Elections are like islands of hope in a sea of troubles. They seem to increase hope when deep despair is at hand. Last week, while doing a Q&A in Falmouth after the showing of the film Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son, I was asked whether I hoped for much in the forthcoming general election.  

I was not appointed in life to urinate on people’s parades. Nor was I appointed – or self-appointed – to be gooey-eyed over political promises. Rather, to be firmly sensible and not misled by what turns out to be
electoral bluster.  

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So it’s a hard one when, having stacked up so many empty promises, the government finally surrenders to the inevitable and calls a general election. And suddenly everything is about promises and hope and political bunting, with manifestos not admitting one squeak of a chance that the promises won’t be
realised if office falls into their lap.  

No, poverty won’t go away. No, the health service won’t heal itself. No, prosperity won’t be gloriously distributed throughout all constituencies irrespective of where you are geographically.  

But we must demand that all things possible are done to repair our troubled society. We must ask for promises even if we know they might not be delivered. Because we have to have a gauge by which to measure achievement.  

But unless government and governance themselves are untangled and given new form, then whatever result comes through on general election day will not result in the changes and improvements we demand and require.  

If the next Treasury remains remarkably similar in shape to the current one then it will not spend good prevention money but will wait until the problems have grown to a point where emergency repairs are required. As I said last week, not repairing the roof means waiting until the roof almost collapses. That is, if the next administration carries on with the policy of all Treasuries since time immemorial – of not ‘spending to save’.  

If poverty is not made a central concern but is allowed to carry on distorting the budgets of all our major ministries – health, education, justice, work – then we won’t witness the promises being kept and affording us a new prosperous reality.  

• Big Issue founder calls for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention ahead of the general election
• More than 700,000 children plunged into poverty since Tories came to power: ‘We’re going backwards’

Yes, my advocacy of a Ministry of Poverty Prevention – MOPP – is my own noisy call. A centralised government department that will gradually relieve ministries of the burdensome need to spend fortunes on coping with the effects of poverty on their budgets. Imagine a health service that doesn’t have to spend half of its budget on people suffering from food poverty, so that their illnesses are not created or exaggerated by food poverty. Because if MOPP is created it will be busily mopping up the mess left by poverty and need.  

But promises are coming our way, and unless they are firmly entrenched in the possible they will wilt in the harsh winds of reality.  

Yet it is also essential that cynicism is not allowed to flourish. Scepticism perhaps, asking where the money is coming from, and where the thinking is that will turn a promise into a reality. The thinking is as important as the money. If government doesn’t think new thoughts then the money will be wasted.  

I always come back to the problem of inherited poverty: if that’s what you get from your parents then you are definitely coming from behind. You will struggle and be distorted and hurt and reduced by that monumental piece of misfortune. Some will escape and even hang around to tell us that poverty made them, that everyone should follow their example. From rags to riches, from Cinderella-ing in the kitchen of life to winning Prince Charming. Thousands, if not millions, have escaped poverty. But that should not lead us to believe that everyone is going to escape poverty through their own devices. That is why we need to create poverty exit strategies around social security and education, and around social housing.  

That is why the reform of budgets for social transformation need to be carefully targeted at the early years, so that just because mum and dad do not have the savings and the social profile of a Boris Johnson, it doesn’t stamp on them and limit their life. Just imagine Johnson stripped of his inheritance and born in dire need: how far would he venture out into the world if he was coming from behind? If anything needs doing it must be the reinvention of the welfare state so that it targets these inherited deficits. A welfare state that doesn’t park people up for life. Warehousing them in a piddling form of benefit. Social security has to be rocket-fuelled so that it becomes social opportunity. Alas, much social security has been little more than enabling people to tread water and not a down payment on moving up and out and away from poverty.  

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

The care of strangers and the welfare state have to become more of what welfare was intended to be – a bedrock, a foundation stone for a better life than mean circumstances and beginnings would usually allow. Or, as the large poster that I gave Peter Mandelson back in the days of the Blair administration said, ‘You have to fare well on welfare in order to say farewell to welfare.’ To which one should add that welfare has to be seen as a right that is worthy of its name: well-fare. 

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

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This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Westminsterism might be a good way of describing many of the current complaints lodged at the door of government(s). An inability to see beyond ‘officialese’ thinking dogs the ruling body – and its ancillary bodies. Ministers, who are content to take office and pursue their career, fall back on blank thinking when it comes to facing up to their departmental mistakes.  

Contaminated blood is the latest example, with a call for the fall of the former government minister who oversaw what seems, at a distance, to be a cover up. Thousands died because of experiments carried out without reasonable guards against contamination. Brutal government indifference, hidden under the mask of a superior grasp of the truth, abounds.  

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Think also of the post office scandal, where many lives were destroyed by a failure to embrace the truth about a faulty computer system. Government ministers and political leaders appear indifferent to the resulting human tragedy.  

Westminsterism might be described as ‘government knows best’. The US equivalent, because all systems are seemingly compromised at the moment, might be ‘Capitol Hill knows best’. As if all the power and all the decisions, and monitoring of the outcome of these decisions, is buried and squirrelled away in the corridors of power.  

• When it comes to poverty prevention it’s minds we must change – before anything else
• We’ll never end homelessness if we don’t have a proper long-term strategy

There are other problems that haunt the spring and coming summer of this election year.  

Last weekend I was in Liverpool and met among others the new leader of the city council, Liam Robinson, who informed me that 60% of all central finances have been removed from Liverpool since 2010. No wonder there are homeless people on the streets. No wonder there is a thirst for change among the many. Finances have been shredded because local government was given the unenviable role of paying for our generosity in saving the banking system. Someone had to pay for it. And it fell to the needy throughout the UK.  

The centralisation of government ran amok under Thatcher’s government. Finances were centralised because the Westminster of the time could not trust locals to run their money or much of their decision making. Control the money and you control spending, often on policies that would irritate Westminster.  

The blood contamination, which even destroyed the health of the late Anita Roddick (the mother of Big Issue), is proving a nightmare of death and suffering. A personal apology from the current government will not suffice when the whole affair simply proves the arrogance of power and the inadequate checks and balances that have yet to be addressed.  

Westminsterism Rules OK. Some Titanic deck chairs will, without doubt, be vigorously rearranged. Yet the government’s thirst for having the last – supposedly informed – word undermines belief in Westminster itself.  

Before Liverpool, I was in Spain. I was visiting youth offenders’ institutes and will write more extensively later about what I saw. What attracted me was the success rate in reforming young people. Some 80% returned to society using methods that would appall Westminster: here we are lucky if we get 30%.  

I could recognise some of the methods used in Spain – purposeful activity and involvement in schooling and work – from my own young offending days. Westminsterism may think it knows best, but it certainly picked apart and undid what had once, in my teens, been a relatively successful youth rehabilitation programme. Why now, having destroyed our own youth justice system, are we not adopting the successes of others to replace our own faulty framework? Systemic failure seems to haunt the economy and our political society. Expertise seems lacking. Government reshuffling results in short-lived ministers. How can wisdom be built up when only a year or two is spent in the job?  

My own passion revolves around addressing how unsystematic ministers seem to be in the running of their departments. As is so brutally witnessed with poverty. If we want a change that is not simply ‘deck-chairing’ then we need to look at Westminsterism as a whole. How it decides budgets. How it cuts some budgets and undermines other budgets. The enormous hits to local authorities’ funding have hit health hardest, with 50% of hospital beds taken up by people living in need.  

Before the next government comes into office we need a root and branch audit of how governments make decisions. How they allocate power and resources. My idea for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention is one such initiative aimed at making government better.  

By bringing poverty into a ministry rather than spreading it out over eight different ministries is only a step on the road of the intellectual revolution we need to undergo to make government work. The foreseeable future will have to be a period of permanent reinvention, to keep abreast of the permanent change that our lives are witnessing; the terrible damage that gadgetry hands out to our children, and also to every adult who happens to be on every train I go on. The environmental damage bring exacted on our planet – that’s not going to end through the protest of the committed few.  

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

The thinking animal, as we have cleverly named ourselves, may need to do more and deeper thinking than any we have done to date. Dismantling Westminsterism would be a good beginning.  

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

Today (Wednesday 8 May), Big Issue Group has issued an open letter to Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and other political leaders calling for five urgent and essential poverty prevention policies to be implemented by whoever emerges victorious in the upcoming General Election.

1 in 5 people in the UK live in poverty[1]. There are a reported 14 million people struggling to meet their most basic needs, including 4 million children. Over the past 30 years, there has been the biggest increase in child poverty since records began.[2]

The Big Issue Group has demanded an end to this crisis, with their letter recommending a number of key changes the next government can implement within their first year of office in order to dismantle poverty.

The five policies are built around the five strategic pillars that the organisation has put in place in order to dismantle poverty and to change lives through enterprise.

The poverty prevention policies outlined in the open letter are:

• Build more social and affordable housing, and commit to providing high-quality public services and infrastructure as part of the build.  
• Provide universal free school meals to all school-age children, including outside of term-time. 
• Replace the increasingly punitive job-seeker benefits system, with back to work support mentorship, confidence building and realistic routes to sustainable employment. 
• Outlaw high-interest credit and loans, and ensure access to affordable, equitable and fair replacements. 
• Invest in reskilling workers in green energy, using the Just Transition criteria.

Big Issue Group believes this multi-faceted approach to reinventing systems at the heart of government is the only route to dismantle poverty for good.

The public are invited to back these policy calls by signing the open letter, which can be found on the Big Issue’s website.

Lord John Bird, founder of the Big Issue, said: “The time has gone for a light touch approach from any incoming government. Clear and real change is essential. Failure to act now will be catastrophic.

“Our message to the next government is simple – if the electorate put their trust in you, do not pass up this chance to end poverty for good.”

Big Issue Group’s open letter can be read in full on their website, where the public can sign to show support: www.bigissue.com/campaigns/end-poverty/

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[1] More than 1 in 5 people in the UK (22%) were in poverty in 2021/22 – 14.4 million people: https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk

[2] Poverty in the UK: Statistics by Brigid Francis-Devine 8 April 2024, citing DWP, Households Below Average Income, 2022/23, pg 23.

I went recently to the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington, having stayed the night in my favourite Premier Inn hotel at Putney Bridge. It was formerly the headquarters of ICL – International Computers Limited – a British attempt at trying to see off the large American computer giant IBM. Britain had led in computing up to and into the Second World War, but as compensation for underwriting the cost of the war, the US insisted that Great Britain – as it was then called – surrender many of the advances it had made in computing. 

The “white heat of technology” was Harold Wilson’s slogan for a Labour government that came to power to modernise Britain and make it a world leader in science and business again. But that promise did not happen after Wilson won the election 60 years ago. 

Big Issue is demanding an end to poverty this general election. Will you sign our open letter to party leaders?

Elections are often full of promises, but it does worry me when they are not backed up by decidedly different policies and thinking. Instead we get ‘more of the same’. Let us hope that the next general election will not be full of vacuous promises that collapse on first encountering reality. 

I stayed in my favourite hotel because I had a short debate in the Lords that day, lasting only an hour and a half. My subject for debate was: what was the government going to do about the root causes of childhood poverty. I had 15 minutes to explain my position, that we very rarely talk about the roots of poverty, the causes of poverty. We usually concentrate solely on trying to bring relief to people in poverty. 

I included what I want to campaign for around the general election when it happens: that is, not only more social housing, which we desperately need, but also a revolution in social housing. So that getting social housing doesn’t condemn you and your children to an eternity of poverty, which is largely the case now. That social housing has to be seen as the foundation stone for a fuller life that can help you out of
poverty, and that your children don’t only inherit poverty from you. 

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• Big Issue founder calls for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention ahead of the general election

There was some misinterpretation of my position. That I was having a go at social housing by saying it often keeps people in poverty. I did my best to counter this misunderstanding but I am sure I did not convince everyone. 

I told my family story of how after the slums of Notting Hill, homelessness and then a Catholic orphanage coming to the rescue, we came out and got our own council flat. I also like telling people that sharing one slum toilet with perhaps eight families was a very trying affair; and that if you wanted a crap you had to book it two days ahead. I joke. But getting social housing, with a bath and toilet and a kitchen with running water, was like becoming as rich as one of The Beatles. 

I am hoping that we can build an alliance of government and business and charities and the public to help turn social housing into the beginning of the end of poverty in one’s life. 

It was an electric evening in the Lords and the six other speakers did a good job of putting meat on the bone of poverty, while I tried to get to those roots of poverty and the need to make sure that poverty is not the only inheritance people are given, as was my case. (As an aside I am, according to my oldest friend, actually worth £5m, which he insists is the truth because he read it on the internet. I did remind him that he should check this out before he passes it on.) 

So I stayed over in London and the next morning went to the V&A to see masses of their Constable paintings, drawings and sketches. Constable is my favourite British artist and I have been looking at him since I was 16. But I was unfortunately in for a disappointment. Only a handful of Constable’s works were on display. I was told that this was because they don’t have enough room to display all of the enormously exciting pictures that I looked at in my youth and young manhood.

They are in storage, with a handful changed every now and then. Not the incredible array of his work shown 50, 40, maybe 20 years ago. The vast collection of the Constables that the V&A have were given to them by Constable’s daughter to be displayed, not just to be stored. This really cheesed me off. 

So in my spare time I am going to campaign to create a Constable gallery, similar to the one that Turner has at Tate Britain. If these works are given for the public good, and Constable knocks the spots off of any other British artist, then they should be shown. 

Of course I will not allow my passion for Constable to cloud my great campaign to turn the thinking of future governments to digging out the roots of poverty. For children and all. 

Poverty eats away at all it touches, including the best intentions of politicians who say they got into politics to get rid of it. A practical reallocation of thinking around poverty, please; that’s what we want. Not hollow and unachievable promises.

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

John Bird, founder of the Big Issue and crossbench peer, called on the Government to commit to long-term and focused approach to poverty prevention in a House of Lords debate last night (29 April).

Lord Bird argued that the current governmental model, which sees a plethora of departments tasked with reviewing and executing poverty policy, leads to an ineffective scattergun approach. His Bill for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention, which had its first reading in the Lords earlier in April, proposes centralising efforts to reduce poverty under one governmental remit.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports that around 30% of UK children (4.3 million) live in poverty, which has a long-term impact on their future health, wellbeing and economic prospects. These children face a high risk of deeper and more persistent poverty throughout their lifetime.^[1]

John Bird was born into poverty, brought up in care, and spent long spells in the 50s and 60s rough sleeping. Since being made an independent peer in 2015, he’s dedicated his time to seeing poverty eradicated within his lifetime.

Speaking in yesterday’s debate, Lord Bird said: “I alert people to my belief that, in the seven or eight years I have been in the House of Lords, I have never come to a debate or discussion where the root causes of things are dealt with.

“I believe strongly that one of the main problems we have is that Governments, Oppositions, and people who have worked for many years in and around poverty are always dealing with the effects of poverty; they do not deal with the root causes.

“This is why I am campaigning to change the way we deal with poverty. We have a situation in which eight government departments are dealing with poverty, but we do not have a convergence to dismantle it.

“Some 40% of government expenditure is spent on poverty; we really need to change that. That is why I am calling for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention.”

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, Viscount Younger of Leckie, was the responding minister.

“The early years, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, are vital to securing good outcomes for children,” the Viscount told the House. “That is why we continue to work across government to ensure the best start for all children, including through our early years childcare provision and funding for school breakfast clubs.

“We understand that many families still face challenges, we are not shying away from that, and we will continue to work to ensure that the welfare system supports families who need it.”

Peers from across the parliamentary spectrum engaged in the debate, including Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Labour), Baroness Janke (Liberal Democrat) and the Earl of Effingham (Conservative).

Read more about Lord Bird’s Ministry of Poverty Prevention Bill by visiting bigissue.com/campaigns/ministry-of-poverty-prevention.

[1] https://www.jrf.org.uk/child-poverty

Millions of children are “inheriting poverty,” Big Issue founder John Bird has warned, calling for an “enormous mind shift” in how we tackle destitution.

Lord Bird’s impassioned plea – made during a special debate in the House of Lords – comes as the number of children in poverty reaches record highs.

A total of 4.3 million children are impoverished in the UK – a staggering one-in-three kids – up from 3.6 million in 2010/2011. And according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, around one million children lived in “horrifying levels of destitution”.

In a special debate, Lord Bird called for a “scientific analysis” of the root causes of poverty, warning that a vicious generational cycle keeps people below the breadline.

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“When are we going to spend our time on eradicating poverty, rather than ameliorating it, and trying to accommodate it?” he asked.

“I believe strongly that one of the main problems we have is that governments, oppositions and people who have worked for many years in and around poverty are always dealing with the effects of poverty; they do not deal with the root causes.”

Lord Bird argued that the current governmental model, which sees a plethora of departments tasked with reviewing and executing poverty policy, leads to an unsuccessful scattergun approach.

His bill calling for the creation of a Ministry of Poverty Prevention, which had its first reading in the Lords earlier in April, proposes centralising efforts to reduce poverty under one governmental department. 

Born into poverty in the “Notting Hill slums”, the life-time campaigner is no stranger to poverty. Brought up in care, he spent long spells in the 50s and 60s rough sleeping.

“I come from poverty – and maybe that’s what drives me on,” Lord Bird said in the debate. “I come from people who came from poverty, and who came from poverty and who came from poverty. They were surrounded by poverty. They couldn’t get away from it. And the mind forged manacles that go with poverty, that meant that they would perpetuate poverty.”

The responding minister, Viscount Younger of Leckie, thanked Lord Bird for bringing the “important” debate, but said the government had provided “unprecedented cost of living support” in recent years.

“[Our] additional support prevented 1.3 million people, including 300,000 children, from falling into absolute poverty, our measure, in 2022-23,” he said. “We understand that many families still face challenges, we are not shying away from that, and we will continue to work to ensure that the welfare system supports families who need it.” 

‘Absolute’ child poverty is when a child is living in a household with an income less than 60% of the UK average.

Viscount Younger of Leckie said that getting people into work is crucial to tackling poverty. However, more than two in three (69%) of children living in poverty have parents who are working.

Speaking in the House of Lords debate, Labour Baroness Lister of Burtersett said that the government’s two-child benefit cap was a “key driver” of child poverty.

“The root causes of child poverty are systemic, and are amenable to government action,” she said. “Unfortunately for the most part, government actions, particular as regards social security, have served not to prevent, or even to alleviate poverty, but to worsen child poverty.”

Liberal Democrat Baroness Janke added that the impact of poverty is particularly pronounced in certain groups.

“With political will, child poverty can be significantly reduced… [but] in the UK we see disadvantaged groups becoming even more disadvantaged and deprived,” she said.

Some 47% of children in Asian and British Asian families are in poverty, 53% of children in Black/African/Caribbean and Black British families, and 25% of children in white families, according to the Child Poverty Action Group.

Recent findings from UNICEF’s review of child poverty in 39 OECD and EU countries show that child poverty has increased faster in the UK than in any other country investigated.

Street homelessness has changed in all manner of ways since we started 33 years ago this coming September. Then, we were dealing with thousands of homeless people living on the streets of London, the place that we started: 6,000 reportedly sleeping in the centre of London. This was largely the result of government policy as industries closed down, young people were refused social security and the malaise of government policy expressed itself on the streets of a number of cities. But the principal hit was London where thousands struggled to beg, sell their bodies or thieve to get by.  

The waking up to this harsh reality by the Tory government of John Major, saw some reform. Gradually people were removed from the streets and some accommodation was found for them.  

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And then in 1997 Blair swept into office and more work was done as resources increased to end the preponderance of rough sleepers who were an expression of homelessness. That government turned the tide and reduced the number of rough sleepers in our cities. Soon the new century saw an almost clean city, clean of the problems of rough sleeping and begging. But things were not to stay that way: under the coalition government of 2010, fiscal tightness and an increase in displacement led to an increase of street dwellers. The financial crisis of 2008/9 knocked the bollocks out of whatever grand plans the government had for greening jobs and housing and all manner of progressive environmental thinking. I had talks with government about all the green jobs coming our way; but they didn’t arrive because government policy embraced AUSTERITY.  

What a killer that was, preparing us for the worst mismatch of reduced government spending and contraction. Meaning that much of our current crisis of housing and poverty is down to austerity’s destruction of the socially supported community we kind of had before. 

Ever vigilant to the vicissitudes of street life, the Big Issue embraced anyone who needed help making ends meet. Embraced the arrival of Romanians, let into the UK with Blair’s commitment to the EU’s expansion. Worked with people from other parts of Europe, as did most homeless projects. But under Blair we also saw an increasing reliance on the state to provide more and more. So when austerity became the new policy for a new government, much of what had been achieved was washed away.  

The streets have always been a barometer of the health of a nation. America is looking unhealthy again because of the enormous increase in homelessness in their major cities. And our cities have followed suit. The malaise has returned three decades after we were first formed.  

But as we all know now, behind and beyond in the hinterland of homelessness there are more than 130,000 children living in temporary accommodation. We know that local authorities are going broke because of the enormous statutory requirement they have to provide for those made newly homeless. And we know that a revolution in thinking around housing and homelessness needs to be inaugurated in order to change the upward increase in dispossession that homelessness creates.  

Dispossession: the loss of things that help you to be human. A lack of place, a lack of belonging. A lack of wellbeing; an increase in health breakdown, a move into the margins of depression and an inability to cope with life.  

This is a most depressing menu for our current climes. Yet still government, and perhaps the opposition in their planning, are not seeing the essential element in all of the problems we face, which is the problem of poverty. It seems they cannot see that a family unsupported in its early stages, with only an inheritance of poverty, will fan out later in life to produce a further generation of poverty. 

The street homelessness that we created ourselves to address has changed. We have asylum seekers mixed in with the indigenous collapsed, mixed in with many people with mental health issues. What was once a seemingly straightforward case of eradicating street homelessness has now extended to addressing the crisis of Africa and the Middle East, the crisis of climate control, the spread of war and economic collapse. The UK is now, like Europe, reflecting a world of dislocation.

Interestingly we are not seeing millions of Latin Americans coming across the Atlantic to seek some stability and prosperity; rather they are heading north towards the prosperity of North America. Europe and the United States have become magnets of hope for a troubled world. And how do we see the future developing if we don’t factor in these global dislocations?  

There are, it seems, very few people involved in trying to converge thinking so that you can see the big driver behind all of this – the driver of poverty. The mistaken belief lingers that we live in a world that we can still patch and mend. If we have a new government coming down the line intent on addressing the issue of homelessness and the inability of the many to get a secure home, then they need to come up with more than the raggle-taggle thinking of our current government.  

Poverty distorts all human relations. So where’s that Ministry of Poverty Prevention that can unite the fight to end poverty’s dominion over us? That’s the question of the moment. 

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

In a new statement, the Renters’ Reform Coalition have criticised the “weakened” Renters (Reform) Bill ahead of its final report stage in the Commons today (Wednesday 23 April).

Lord John Bird, founder of the Big Issue and crossbench peer, and a Champion of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, supports their criticism, and has vowed to further scrutinise the Bill ahead of its reading in the House of Lords.

Lord Bird said: “The government benches have continuously weakened the Renters Reform Bill throughout its passage in the Commons. I agree with the Renters’ Reform Coalition’s statement today that, if passed in its current form, it will be a complete failure for renters across the country, who deserve secure, safe, and affordable housing. Unfortunately, this government is breaking its manifesto promise of a better deal for renters.

“I look forward to the Renters Reform Bill coming to the Lords, where I intend to do what I can to make the legislation deliver for the millions of renters that desperately need stronger protection from those landlords who are unethical.”

‘Data’ tells you lots of things. It tells you, hopefully, what is happening. For instance, the data on the amount of children in child poverty. The data should throw up the figures, and what direction they are going in: is it increasing, or is it reducing?  

Data is about proving something. And proving something is about measuring things. Measuring results, outcomes and outputs is now expected in all manner of things to do with social investment – that is, the money that government or philanthropists invest to bring about change.  

You have to prove that what you are doing helps outcomes.   

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When I went into parliament I did so to dismantle poverty. That was my prime objective. I had seen a preoccupation with what I somewhat rudely, perhaps insensitively, described as ‘tinkering with poverty’; doing a bit here and a bit there. Or concentrating on poverty relief, which is the giving out of monies to help people through the day, the week, the month, the year – but which keeps them dependent and never gets them out of poverty.  

My strategy was to suggest that we had to get rid of poverty as a whole and that just giving relief, giving the poor more for the moment, was only postponing the day when we’d have to get serious about poverty and work on its ending. Parliament seemed obsessed with giving the poor more but never questioning itself about how inefficient this method of thinking and acting was.  

Recently I was questioned about what I had achieved since entering parliament and could I prove with measurables, with data, the effects of my actions? To prove something that is in a way unprovable. If I went into parliament to dismantle poverty and poverty is still with us seven years later, surely I have failed? The various bills I have worked on are evidence of involvement; but what of the big thing, the big
poverty thing. How’s that going?  

That is where data and measuring are about as useful as a bucket with a hole each end. Because what you need to do is change the thinking to understand that tinkering with poverty – as I saw it – is not the answer. Getting down and deep with one aspect of poverty in isolation will get you nowhere. Unless you wake up government and opposition to the profound problem that an ad hoc, bit here, bit there, approach to poverty will mean that poverty will simply continue, then you are lost.  

Hence my campaign over the last few years to create a Ministry of Poverty Prevention. A MOPP. With eight government departments each currently having a finger in the poverty pie, no wonder we have been seeing such scattergun outcomes.  

• Ministry of Poverty Prevention
• More than 700,000 children plunged into poverty since Tories came to power: ‘We’re going backwards’

Changing the mind big time is the answer. Endless, repetitious, seemingly obsessed, at times boring: having to continually point out that every one of the major social problems that stalk our streets and our communities boils down to poverty is like being a Jehovah’s Witness-type knocking on doors for God.  

Eyes glaze over when I talk to people in government or opposition because the scattergun effect is perfectly understandable to them. The Treasury often spends social investment money only after the problem has occurred, rather than spending on its prevention, and this mindset seems to continue whatever administration is in power.  

Why? Because the whole political, social, economic and educational system is geared towards this stop-gapism. The acceptance of poor people in society as a fact. The concerns for their relief.  

It is easier to make people cry than to think, is what I found myself saying recently. They cry over the poor rather than think their current thinking and their current crying will change nothing.  

Mindset, changing the mindset; revolutionising thinking around poverty: 40% of government spend goes on poverty-related issues and on the collateral damage thrown up by poverty. Remove poverty from life, even discuss the possibility of doing such a thing – that is the scientific way of thinking. See the ending of poverty as a scientific problem no different from getting Higgs Boson (whatever that was) resolved.  

Humans are the thinking animal but it would seem that we never rise above our former mistakes, being governed by our former practices and the lumpy pieces of former events – history – that we have to carry around with us.  

MOPP is the biggest thing I have ever bitten off to chew. It is so monumentally necessary, when you see so many people who have inherited poverty from previous generations, who have not been invested in to rise free.  

Much of what is going wrong in the world is to do with the distribution of resources. Under all the gangsterism of much of our contemporary political world lurks poverty – the motivator, the driving force. Poverty has lit so many of the current political fires that we are asked to put out. Even the destruction of the environment can be put down to the undying drive by some incredibly wealthy people to escape as far from poverty as possible. It would seem that however far away from poverty you get, you can never get rid of the insatiable need to get even further away by the accumulation of even more.  

But to try and prove, measure, throw up data showing that we are nearer by my efforts to getting rid of poverty is not feasible. Changing minds is the big issue.  

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

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This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play

The Big Issue created its own children. First it created itself and then it created imitations of itself.  

Or, more accurately, you could say that Street News of New York created itself in 1989 as the world’s first street paper. And then, inspired by its example, we created the Big Issue, which came into being in 1991.

The Big Issue soon became a London example of what could be done for homeless people if you narrowed the field of effort. If you said such things as “helping the homeless to help themselves”. Or “coming up from the streets”. Or “a crime prevention programme” (street living and poverty providing a fecund backdrop for surviving by wrongdoing).  

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Or if you narrowed the field of vision, so to speak, to giving people an exit from the intolerable burden of how to survive when there are thousands of people like you filling the streets of London. Give homeless people the chance of becoming stable so that change in their lives becomes possible.  

I was reminded of the Big Issue inventing its own children when I heard about The Beautiful Game, launched on Netflix last week. An inspiring story of homeless people reaching out and away from street life through football. Towards something more loaded with chances to turn skills nurtured in poverty into something that could lift you out of poverty.  

Not long after the Big Issue was founded we were helping people from Europe and America imitate us as once we imitated Street News. The Big Issue corralled its children at various points and out of this grew the International Network of Street Papers, led by Big Issue’s Tessa Swithinbank, former wife of yours truly.  

Hearing about The Beautiful Game reminded me of those early days when we were helping to produce so many imitators of ourselves, including the two who met at a Network of Street Papers conference who, instead of going to bed, sat up drinking all night and came up with that beautiful invention The Homeless World Cup.  

I like to use the rather obscure word ‘fecund’, meaning fruitful, in describing the enormous ‘fecundity’ – fruitfulness – of The Big Issue and its founding model Street News. And to speak of how Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop, inspired and funded the creation of the Big Issue.  

• The Beautiful Game: Everything you need to know about Netflix’s new Homeless World Cup film
• How the Homeless World Cup saved a Sacramento footballer’s life
• Bill Nighy: ‘Footballers are physical geniuses creating passages of great beauty. It’s fascinating’

And how out of this came hundreds of projects and inventions that owe their existence to that early Street News, an example which rallied a new way of working with homeless people.  
Imitation is an honourable game. Fecundity grows out of it. Originality then grows out of imitation. Picasso dutifully copies and apes his father the academic painter; and makes much of 20th Century art his own. Aren’t The Beatles just another example of what the Big Issue did with the already created?  

I have yet to devote time to watching The Beautiful Game. But I shall do so one night with a few bottles of imitation (non-alcoholic) beer, so popular now that I see Waitrose has a shelf of 0% beers all to itself. Now there’s something I wish someone had invented so I could have imitated them back then. The Big Issue 0% Beer. Not a bad idea. Imagine all the fights we could have prevented.   

Interestingly, when in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, I met the reverend Ted Hayes, who was known as Mr Homeless. One of his great projects was to create a cricket team in Compton, then known as the ‘drive-by shooting capital of the US’. He taught street kids to play the game and they were a resounding hit. They even came to the UK and thrashed, among others, the parliamentary cricket team at the Oval. Using sport in such a dramatic way even led to Disney making a film about the Reverend Ted Hayes and his team of unlikely players.  

Social repair and complete reinvention through sport must be up there as one of the biggest ways of calming the troubled spirit and turning it towards creative uses.  

When I was a boy facing the bitter poverty struggle around me I had a desire to imitate south London boxer Don Cockell. He was a heavyweight champion who went nine rounds with the great world champion Rocky Marciano. But if you are going to imitate you have to do your homework. The slogging. The fitness regime.  The 10,000 hours that Tiger Woods references that you need to put in to achieve excellence. Alas I was not prepared to imitate and therefore only dreamt.  

What will be my next imitation? I will of course keep you informed.  

John Bird is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue. Read more of his words here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? We want to hear from you. Get in touch and tell us more

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine, which exists to give homeless, long-term unemployed and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy!

If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue or give a gift subscription. You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play