PEOPLE in Britain have been subjected to “great misery” because of the austerity policies of the Tory Government, the poverty envoy of the United Nations has claimed.

In a brutal and unsparing report, Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, says the Tories have inflicted “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies.

Poverty, he says, "is a political choice".

He claimed that Chancellor Philip Hammond could "easily have spared the poor" at the last budget, but there was no political will to do so.

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"Resources were available to the Treasury at the last budget that could have transformed the situation of millions of people living in poverty, but the political choice was made to fund tax cuts for the wealthy instead," Alston said.

Levels of child poverty in the UK, he adds, are “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”.

Citing figures from the IFS and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Alston said around 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty – 1.5 million of those are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.

Alston’s 24-page report, which will be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva next year, comes after a two week fact finding mission to the UK, where spent time in Glasgow, as well as London, Oxford, Cardiff, and Newcastle. He also met with Nicola Sturgeon and various UK Government ministers.

There is praise for the Scottish Government, and their attempts to mitigate the worst aspects of austerity, but he warns of an "accountability gap", criticising ministers in Edinburgh for not including “an explicit reference to international standards in the Social Security (Scotland) Act”.

He also warns that the Scottish Welfare Fund is not as well publicised as it should be, and Alston has strong words for the length of time it takes for local authorities to process applications.

In Glasgow only 3% of local welfare fund applications were decided in a day, whereas other councils managed to decide these claims within a day 99% of the time.

Alston said: “I met with children in Glasgow’s North East, where, according to one local councillor, 48% of people are out of work, life expectancy is six years lower than the national average, about half of families are single-parent households, and about a third of households lack an internet connection."

The envoy said the UK Government was in a state of denial.

He said that it was “obvious to anyone who opens their eyes to see the immense growth in food banks and the queues waiting outside them, the people sleeping rough in the streets, the growth of homelessness, the sense of deep despair that leads even the government to appoint a minister for suicide prevention and civil society to report in depth on unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation".

John Dickie, the director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland, said the findings should be "a wake-up call for government at every level".

He added: "As the UN investigator found out when he spoke to children in Glasgow child poverty isn’t only happening overseas, it is undermining children’s lives here in Scotland and across the UK.

“The key drivers of rising child poverty are clearly summarised by the UN rapporteurs description of the current UK approach to social security as ‘punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous’.

“UK ministers now need to wake up to the damage being wreaked and end the freeze on working age benefits, scrap the two child limit and fully restore the value of universal credit.”