In our latest submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights’ call for input into ‘A Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth’, Just Fair argues that it’s time to flip the script: economic policy must be designed to support human rights, not override them. At the heart of this is the need for a rights-based framework centred on social protection – one that treats access to housing, healthcare, and income security as fundamental rights, rather than optional outcomes of growth-focused economic policy.
This is because, as the submission explains, policy driven primarily by the pursuit of economic growth can be substantively harmful and incoherent – often resulting in further harm. The absence of a rights-based anchoring framework can lead to inconsistent and conflicting policy decisions that not only undermine the goal of economic growth, but also harm people and delay the realisation of a life of dignity.
The submission highlights several examples of substantively problematic policies including:
- Changes to winter fuel payment policy which helps older people with elevated fuel prices during the cold winter months.
- The failure to remove the ‘two-child limit,’ a restriction on the payment of the child benefit related element of Universal Credit, a social security payment, to the first two children in a family.
- Reforms to health and disability social security benefits announced in March 2025.
The submission demonstrates potential incoherence in policymaking through the example of how revenue-raising measures – such as the increase in employer national insurance contributions – and reforms to health and disability social security benefits may interact in ways that place the already struggling social care sector under even greater strain, ultimately resulting in harm.
The current system is failing specific groups – particularly those with protected characteristics, as well as individuals facing barriers to accessing necessities such as healthcare, food, housing, decent work, and social security. Inequalities are deeply intertwined, with those at the sharpest end often experiencing violations of multiple rights. And for these groups, the situation is getting worse. People who already could not wait for growth to materialise to enjoy a dignified life are facing increasing hardship.
We are concerned that the pursuit of fiscal prudence and economic growth is not only failing to address poverty but actively contributing to pushing more people into poverty as a result of political decisions.
A rights-based approach which places dignity at the heart of decisions and policy making is critically important – and currently absent from the current approach. In the UK, this requires incorporation of economic, social and cultural rights into the domestic legal framework and developing economic and taxation policies which enable their realisation.
Read the full submission here.
We welcome views and comments on this area of thought – join the UK ESCR Network to get involved!
Background image by Fonzy Nils.
