UN envoy Philip Alston, who wrote the report on the UK based on a visit here lasting precisely 11 days
He claimed to have witnessed ‘Dickensian’ poverty during a fact-finding tour of Britain.
So United Nations envoy Philip Alston might well have been happy to go home – to his spectacular £3.1 million beachside property in America.
Here, a world away from ‘poor, brutish’ Britain, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights lives in luxury in one of America’s most exclusive resorts.
Professor Alston’s report last week, following a visit to the UK at the end of last year, caused outrage, with the Government describing it as ‘barely believable’. Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd is considering complaining to the UN about its contents.
Prof Alston, 69, a law professor, said UK welfare policies had been designed to harm the poor and that life for many in the country risked becoming ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.
United Nations envoy Philip Alston might well have been happy to go home – to his spectacular £3.1 million beachside property in Long Island, New York (pictured)
A living room in Professor Philip Alston’s £3.1 million beachside home in The Hamptons, Long Island, New York
Mr Alston and wife Grainne de Burca demolished an existing house in 2011 and built a new four-bedroom house with three bathrooms in its place
He wrote: ‘It might seem to some observers that the Department of Work and Pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitized version of the 19th Century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens.’
By stark contrast, there’s no expense spared at the home Prof Alston shares with his fellow law professor
