The reality of disability in Austerity UK

There are those who have argued that austerity was a rational, necessary and inevitable response to the economic crisis and, as we know, these are usually the same people who, despite evidence to the contrary, repeat platitudes like ‘we are all in this together’. When UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty & Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, came to the UK to take part in a London School of Economics event, ‘Austerity on Trial’, in early 2013, not only did she make a resounding argument that austerity was avoidable in the UK or elsewhere, she also declared that we were most certainly not all in it together.

With a unique global perspective on austerity, Sepúlveda underscored that the poor and underprivileged were profoundly affected in the UK and elsewhere, even to the extent of infringing on their human rights. She was at pains to drum home that some groups were treated much more harshly than others by austerity-related policies, with dire consequences for them, their families and their communities. Those groups most likely to be left destitute by cuts to essential benefits, she emphatically concluded, were also those most directly affected by cuts to public services – rendering them vulnerable on several fronts. Whether it was Greece, Spain, Ireland or the UK, the people at the very sharpest end were the same – it was just a matter of degree.