Today (20th January 2015), MPs will debate the future of the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. Those who speak in favour of renewing Trident, at a cost of almost £100 billion, will no doubt say Trident is essential to protect UK citizens at some point in the future. Yet last week, those same MPs voted to commit the next Parliament to austerity, which is killing UK citizens here and now.
Today (20th January 2015), MPs will debate the future of the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. Those who speak in favour of renewing Trident, at a cost of almost £100 billion, will no doubt say Trident is essential to protect UK citizens at some point in the future. Yet last week, those same MPs voted to commit the next Parliament to austerity, which is killing UK citizens here and now.
A toxic cocktail of austerity and callous welfare reform has proved fatal to many people in the UK.Those who believe the country is on the right track may say this is extremist scaremongering, but the evidence that government policy is leading to deaths is available and mounting.
Only this month, a Council in the North West alerted Public Health England that there had been a “statistically significant, sustained” decline in life expectancy among elderly people. Dr. John Middleton, Vice Chair of the Faculty of Public Health, said that “inadequate social care and inadequate investment in preventive care for vulnerable older people” could be an explanation.
Half a million fewer people now receive social care than five years ago, as the budget has been cut by £3.5 billion. It is no doubt significant that the alarm about deaths has been raised by a Council in the North West of England, an area which has suffered some of the harshest cuts.
And for the youngest in the population, last May it was reported in The Lancet that the UK has one of the highest infant mortality rates in Western Europe. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, said ‘Until our politicians begin to take the health of children–the health of the next generation of British citizens–more seriously, newborns and older children will continue to suffer and die needlessly.”
Those child mortality rates vary dramatically between rich and poor areas, and the Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies said, “I think this is something, as a country, we should feel profoundly ashamed about – I do.” Dame Sally also revealed,
“We are seeing rickets again. I used to see rickets when I trained in the late Seventies, and it’s coming back again.”
For those of working age, unfortunate enough to become unemployed or too ill or disabled to work, the situation is also bleak. The Department for Work and Pensions has officially conducted sixty internal reviews into suicides of benefit claimants, but campaigners say that these sixty cases represent just the tip of the iceberg.
Many people’s deaths will receive little attention. Take the case of Stephen Lynam, reported in Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centres Annual Report for 2014
Stephen (53) suffered from anxiety and depression as well as high blood pressure, a heart condition and musculo-skeletal problems.
He was found fit for work following a work capability assessment. Stephen challenged the decision and was told he would have to have a Mandatory Reconsideration before he could actually appeal.
However, whilst waiting for a Mandatory Reconsideration, claimants must either sign on for Jobseekers Allowance or receive nothing. Stephen felt too unwell to look for work and feared he could not meet the strict conditionality of Jobseekers Allowance.
Stephen lived on two small payments from the local discretionary fund and help from a food bank, but was unable to eat properly. Facing eviction he became ever more depressed.
Stephen died shortly after hearing that he would be allowed to appeal the Department’s decision. His sister, Mavis Bond, was shocked at the treatment of her brother.
“I find it hard to believe in this day and age that the State would leave a man penniless – but this is 21st-centuryBritain where a sick man can be hounded to death and denied a safety net.”
Stephen’s appeal was heard posthumously and the tribunal overturned the Department’s decision.
We cannot say for certain, but surely, for a man with high blood pressure, a heart condition, anxiety and depression, going without food and facing the prospect of eviction must have hastened his death?
At the end of 2014, the number of people unemployed but not claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance exceded the one million mark for the first time ever. Given the punitive and humiliating nature of the ‘reformed’ benefits system, this is not surprising. For some people, particularly those who are anxious or depressed, one experience of the ‘support’ now offered by Jobcentres is more than enough.
Perhaps this is viewed by the government as one of the ‘achievements’ of welfare reform. Making the benefits system unbearable to all but the most resilient will tend to lead to a drop in the numbers of claimants. Yet, as with those still in the system who have been sanctioned, nobody is asking how these people survive.
Some citizens are completely in the hands of public services, and their fates reflect how those services are coping with austerity. For prisoners the figures are shocking. In the 12 months to the end of September 2014, 235 prisoners died – a 19 per cent increase on the previous year. Suicides rose by 38 per cent during the period – from 63 to 87. Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick said, “In my view, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the conjunction of resource, population and policy pressures, particularly in the second half of 2013-14 and particularly in adult male prisons, was a very significant factor.”
So it would seem the official position is that there is no lack of money for weapons to protect the UK, but we cannot afford to protect people against hunger, poverty, and distress which may prove fatal.
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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. You can follow her on Twitter: @BernaMeaden
Views expressed by individual contributors do not necessarily reflect an official Ekklesia view.