Damning report on UK poverty should also raise serious questions for Jersey
Following a report last month from the IMF stating that UK public finances are now among the weakest in the world, Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has just concluded his two-week fact-finding mission in the UK. The UN report based on his findings is damning. It states that under consecutive Conservative leaderships the UK government has inflicted a ‘great misery’ on its people, with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies driven not out of economic necessity but by a political desire to undertake “radical social re-engineering”.
Despite the UK being the world’s fifth largest economy, the report highlights the rise in foodbanks, homelessness, “unheard of levels of loneliness and isolation” and that austerity has fallen disproportionately upon the poor, women, racial and ethnic minorities, children, single parents, and people with disabilities. It states that a fifth of the UK population are living in poverty (Jersey poverty is one in four after housing costs) and that 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.
It cites the government’s pledge in 2010 to radically reform public services by cutting funding to local authorities in England as one of the main drivers of poverty. With cuts being made without either “measuring or accounting for their broader impact” while the wealthy received tax breaks. It states the government has remained “determinedly in a state of denial”, fixated on the idea that work is the solution to poverty, pointing to record employment rates as evidence that the country is going in the “right direction”. However, the report argues employment does not “magically overcome poverty.”
Despite the bleak situation in the UK, Alston says he has seen “tremendous resilience, strength, and generosity” amongst the British people, with “neighbors supporting one another, councils seeking creative solutions, and charities stepping in to fill holes in government services.”
If the findings of the UN report all sounds rather a bit familiar it should. When the 2009/10 Income Distribution report revealed the level of poverty in the Island, Ian Gorst, Chief Minister at the time, downplayed its findings, believing that inequality was reducing in a “slightly greater way” than the UK. Five years later, the 2014/15 report showed inequality had not only got worse but that it was greater than in the UK. Despite its importance, the latest Income Distribution report that was supposed to be brought forward to before the recent elections has been delayed despite commitments from government to find the funding to produce it.
A September 2016 Scrutiny review, looking into living on low income in Jersey, also found denial at the level of poverty in the Island. Stating that the Minister for Social Security, Susie Pinel at the time, assertion that the growth in the use of Food Banks was mostly due to people who have recently arrived in the Island and were not qualified for Income Support was “at odds with the experience of the charitable organisations” and that there was also “no evidence” to her claim that people were regularly abusing charities by making unnecessary multiple applications for food parcels being again “contrary to the experience of the charitable organisations”. The review also found that the voluntary sector in Jersey is playing “an increasingly important role in providing essential assistance to people living on a low income”.
Recent local media headlines also reflect similar issues raised in the UN report. Whether it’s States job cuts to save £30 million a year or the number of young homeless being described as “alarming” and “unacceptably high” by a local charity. That suicide rates are twice that of the UK or that there’s been an increase in mentally-ill children seeking help, worsened by the “restructuring of public-sector services”. Reports of a “Black Market” workforce in hospitality and that Firefighters being told to keep quiet about a lack of resources — seeing a 20% decline in their numbers since 2003 — or the fact that despite struggling services, below inflation pay offers, and a growing recruitment crisis, public sector workers are being forced to accept the pay offer as there’s apparently “no more money” left.
All the while, the States of Jersey made “strong investment returns” in 2017, totalling £282 million— a return of over 10% — contributing to “record levels” in the Strategic Reserve and Social Security Funds with total reserves amounting to over £2.8 billion. Heads of States-owned companies are given significant pay rises, multinational subsidiary companies benefit from our “Zero Ten” tax regime — in essence, a taxpayer-funded corporate subsidy — and the wealthy reap the benefits of rising property prices and not being subject to any capital gains or inheritance tax.
The UN report on UK poverty should serve as a stark warning for us and should be required reading for every Jersey politician and civil servant, especially considering the States’ close cultural ties with the UK government and with top-level public sector positions increasingly being filled by UK candidates. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t employ people from the UK, and there’s no doubt that we have good people both in and out of government that are working towards a better and fairer future for us and it’s vital that we support them. We’re not the UK, and nor do we have to be, as the report says in its conclusion: “poverty is a political choice.”
