taxes on corporations.” » | Robert Booth, Social affairs correspondent | Wednesday, November 2, 2022
We’ve had years and years of Tory austerity already. Cameron and Osborne introduced the “age of austerity” in 2009. (Of course, we were all in it together!) And a fat lot of good it has done us! A worse outcome would be hard to imagine!
Even though I disliked the man at the time, he has been proven right. I speak of Denis Healey, the one-time Labour chancellor of the exchequer. He once said, “I want to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.”. That is exactly what we need to do right now! Forget about inflicting even more pain on the poor! Tax the rich instead – until their pips squeak, as he said! (Source of quotation: The Guardian).
Moreover, if you don’t wish to tax the superrich, then we might need to talk about whether we can afford the luxury of royalty.
I am not anti-royal; I am no republican. But it seems ludicrous to me that we lavish limitless amounts of money on royalty to keep them in the lap of luxury, when so many ordinary people cannot put food on the table for their children. That is not only wrong, it is also unconscionable. – © Mark Alexander
More austerity, more division, more decline: Sunak is merely a sequel in a tired Tory franchise: The new prime minister’s main redeeming quality is that he is not his predecessors. What a sorry waste of 12 years in power »
