Jen Clark, economic and social rights lead at Amnesty International UK, said: “The social security system in the UK is broken. It’s violating human rights. It’s not enough to prevent poverty. In fact, it’s poverty by policy. We want to see it fixed to stop the harms of the social security system pushing people into desperation, homelessness and hunger.”
The Big Issue has reported extensively on the failures of the benefits system, and Amnesty’s report is far from the first time the UK government has been accused of “violating human rights”.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) has consistently found “grave or systemic violations” of the rights of disabled people by the DWP and other government departments.
And the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is also investigating if the DWP has “broken the law”, previously warning that disabled people face “psychological distress”, poverty and “avoidable deaths” due to failures of the DWP.
Lihou faced one of her most difficult times with the benefits system when she tried to switch from a single claim to a joint claim for tax credits when her partner moved in with her. It took three months to process the claim, during which she was not paid.
“I was like: ‘How am I supposed to pay my rent or feed my children?’” she recalls. “I had to use my housing benefit to pay for immediate needs, like food. That increased the worry of not being able to pay the rent. Would we get evicted? There were all those worries. We had to use the food bank.”
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Lihou eventually received back pay and has now migrated to universal credit, but it can still be a challenge to cope financially. She and her partner sell plants for a living, which is seasonal, meaning that they earn more money some months than others.
“They don’t seem to have the systems set up for that. They don’t take that into account,” Lihou claims.
More than three quarters of people claiming universal credit and disability benefits went without essentials such as food and heating in the six months to March this year, according to research from charity Trussell.
Amnesty International UK also highlights the “inadequacy” of benefits. In 2024, 86% of low-income families on universal credit went without essentials such as heating, food and clothing. That is millions of people in the UK going without some of their “most basic rights”.
A government spokesperson said: “We inherited a fundamentally broken welfare system which does not work for the people it is supposed to support. That’s why, as we secure Britain’s future through our plan for change, our reforms to health and disability benefits will ensure the welfare system is there to protect those who need it most.”
The DWP claims it is “unlocking opportunities for sick and disabled people through a £1 billion employment support package” – but this comes with billions of pounds of proposed cuts to the disability benefits system which, by the government’s own admission, will push 250,000 people into poverty.
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It has also launched a crackdown on benefit fraud, with controversial plans to compel banks to share claimants’ bank account information in cases where fraud or error is suspected.
Lihou feels there is an inherent “mistrust” of benefit claimants.
“It’s like they don’t trust us. And it makes it worse that we’re self-employed. They think we’re cheating, as if we must be fiddling the system, and we’re not,” she says.
Lihou wanted to speak out because she knows that “not everybody can”. She says “there’s a lot of people who’ve been mistreated by the system and continue to be mistreated by the system and, for whatever reason, they’re not able to talk about it”.
The DWP has increased the living wage and boosted benefits (although only by 1.7%), extended the household support fund to help low-income families with the cost of essentials, and protected pensioners by sticking with the triple lock.
But Amnesty experts believe the system needs a complete overhaul. It is calling for a “landmark, independent social security commission” with statutory powers to reform the benefits system, as well as legal protections to ensure people’s basic human rights to food, housing and dignity.
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It is demanding that the government “urgently reverse” proposed cuts and ensure that reforms meet international human rights standards and are shaped by people who are most affected.
Clark said: “There can be no tinkering of the system – it has gone too far, and it is too late. There must be full reform. It is broken from start to finish and intentionally sets people up to fail. No one would want political choices in this country to deliberately diminish dignity and perpetuate poverty.”
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