Eastbourne Labour Party Eastbourne Labour Party
The UN are visiting the UK next month to investigate how Tory policies like welfare reform have affected poverty and human rights in the UK. Our Government has previously been found by a UN inquiry (Committee on the Rights of Disabled Persons) to have been responsible for “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights – 2016. At the time, this report was dismissed by our Government. Dismissed. Waved away. But then, last summer the CRPD spent two days grilling UK Government officials in Geneva. Theresia Degener, who leads on the Committee, said the Tory welfare cuts have created a “human catastrophe” for disabled people in the UK. Our Government, she said, had “totally neglected” disabled people.
The UK is the first state to have been investigated under a UN convention. This is serious. How could the Tories have gotten this so wrong? (Rhetorical question). Well the story doesn’t end there. Please see the video within this report. Yesterday, in Parliament, Labour Party’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP, (Kemptown, Brighton) put a question to Sarah Newton MP, (Minister for Disabled People). Her response is shameful and shocking. With attitudes like these, in such high Tory places, what chance is there for those of us in need of support and welfare?
We as a society ought to be treating those of us in need with dignity and respect; and we ought to be providing adequate means when this is required. Isn’t this a fundamental? Are we not human? But, instead, currently there are 4.2 million people with disabilities living in poverty in Britain. There are shocking violations of disabled people’s rights and shameful attitudes are prevailing amongst Ministers who surely should know better. And, this is happening despite the UK signing up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People in 2009. The next Labour Government will go further in protecting disables people’s rights by signing this international convention into UK law.