Draw attention to government policies which shorten the lives of the elderly.

Statistics published by the ONS in July 2016 show that the mortality rate in England and Wales increased by 5.7% in 2015. This was equivalent to an extra 27,000 deaths, the biggest annual rise since 1968. Rates were notably higher at ages 75 and over for both males and females in 2015 compared with 2014. In fact, the death rate has increased year on year since 2011 (with the exception of a 1.1% fall in 2014), indicating the reversal of a long term trend of falling death rates which began in the 1970s. Danny Dorling, an Oxford University professor and an adviser to Public Health England, said: “When we look at 2015, we are not just looking at one bad year. We have seen excessive mortality - especially among women - since 2012 ….. I suspect the largest factor here is cuts to social services - to meals on wheels, to visits to the elderly …”

Social services budgets have been badly affected by reduced grants from central government, which have been cut by 36% since 2011. Furthermore, as noted by the Guardian (14th November 2015): “Councils in northern, urban cities and London boroughs with high levels of deprivation predominantly run by Labour have seen their budgets cut by almost 10 times the amount lost by mostly Tory-administered authorities in rural southern England.”

The precedent for a UN inquiry into violations of human rights caused by government spending cuts was established in October 2015, when, at a closed hearing in London, the UN launched an investigation into alleged violations of disabled people’s human rights in the UK. The inquiry’s findings will be published in 2017.