Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2019
While Dr Alston’s report makes many valid points, I feel that an opportunity has been missed to have a rational, reasoned debate on the issues that affect the most vulnerable in the UK and to depoliticise what has been a heavily partisan conversation.
There is a common misconception surrounding United Nations special rapporteurs—namely, that they are representatives of the UN. As Dr Alston himself has said, he is not a UN official; he merely presents his independent findings to the UN. Bearing that in mind, we should be careful not to conflate the views in Dr Alston’s report with the opinions of the UN. It is also important to note that the UN has struggled with its relationship with rapporteurs and that it does not always agree with their findings. Philip Alston has recently come into conflict with the UN, as we saw from Ban Ki-moon’s reaction to his work in Sri Lanka.
With any piece of work, one of the greatest challenges is ensuring its validity. Many members will have undertaken graduate and postgraduate work. One of the first recommendations that those who embark on research receive is that their sources should be peer reviewed. Sadly, the piece of work that we are discussing today did not enjoy such academic scrutiny. For example, by referring to the UK’s budget surplus or fundamentally misunderstanding the devolution settlement, Dr Alston does not help his cause. His hyperbolic language does not aid his case, either, and I believe that the secretary of state will make a formal complaint to the UN to make that point.
Although it has been confirmed that the statistics that are contained in the report are valid, the fact that many of the publications are simply out of date—they rely on figures and anecdotal evidence from before 2017—has not been accounted for.