COVID-19 Through the Lens of Inequality: Economic Austerity Measures and the Human Rights Impact in the United Kingdom.
Human Rights Lessons that need to be learned from the last financial crisis: austerity is not an option.
Not only has COVID-19 had a devastating public health toll, the global economy has been hit with a ‘coronavirus shock’ (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2020: 1); which could potentially see the deepest financial downturn since the Great Depression (International Monetary Fund, 2020: online).
The past 10 years in the United Kingdom has proved that the response to this incoming crisis cannot be regression back to economic austerity measures. Austerity measures have only served to entrench inequalities, weaken social security nets and jeopardise State potential to respond to immediate minimum core human rights obligations (United Nations, A/74/178, 2019: at para. 36).
From a human rights perspective, this approaching recession will have a considerable impact on the protection of those economic, social and cultural rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966); including the rights to work, food, adequate housing, social security and healthcare (Bohoslavsky, 2020: 4). From the 2008–2009 financial crisis we saw that:
“generally, the crisis and the global economic slowdown associated with it, has the potential to impact on human rights directly and indirectly, including on the ability of individuals to exercise and claim their rights and on the ability of States to fulfil their obligations” (Human Rights Council, A/HRC/13/38, 2010: at para. 8).
What are Austerity Measures?
Austerity measures are efforts to substantially reduce government spending in an attempt to regulate public-sector debt; the UK sought to do this with sustained reductions in public spending and tax rises (Mueller, 2019: online). Between 2010 and 2019, more than £30 billion in spending cuts were made to social services, housing subsidies and welfare payments (Whittaker, 2019: 30). Often these types of measures cause retrogression in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, especially for those most vulnerable; with public spending cuts on those programmes that primarly benefit the poor, raising concerns of international human rights law obligations (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2013: 13).
State Obligations Regarding Austerity Measures:
When party to the ICESCR, there is a framework to guide government policies with obligations States must fulfil. Namely this is to use their maximum available resources, fulfil minimum obligations, progressively realise economic and social rights and prohibit retrogressive measures and discrimination (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2013: 12). In 2018, the UN Expert on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, found that the UK had failed all the criteria of permissible use of retrogressive measures, which must be temporary, necessary and proportionate, ensure protection of minimum core content of rights, and be non-discriminatory (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2013: 12–13). Alston declared “the policies pursued since 2010 amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the country’s human rights obligations” (Human Rights Council, 2019: 15).
The Human Impact of Economic Austerity Measures:
Between 2011 and 2017, homelessness rose 60 percent (National Audit Office, 2017: 14) and rough sleeping increased by 165 percent from 2010 to 2018 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2019: online). The Social Metrics Commission found that almost one third of children in the UK were in poverty in 2018, and 2.5 million people in the UK were one crisis away from falling into poverty (2018: 7), and the current COVID-19 pandemic has presented such a crisis. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation between 2016 and 2020, the benefits freeze will have swept 400,000 people into poverty and affected more than 27 million people (Barnard, 2019: online).
It is unacceptable that in the world’s fifth largest economy, 1.5 million people have experienced destitution, unable to afford basic essentials in 2017, with 20 percent of the British population living in poverty (Human Rights Council, 2019: 3). Within those poverty numbers, disabled people and people from ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected. Due to the austerity programme, families that include a disabled person are projected to lose more than 30 percent of their annual net income by 2021/22 (Human Rights Council, 2019: 16); since 2013 more than 17,000 sick and disabled people have died waiting for disability support benefits (Bulman, 2019: online). Similarly, people from Black and Asian households in the UK are the most likely to live in poverty and are the most disproportionately affected by the government measures from 2010 to 2020; with those in the lowest fifth of incomes experiencing about a 20 percent decline in living standards, the largest average drop (Human Rights Council, 2019: 17).
Whilst those most vulnerable have been disproportionately impacted, with the “bottom 20 percent of earners [having] lost on average 10% by 2021–2022”, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, these austerity changes have meant that top earners have actually increased their income (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2018: 26).
Austerity schemes such as ‘Universal Credit’, which rolled six different welfare benefits into one benefit, with arbitrary waiting payment periods and strict sanctions, has been directly linked to increased reliance on food banks (Trussell Trust, 2019: online). A 5,146 percent increase in the distribution of emergency food parcels provided by the Trussell Trust has been documented (Human Rights Watch, 2019: online). The negligent waiting periods and arbitrary sanctions of Universal Credit can be seen in the case of Errol Graham. Graham starved to death after his benefits had been cut because he did not attend a Work Capability Assessment due to his depression (Butler, 2020: online). He weighed four and a half stone when he died (Drury, 2020: online).
Clearly those basic rights to food, adequate standards of living and social security and even fundamentally to life have been hugely restricted and infringed upon by the austerity measures of the Government since 2010; with a detrimental impact on those people the state should be most committed to protect.
What we can already tell from the impact of COVID-19 and intersectional inequality:
Much like the myth of austerity measures affecting everybody in UK society similarly, with everyone having to “tighten their belts together” (Osborne, 2008: online), the construction of Coronavirus being an “equaliser” in society is of similar falsity (Chowdhury, 2020: online).
COVID-19 is hitting a society that is already unequal.
Already we can see the unprecedented effects of COVID-19 on the UK economy. Between April and June this year, households will have £43 billion less cash available for essential spending (Partridge, Wearden, 2020: online). Many families at the sharp end of inequalities who were struggling before the pandemic are now faced with reduced or no income (Bibby, Everest, Abbs, 2020: online). The Centre for Economics and Business Research has predicted that unemployment will more than double, with the biggest unemployment increase among the lowest-paid workers, with benefit claims unlikely to satisfy the demand for disposable income (2020: online). This stress and insecurity can be anticipated to have immediate mental health effects on those most vulnerable.
Due to health inequalities in the UK, whilst making up just 13 percent of the population, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people are being disproportionately affected by COVID-19, accounting for over a third of those critically ill cases (Siddique, 2020: online). Additionally, the economic impact is likely to hurt these communities more, as seen with the effect of austerity measures, the UK poverty rate is twice as high in BAME communities to that of white groups (Weekes-Bernard, 2017: 1).
According to the Department for Work and Pensions, between March 13, 2020 and April 9, 2020, 1.5 million universal credit claims were made, with the number of people on universal credit increasing by 40 percent due to the pandemic and over 5.2 million people claiming Universal Credit in May (Peachey, 2020: online). It can be assumed by the already experienced shortcomings of Universal Credit that many of those who have applied will have to wait, will not qualify or may be sanctioned if not actively seeking work during this unprecedented period.
Increased food insecurity has also been seen in response to COVID-19 (Bibby, Everest, Abbs, 2020: online). As food prices have risen and access has been reduced, The Food Foundation has indicated a preliminary quadrupling of adults who are now food insecure (Loopstra, 2020: online).
The impact of COVID-19 has hit people from uneven starting points, which were exacerbated and deepened by a policy of cuts that made poor people poorer and vulnerable people weaker.
Austerity cannot be the option for future Government policy:
The 2010 programme of economic austerity was posed by the Prime Minister David Cameron as the only response to “save the economy”, with “no alternative” (Cameron, 2009: online). Similar rhetoric is being employed by the government in response to COVID-19 to be “doing whatever is necessary”, which rings certain alarm bells (Kirkland, 2020: online). In light of the “Coronavirus shock” and huge government funding for emergency support measures, estimated to consume 41 percent of national income by 2023 (Woodcock, 2020: online), calls for austerity to balance the budget after the crisis are already being posed (Atkinson, 2020: online). This cannot be the future policy of our current government, considering austerity has hugely contributed to the ineffective UK response to the pandemic, the 44,236 unnecessary deaths (Public Health England, 2020: online), and the devastating impact austerity had on those most vulnerable in the UK (Human Rights Council, 2019: 15).
It is unsurprising that a decade of spending cuts and benefit freezes has left the country wholly incapable of responding to a crisis such as COVID-19. Even without a pandemic, the National Health Service was overworked, overwhelmed and underfunded (Coppola, 2020: online). Social care and our welfare system has been gutted, and the safety net for those least able to help themselves, children, single mothers and the disabled, has been destroyed (Blanchflower, 2020: online).
The UK needs to create a ‘new normal’, one that is not dictated by austerity and individualist capitalism. Already we have seen, despite massive public spending and borrowing ‘on a scale that would previously have caused ridicule’ (Mazzucato, 2020: online), a return to a hostile environment for those most vulnerable in the UK, with the reinstatement of benefit sanctions on July 1, 2020 (Peachey, 2020: online). This arbitrary reintroduction of sanctions comes at a time:
“Where vacancies have dropped, when people are shielding and the schools haven’t yet gone back, threatening people with reducing their support if they don’t look for jobs is surely untenable” (Reynolds, 2020: online).
Whilst the huge economic bail-out packages we are seeing from the government at the moment are welcome and necessary, the support provided in the future needs to be human rights based, placing people at its heart, not business; with investment in people and places. Following economist Mariana Mazzucato, the economic crisis caused by COVID-19 presents us with an opportunity to ‘do capitalism differently’, recognising the power of the state to create value (2020: online). As opposed to the government working to fix market failures after the fact, the role of governments should be to proactively shape and create markets ‘that deliver sustainable and inclusive growth’ (Mazzucato, 2020: online). As public life in the UK has been dominated by business, Mazzucato argues that this prominence has caused a loss of confidence in the capabilities of the government on their own, which has led to ‘problematic public-private partnerships’, where the interests of big business are prioritised over public good (2020: online). The new normal should be characterised by governmentally funded partnerships with business which are not driven by profit, but public interest (Mazzucato, 2020: online). Accordingly, David Blanchflower argues that the ‘economy must serve ordinary people, not hedge funds’, investing in living standards and incentives to work (2020: online).
You don’t weaken people when they are down, you build them up (Blanchflower, 2020: online).
In lieu of a return to austerity and budget cuts post-COVID-19, investment in people through government spending needs to continue and tax rises present the progressive alternative to austerity and cuts (Roberts, 2020: online).
The UK government failed those most vulnerable in 2010, they cannot fail them again.
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