Dear IRR News subscriber,

We write this newsletter as Britain goes to the polls. We don’t know which party or parties will form the next government. But the new government faces a country scarred by poverty and destitution on a scale probably unprecedented since the birth of the welfare state. Vulnerable people such as disabled people, migrants and refugees are at the sharpest end of the uneven distribution of austerity over the past decade.

This week on IRR News, asylum rights campaigner John Grayson exposes the shocking conditions faced by an asylum-seeking family with disabilities, trying to bring up three children in a lethally damp, rat-infested asylum house in Rotherham, and failed by the Home Office, by the charity contracted to receive and pass on complaints about defects, and by the private company providing the housing.

And as our calendar of racism and resistance shows, more people will be out on the streets as asylum housing provider Serco proceeds with lock-change evictions in Glasgow. Whoever wins the election must face up to the challenge of providing decent living conditions to everyone living in the UK.

 

IRR News Team