UNITED NATIONS REPORT ON EXTREME POVERTY IN THE UK

That this House condemns the immoral widespread extreme poverty in the UK as detailed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; observes the central role played by this UK Government, particularly by the DWP, in deepening this ongoing poverty crisis since 2010 through ideological social security cuts to the least politically powerful; stresses the need for the reality laid out in the UN's report to be rectified with increased social security spending in order to stem, as the UN report outlines, a seven per cent rise in child poverty by 2022; champions the churches teachers, charities and community groups fighting back against those Government attacks on the most vulnerable; acknowledges that Wales faces the highest relative poverty rate in the UK, with almost one in four people living in relative income poverty, and in-work poverty growing in Wales over the last decade, despite improvements in the Welsh employment rate; praises the Scottish Government for using newly devolved powers to establish a promising social security system guided by the principles of dignity and social security as a human right, co-designed on the basis of evidence, which eschews sanctions entirely and, in contrast to Universal Credit, is decidedly not digital by default; and calls on these same powers devolved to Scotland also to be devolved to Wales so that the Welsh Government, if it so chooses, can take similar steps to redress these domestic horrors reported by the United Nations and brought about by the Government.