The shocking facts about ill health & mortality arising from austerity & poverty presented at Taxpayers Against Poverty’s Westminster seminar
5 May 2019
The harsh reality of current government policy was further demonstrated at a seminar entitled "Social death: the impact of austerity and poverty", organised by the land and health campaigning group Taxpayers Against Poverty (TAP) on 1st May 2019, Labour Day, at Portcullis House, on the Parliamentary Estate, Westminster.
The purpose of the event was to place on record evidence linking the recent dramatic decline in health, reduction in life expectancy and increase in infant mortality in the UK to austerity and poverty. This will be forwarded to governmental and political organisations.
Links to each presentation can be seen below.
Dr Faiza Shaheen spoke about the gender, racial and class impacts of austerity and poverty.
You can listen to it all on the video or you can view each presentation indiviudally on the TAP Facebook page
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21:44 Chris Grover, "understanding austerity as structural violence and social murder"
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48:38 David Taylor-Robinson from the University of Liverpool."Child health unraveling in the UK"
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1:07:42 Danny Dorling, "Beyond reasonable doubt - the deaths and the blame"
The PowerPoint presentations
Professor Danny Dorling -
"Beyond reasonable doubt - the deaths and the blame".
Dr Chris Grover -
"Understanding austerity as structural violence and social murder".
Professor David Taylor-Robinson
"Child health unravelling in the UK"
The good health and wellbeing of every UK citizen in or out of work must now become a national priority
A decent social security system, built on moral principles shown on the Fabian Society website, would allow people to flourish and reverse the current structural violence and social murder.
A stream of data demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that, since 2010, more people have suffered mental and physical ill health, and have died younger, as a result of cuts to local government and the NHS, and as a result of poverty incomes. The failure of the government to address the fragility of children from birth through their early years, and the impact of today’s harmful poverty on future generations, is particularly shocking. While the number of infant deaths worldwide has reduced in recent decades, the UK’s position in the 23-country European league table has dropped sharply from the best six to the worst five.
Rev Paul Nicolson, founder of Taxpayers Against Poverty, said:
LAND
We have now run four seminars – on land, housing, health inequality and social death respectively – with speakers providing the highest-quality information available in the UK.
Land is the connecting link. It is a gift of nature intended for the provision of shelter, food, fuel, water, clothes, health and wellbeing for all. With the young climate protesters, we say, ‘There is no planet B.’
Land in the UK is being grabbed by the national and international wealthy for their private benefit, setting rents so high that low-income tenants are forced into debt, hunger, evictions, and mental and physical illness. An ever-increasing number of families, children and individuals are without a home. They will be the worst affected as the planet warms and the prices of necessities increase. Inequality is soaring and morality is missing when laws that oppress poor people are passed by Parliament.”
Taxpayers Against Poverty proposes
- an increase in the minimum wage and welfare payments both based on minimum-income standards;
- the abolition of council tax and business rates;
- the introduction of rent controls;
- a property tax based on the value of land, thereby taxing wealth not income. If properly implemented the property tax could be lower than the council tax for lower to middle-income home owners owing to the larger tax base.
This would release 30% of households renting their homes from council tax and facilitate funds to enable a rapid increase in the building of quality, truly affordable social housing.
About Taxpayers Against Poverty
With and for our poorest fellow citizens, Taxpayers Against Poverty seeks to influence national and local policy with well-researched evidence of hardship, and proposes practical policy recommendations. It also supports those in need who are thrust into unmanageable debt by caps and cuts in housing benefit, threatened eviction, forced migration, and undue stressand misery. In 1997, Rev Paul Nicolson initiated the detailed research into minimum-income standards on which the first real Living Wage was based and founded the Zacchaeus 2000 axpayers Against Poverty. In 2012 he founded Taxpayers Against Poverty. We launched the Moral-case campaign for adequate minimum income and truly affordable housing in 2018.
Media contacts
Tom Burgess: 07887 724285; .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Rev Paul Nicolson: 07961 177889; .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)