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If you’ve followed our coverage of benefits cuts over the past few months, you’ll know that the situation is bad. While the cost of welfare is ballooning, those who need benefits to afford the basics are struggling. Universal credit is at an all-time low in real terms, the system to access it is described as complex and demeaning, and around a third of children in the UK are living in relative poverty.
A new report published today by Amnesty International finds that the UK’s social security system is not just in dire straits – it is falling foul of international human rights law.
Koldo Casla, director of the Human Rights Centre Clinic at the University of Essex, led the study on which the report is based. He explains just how the UK’s system breaches several international human rights agreements. The prime minister, a human rights lawyer, should read it with interest.
It’s worth mentioning here that the conclusions were reached even before cuts to disability payments were announced in the spring statement. With backbench Labour MPs gearing up for a rebellion over those cuts when the legislation comes forward in early June, the evidence laid out in this study is politically consequential.
A new MRP (multi-level regression with post-stratification) poll came out earlier this week and has been described as “the map of doom”. It shows that, as things currently stand, Reform would beat Labour and the Tories in a general election. But all is not what it seems here. MRP polls are incredibly complicated, expensive projects. And, as Paul Whiteley explains here, they are of limited value so far from an election, precisely because of the way they are put together.
The government has welcomed the “clarity” brought by the UK Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. But it’s not at all clear yet what the decision will mean in practice. Legal expert and specialist in gender, sexuality and the law Alexander Maine explores some of the key questions about how single-sex spaces will operate, which laws still protect trans people from discrimination, and whether the Gender Recognition Act is worth anything after this decision.
The assisted dying bill is due to return to the House of Commons next month. One of the arguments at the heart of the debate over this bill is the “slippery slope” – the idea that legalising assisted dying for terminal conditions could lead to allowing it for non-terminal ones, including mental health issues. But a new study of Belgium’s experience with assisted dying (where it’s been legal since 2002) finds no evidence to support this. Here’s also a refresher on the unusual politics behind the bill.
And a new survey reveals how young journalists see their role less as objective observers and more as activists – as well as the class privilege that is rife in UK newsrooms.
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