As part of his field work for a damning report into poverty in the UK, Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur, visited Newcastle where he found people struggling to negotiate the benefits system and going hungry. He called it a ‘social calamity and an economic disaster’. Plus: John Kerry on how Donald Trump has undermined global institutions

The UK government has inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies according to a damning verdict from the United Nations poverty envoy.

As part of Philip Alston’s fact-finding mission around Britain, the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Robert Booth,followed the UN envoy for a day in Newcastle. He found people struggling to cope within a benefits system designed to force people into work with built-in delays to payments. Many have been referred to food banks with some still going hungry.

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