Two recent communications from UN Special Rapporteurs have put the UK’s record on economic, social and cultural rights firmly under the spotlight, highlighting both progress and persistent gaps in the realisation of the rights to food and housing.

Issued by new UN Special Rapporteurs on the right to food and the right to adequate housing, the communications come at an important moment. Only months after taking up their posts, both experts have issued official communications to the UK Government, signalling the priority they attach to concerns about the realisation of the rights to food and housing in the UK.

The right to housing: a stark warning

The new UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing has used his first communication to the UK Government to raise serious concerns about housing and migration policy.

His communication calls on the Prime Minister and UK Government to review the “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) policy and end the blanket exclusion of migrants and people seeking asylum from the protections needed to realise the right to housing.

The Special Rapporteur points to the UK’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and makes clear that economic, social and cultural rights apply to everyone, including refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, regardless of legal status or documentation.

Crucially, the communication sets out what a rights-based approach requires from government. Public authorities must use the maximum available resources to progressively realise the right to adequate housing. This means they must use the resources they have, to the best effect they can, to move forward on the right to housing. Policies that reduce existing protections must be justified as necessary and proportionate and must not disproportionately affect those facing the greatest disadvantage.

Of course, resources are not endless – and the Special Rapporteur clarifies that States can set, “reasonable, transparent and carefully designed criteria” to allocate housing, but that there simply cannot be, as a matter of internal law, a blanket exclusion of migrants and people seeking asylum from housing when they require it.

The Special Rapporteur’s communication is particularly significant in the context of the UK’s housing crisis. It challenges the idea that housing policy is simply a matter of political choice or competing priorities. The Special Rapporteur specifically highlights a serious and growing problem within the housing saector – the acquisition of housing stock by foreign investors who have no intention to reside in the area, yet contribute to pushing up the price of housing, making unaffordable to many.

Governments have obligations to progressively realise the right to adequate housing and to do so without discrimination, including on the basis of immigration or any other status.

The right to food: progress, but unfinished business

The new Special Rapporteur on the right to food highlights unfinished business in Scotland’s approach to the right to food.

In her first communication to the UK Government, she calls for the governing party in Scotland to fulfil their manifesto commitment and set out a clear timetable for extending universal free school meals to all primary pupils and avoid retrogression in existing entitlements.

The Special Rapporteur also recommends that the right to adequate food is explicitly reflected in Scotland’s Good Food Nation Plan and asks for clarification on whether the forthcoming human rights legislation will incorporate the right to food.  

As Just Fair has clarified, while measures, like universal free school meals, which give practical effect to the right to food are crucial, we need to go beyond this and put the right to food in our laws, policies and practices, not least so that the right is enduring and people can access justice if it is not met.

The communication is deeply congratulatory of several developments the Scottish Government has undertaken to give practical effect to the right to food, including free school meals, the Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Foods.

These measures show what it can look like to translate the right to food into practical policy.  Importantly, it also identifies framework legislation as a key mechanism for giving coherent effect to the right to food, echoing the approach promoted by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). But the Special Rapporteur calls on Scotland to go further and bring the right to food into law.

This is a useful reminder that rights recognised in law provide are essential to provide a framework for developing policy, measuring progress and holding governments to account so that people have something they can rely on if things go wrong.

The bigger picture

Taken together, these communications tell us something important about where the UK stands.

Fifty years after the UK ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the rights it committed to uphold, including the rights to adequate food and housing, remain largely absent from UK domestic law and CESCR’s 2025 examination of the UK, highlighted persistent concerns about poverty, food insecurity, housing and inequality.

The challenge now is to close the gap between international commitments and people’s lived reality. That means treating economic, social and cultural rights not as aspirations, but as standards against which decisions can be assessed and governments held accountable.

We look forward to reviewing the UK Government’s response to these communications. 

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food communication

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing communication

Background image by Ermina Emmanouel for Fine Acts