Working for a charity supporting older people in poverty, I’m often taken back by the reality of financial hardship in later life. The current statistics show that, shockingly, one in six people aged over 65 in the UK are in poverty, and daily, I hear stories of some of these peoples’ experiences.

A grandmother losing almost two stone because she’s been forced to skip meals. An 85-year old’s hospitalisation due to illness caused by what he suspects was his damp, mouldy rented home. An older lady who uses her phone torch at night because she’s scared to use the lights, despite putting her at risk of further falls. This is what poverty in later life looks like today.

Affecting around two million older people, the situation of financial hardship is already bad. Now, our new research projects that it could get worse.

At Independent Age, we commissioned research from the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, a consortium of housing policy institutions, to project poverty levels and housing tenure for 2040, if current policies and trends stay the same. In a little over 15 years, we could be looking at a catastrophe.

The research that makes up our new Keys to the Future report projects that, by 2040:

• Poverty in later life will rise to affect almost one in four (23%), or 3.9 million, from 2.1 million currently.  
• Poverty will increase more for older women than older men, going from 20% currently to 26%, or affecting over a quarter of older women.
• Poverty levels among older people with a disability will increase significantly from 18% currently to almost one in three (29%). 
• Half (50%) of older private renters will be in poverty.  

The projections are staggering. They threaten to destroy the dream of the comfortable and relaxed later life that we’d all want and deserve.

Poverty in later life is a terrible situation to find yourself in. As well as forcing older people to make terrible choices like whether to heat their home or eat, it removes your dignity, with some older people telling us they’re only washing in cold water or flushing the loo once a day. The freedom of a simple pleasure like going for a cup of tea with friends or visiting the cinema is out of the question for many. One older person on a low income said that they were “not living, just surviving”.

This isn’t just a tragedy for individuals and their families and community. It weakens our society through weakening the people in it, with just one of the costs of poverty in later life being the increased health and social needs caused by having to make cuts to food and energy use.

Many of the people we speak to never thought they’d be in this situation. Affected by ill health, bereavement or relationship breakdown, the reasons people find themselves in financial hardship in later life could strike almost anyone. That’s why averting this outcome should matter to all of us.

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

Today and tomorrow’s older people need:

• The next UK government to conducta cross-party review to agree what level of income is needed in retirement to avoid poverty and to then make sure older people receive this, including all social security entitlements.
• The next UK government to make sure renters on a low income are adequately supported to pay their rent through local housing allowance.
• For renters in England, the next UK government to reform the private rental sector so no one faces no fault evictions or financial discrimination and everyone has a decent home and longer notice periods.
• The Scottish government and Parliament to progress the Housing Bill to create a new system of rent controls, strengthen tenants’ rights and improve support for people facing eviction and homelessness.
• For political parties across the nations to commit to investing in more social housing.

By working together, political parties across the UK have the power to rewrite the script and prevent this terrible future from being realised. With collective action, we can make sure that everyone has a dignified and fulfilling later life to look forward to.

Joanna Elson is the chief executive of Independent Age.

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.

We can take it for granted, getting out the keys, unlocking our front door and relaxing on the sofa after work – this is a moment of brief solace away from the stresses of modern life. But for many of the young people supported by Centrepoint, it is a dream. A key part of our mission is making this dream come true – helping young people into a job and a home, but right now Britain has a clear lack of the latter.

Social housing waiting lists are getting longer, with nearly 1.3 million households waiting for genuinely affordable tenancies in England alone, and while political parties have their own ways of explaining that number, what is clear is Britain’s housing stock is drying up. Right to Buy has seen hundreds of thousands of council-owned properties sold off, without new ones built to replace them, leaving some of society’s most vulnerable people totally stranded. Young people, who are so often unable to afford sky-high private rents and regularly do not have priority for social housing, have been particularly impacted by this acute lack of supply – resulting in many turning to charities like Centrepoint for support.

Research by LG Inform shows that in the last 10 years new social lettings to lead tenants aged 16-24 have dropped by 8% and that is not because demand is falling. Last year, nearly 136,000 young people in the UK faced homelessness, a figure that has been steadily rising year on year – and that doesn’t include those who do not present to their local authorities in need of homelessness support. This disparity between supply and demand suggests that Britain no longer has a wide enough safety net to help everyone in need of homelessness support and a stable home. It is, therefore, often left to charities like Centrepoint to step in when the state does not. Since the start of 2021, the length of time young people stay in our supported accommodation has been steadily increasing and is now at an average of nearly a year. This is, in part, due to long waits for social housing limiting options for those ready to move on and live independently.

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

In this general election campaign, it has been positive to hear politicians talking about housing and acknowledging that the country simply needs to build more and Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change outlines how vital it is that housing gets prioritised over the next year. Homelessness charities too are united in calling for the next government to build at least 90,000 social homes every year across the next parliament. At Centrepoint, we also know that nearly half of these new properties will need to be one-bedroom homes so that young people have more opportunities to live in genuinely affordable housing. For almost a decade, more than 45% of households on waiting lists have not been entitled to larger properties. Many of these applicants will be single young people who are hoping to escape homelessness and move on from supported or temporary accommodation – for example 80% of those supported by Centrepoint in the last five years have been single with no children.

Policies to end youth homelessness are not just morally right, but also make clear economic sense. Research by Centrepoint has found youth homelessness costs the British economy, £8.5bn a year – that is approximately £27,347 for each homeless young person and equivalent to the average salary of a police officer. This includes benefit payments, costs to the criminal justice system and health services and the huge amount lost to unemployment.

At Centrepoint we are doing all we can to end youth homelessness. Our prevention work is identifying children who could be at risk of having nowhere to live, we provide safe and stable accommodation, and our Independent Living stepping-stone homes help young people into work, with rent set at no higher than a third of their salary. We want the next generation to be the first to grow up in a country where homelessness is negligible, but to achieve that everyone must do their part. Any government committed to building a new generation of truly affordable homes would get us well on the way to realising that ambition.

Dr Tom Kerridge is policy and research manager at youth homelessness charity Centrepoint.

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.

In Northern Ireland, they’re arguing over crisps. Stay with me, this is going somewhere.

While it may be a massive leap forward from armoured cars and tanks and guns, an argument over crisps, on the face of it, is a curious one. And it’s not even about the best flavour. There is a stooshie brewing because a flavouring additive needed to create smokiness in smoky bacon crisps (and presumably other smoky-related items) is being banned under EU regulations.

There are toxicity concerns over eight of these flavourings. And due to NI’s position as agreed within the Windsor Framework, that thorny post-Brexit legal agreement between the EU and the UK, many EU rules still apply in Northern Ireland. There is a flipside benefit to this as it allows Northern Ireland access to the EU single market for goods, unlike the rest of the UK.

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An issue with the flavouring hoo-hah comes with Tayto, the crisp manufacturer, a company with semi-mythical cult status in Northern Ireland. Tayto is an engrained part of the identity, like Irn Bru or the Grand National. Every schoolkid growing up waited for the day they’d get a trip to Tayto Castle. 

Tayto, if the smoky flavouring story is correct, would have to work out another way to make their smoky bacon crisps. (Incidentally, this should be no hardship. Smoky bacon is far from the best Tayto flavour.)

You’d imagine a pause on a foodstuff over toxicity concerns was a good thing. You’d be wrong. Jim Allister is furious. Allister is leader of the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice), a party for whom the DUP is too wet and liberal. Jim is venting. “EU micro-managing and interference knows no limits when it reaches as far as dictating that Tayto in NI must stop producing smoky bacon crisps,” he thundered.

It’s down to what he calls the “iniquitous protocol”. That’s the Windsor Framework, which, remember, allows people in NI to have the best of both worlds. A good thing. NO! says Jim. “The fact that the government and its dud deal with the DUP does nothing to address such madness underscores the stranglehold that the EU is allowed to have over a proclaimed part of the UK.”

Jim is something of the Farage of NI politics – born of the establishment, but projecting as anti-establishment, raging about anything vaguely related to the EU, keen to bring down the bigger right-wing, pro-Union party. In fact, the TUV and Farage’s Reform have an electoral pact. There’s another similarity. While both trade on broad-stroke anger, both suffer under scrutiny.

• ‘We need better politics than this’: Sunak and Starmer’s election debate leaves voters unimpressed
• A damning list of Rishi Sunak’s broken promises and screeching U-turns, from net zero to EU law

In this case, it isn’t clear if Tayto actually use any of the banned list flavouring. Jim is tilting at crisps, unnecessarily. But I suppose, for some in the political game, it doesn’t matter, because as we see increasingly in election time, noise and attention is more vital a political juice that truth and clarity. Which makes it ever more important that we stand up and challenge. 

Jim and his crisps are a MacGuffin, a device employed in many films to make us think initially they are important but really they’re of decreasing consequence, and are duping us as the real focus is propelled forward. Frequently we get caught in the MacGuffin, but we need to stay alert and ask questions and demand better. 

I don’t believe every politician is the same. I don’t think, to use that angry phrase, they’re all as bad as each other. 

But I do think every politician should be scrutinised. And if they stand up to it, if their plans are real and deal with the issues so many bruised and battered people feel – particularly in terrible outcomes in housing or health – then those hammering hot with their MacGuffin can be set aside. Let’s see how that goes in the next few weeks.

Incidentally, the best crisp flavour is clearly Tayto cheese and onion. Put that in a manifesto.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

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Agenda Alliance campaigns for women and girls at the sharpest edge of adversity. These are women who have experienced poverty and abuse, and its connected repercussions. We see every day that women and girls across Britain are facing a crisis of unmet need.

The significant challenges women and girls share with us span every area of government: health, housing, social care, the criminal justice system, education and immigration. Many have no safe place to call home, are living with long-term mental health needs, or use substances to cope.

What we and our member specialist frontline organisations see every day is that the very services which are meant to help, public and voluntary sector services, often stigmatise, refuse or are unable to support these women. Their serious problems are left unaddressed, compound one another, and worsen. Escalation could be prevented, lives could be saved, if public services intervened sooner.

• We need to stop hoping for a cure and prevent women and girls from facing poverty and abuse
• Number of women sleeping rough on England’s street may be nine times higher than government thinks

This is why women and girls need a champion at the highest level of government – only a secretary of state has the power to drive forward change across the range of issues women and girls experience.

We want government to listen to women like Nici, a member of Agenda Alliance’s advisory network, who said: “Policymakers need a kick up the butt. They need to do something, and they need to do it fast otherwise there are going to be so many more disadvantaged women; more suicides, homelessness, child removal.”

Nici has important expertise to contribute to building solutions to support women and girls, because she has lived experience of the difficulties in accessing support. We believe politicians need to be hearing and valuing voices like hers. 

There are more than 100 specialist organisations that make up our membership, and they have told us they want us to be ambitious. They want politicians to understand that the disadvantage women and girls are experiencing is made worse because their specific needs are being ignored: services and systems are built with a generic ‘white male service user’ in mind.

Women and girls aren’t getting the attention they deserve, and their life chances are worsening. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. On a visit in February 2024, the UN Special Rapporteur declared violence against women a “national threat”.  

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

Between 2018 and 2021, the North East (a region with some of the worst rates of poverty in the UK) saw the numbers of women who die due to suicide, drug and alcohol misuse, and domestic homicide rise by 15%. In 2020, the average age of a woman who died whilst accessing support from one of our members was just 37 years old. This isn’t acceptable, and it has to change – meaning committing a serious level of time and political resource that matches the seriousness of women’s needs.

Women and girls need someone fighting their corner where serious political decisions are made, especially when there’s an opportunity for things to change. Yet our current system means the ministers assigned to support women and girls have always held other significant government roles – big jobs like home secretary, or secretary of state for culture, media and sport. The Women and Equalities Committee itself have suggested that the role should become “a standalone brief in its own right”.

We have thought a lot about what this secretary of state could do in practice, and shared a manifesto and policy recommendations for where energy should be focused to make a difference.

These include conducting a review into how the cost of living crisis impacts women and girls specifically, introducing radical prevention funds for all local authorities to enable them to intervene early, working with the treasury to create a system which demonstrates how intervening early in one government department can save another department taxpayer money.

Our recommendations focus on systems change, embedding good practice, and tackling stigma so that women and girls’ lives change for the better.

Our alliance wants a secretary of state to prioritise women and girls, and work to prevent harm; share their power, by involving women and girls with lived experience; and champion the specialist women and girls sector, which is chronically underfunded and unappreciated despite being literally life-saving.

As our advisor Nici says: “It needs acting on and it needs acting on fast.”

The crisis facing women and girls across Britain can and must be turned around and that’s why we’re calling SOS. It’s time for a secretary of state for women and girls.

Indy Cross is the chief executive of Agenda Alliance.

No matter our background, we all have a right to the support we need. You might not have noticed it during Tuesday (4 June) night’s election debate, but away from the bright lights of television studios Britain is in the middle of a social care emergency.

This crisis has at least 10 million disabled people, of all ages and backgrounds, in its grip – and we need immediate change. When it comes to social care, the statistics are stark and speak for themselves. In September 2022, the Care and Support Alliance estimated that 2.6 million people aged 50 and above were living with some unmet need for care in England, with the numbers only growing yearly. Kings Fund research has found that for most younger adults, most requests for support do not translate into access to local authority-funded care. Around 35% of requests for support by younger adults result in no service provided (compared with around 25% for older people).

Yet this situation is likely to get worse before it gets better: According to a BBC investigation, the average UK council faces a £33m deficit by 2025-26, a rise of 60% from £20m two years ago. The country’s largest union, Unison, has warned that local authorities might not be able to offer disabled people the “legal minimum of care” as soon as next year.

The issues go beyond those who draw on the system, not only having trapped disabled people without the support we need but also has created a nightmare for workers. Although care is a crucial profession expected to grow exponentially over the decade, unions and individuals are sounding the alarm. With excessive workloads, high stress levels and low morale are rife among workers at breaking point.

• Social care cap: What is it and what does it mean for me?
• Social care is on its knees. It’s no wonder public dissatisfaction is at a record high

Is this any way for the government to treat us all? As Rick Burgess, co-founder of Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts, explained to me when I last wrote on this topic, care can often feel much less, well “caring”, as they put forward, most people experience lacks “the essential part of independent living”, the idea that disabled people agree on that social care should be a system that helps break down the disabling barriers we face across society, rather than a simple list of tasks for an under-paid, time-rushed, agency worker on a zero hours contract to do.

The issues go beyond funding but right to the very core of how our system is designed. More and more disabled people are being pushed into debt just for receiving the support we need. An analysis carried out in spring 2022 identified around 90,000 people who were already unable to keep up with their care contributions.

In this context, ending social care charges should have been discussed at the podiums last night. Millions of people who tuned in to the debate last night will have been angry and disappointed that those who can fix such a crisis are ignoring it. We need social care to be free at the point of use – no if ands or buts.

There are sparks of hope that we could see our political discourse move forward. The Liberal Democrats unveiled a plan for free personal care, which is the first policy we have heard from the major parties that validates what disabled people have been saying for decades: that social care should be free at the point of use and that reform should be funded from general taxation.

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

We should hope that this proposal drives other parties to come up with plans for reform, which puts the independence of disabled people at the centre and commits to major financial investment. Care and support should be about enabling us to live with choice and control over our lives, connecting us with the communities around us. It should not be a list of ‘care tasks‘, which gives us the absolute minimum to survive.

In spite of this new proposal, we know that only our movement has a plan for social care that fixes it for care workers and those in receipt of care. The demand is radical but also tangible: we are unified by our goal of a National Independent Living Service (NILS).

We need a NILS boldly reimagining how care and support for disabled people of all ages in England should be organised and delivered.

Our community wants a radical approach developed by disabled people who draw on social care. Our model, which would be led by disabled people, would be person-centred and empowering and enable disabled people to thrive rather than just survive.  

Underpinned by the principles of choice and control, nothing about us without us, and the right to independent living. We believe that NILS could recognise and address other forms of discrimination experienced by disabled people, including racism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. But this future is one that we won’t get through words but through actions: we don’t need debates; we need to get together to build power for all disabled people through campaigning for our manifesto.

Mikey Erhardt is a campaigner at Disability Rights UK.

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

Private renting in England has reached a crisis point – we spend a higher share of our income on housing here than almost anywhere else in Europe, in exchange for a worse experience, with houses that are on average smaller, older and lower quality.

The symptoms of our broken housing system are nowhere more evident than in the appalling levels of homelessness we are currently seeing. Soaring numbers of evictions have forced unprecedented numbers of people into temporary accommodation, which is often unsuitable, cramped and unhealthy. The cost of providing even this woefully insufficient service is pushing many councils towards the brink of bankruptcy.

The number of children living in these conditions, also at a record high, and all that means for their life chances, ought to be a particular source of national shame.

Meanwhile many of those who can afford a place to rent are putting their futures on hold due to the renting crisis. The basic insecurity of renting – an unaffordable rent hike or a no-fault eviction constantly dangling menacingly over one’s head – prevents renters from putting down roots in their local communities. And with almost a quarter of renters spending over 40% of their income on rent, for so many the dream of home ownership, the prospect of saving enough to put a deposit down on a home, has become little more than that – a dream.

Against this grim backdrop, the response of policymakers has been at times been maddeningly inadequate.

At the 2019 general election, all the major parties stood on platforms which offered renters a better deal and the end to section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, the practice which underpins our unbalanced renting system by giving landlords the power to evict tenants on a whim and without a reason.

The last five years have seen an abortive attempt to deliver on that promise – with the government initially setting out a package of reforms that were a good starting point in changing the private rented sector. We campaign groups watched on in horror as these reforms were first delayed, then diluted, and – finally – ditched, as the government called a general election and failed to pass the bill on Parliament’s last two sitting days.

So what do renters – who make up 20% of households in England – need to hear from politicians at this election?

First and foremost, we need an end to no-fault evictions – in full – immediately. The Big Issue’s blueprint for change is right to highlight this – no fault evictions are at the heart of our broken renting system. We have been pleased to be working alongside the Big Issue as a partner organisation in the campaign for this crucial change.

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

We also want to hear the parties – all parties – commit to a Renters Reform Bill that is in keeping with the scale of the emergency we face. That means closing loopholes that would allow landlords to continue no fault evictions by the backdoor, through tougher measures to stop landlords abusing the new system, longer notice periods, longer average tenancies, and a limit on how much rent can be increased within a tenancy, to stop unaffordable rent hikes being de facto no-fault evictions.

These policies would be a start – and I’d hope that any party that sees clearly the challenge before them would commit to them. But the next government can, and should, look to go further for tenants.

Big Issue founder John Bird rightly observes that the “the time has gone for a light-touch approach” – the next government must offer a serious programme of clear and real change. Tinkering around the edges won’t get the job done, and a weak or watered down Renters Reform Bill will not be enough to fix our broken renting system.

England’s 12 million renters, and the organisations in the Renters’ Reform Coalition that represent and advocate for them, have been demanding change for a long time. Whoever is elected on 4 July, we need to see action, and we’ll be right here holding their feet to the fire.

Tom Darling is the campaign manager for the Renters’ Reform Coalition.

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.

Picture the scene. Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is interviewed on Sky News in the first week of a general election campaign. Asked about the government’s half-baked plan to bring back National Service, Davey pivots to what he considers the real problem with young people. 

“We have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values”, he declares. “In fact, loathe much of what we stand for. I think we see them on the streets of London every Saturday.” 

When the presenter Trevor Phillips picks up the Gaza protests reference and asks “are we talking about Muslims?”, Davey quietly replies: “We are.” He goes on to cite a dodgy poll to claim British Muslims support Hamas, and uses this to attack the government’s immigration policies: “Nobody in history has allowed more people in who are potentially really going to fight against British values than Mr Sunak.”

• Nigel Farage helped break Britain. Don’t let him rehab his image by chowing down on pig anus
• Tories seem to think pandering to the extreme right is a vote-winner. But where’s the evidence?

I think it’s fair to say that after such open bigotry and racist propaganda, Davey would be out of a job within hours. Yet three days after saying exactly this, the president of Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party), Nigel Farage, appeared on the BBC’s flagship current affairs show Question Time, having faced barely a squeak of reproach. Yesterday’s (3 June) announcement that, lo and behold, Farage has done a Putin-Medvedev switch with Richard Tice as Reform leader, and will stand in the general election after all, is being reported on like it’s the second coming. 

OK, now consider this. Reform and the Liberal Democrats are both polling at around 10 percent. In the local elections in May, the Lib Dems picked up more than 100 council seats, and the Green Party gained 74, to Reform’s paltry two. So why is it that Ed Davey has to literally throw himself into a river full of sewage to get media attention, while Farage and his deputies are barely out of the news, where they can freely spew their own toxic waste? 

It’s not as if Nigel Farage’s racist remarks are a surprise. Interviewers are too polite to mention it, but over the years Farage has warned of migrants with HIV using the NHS, Muslim rapists terrorising British (non-Muslim?) women, a “Romanian crime wave” in London, and said Jews form a “powerful lobby” in the US.

And still he gets everything his own way. The entire political and media class spent months waiting for Farage to declare his candidacy in the general election, only to leave Reform press conferences as if they had been stood up at the Prom. When he finally told them he wouldn’t stand after all – claiming that the election was too short notice! – you could almost hear the disappointment.

Now it turns out he does want the honour of running after all – what in journo-speak would normally be called an “U-turn”. Yet even today (4 June) he has the press eating out of his hand. All Reform needs to do is hire a room in Dover and the Westminster lobby will book a train. Some of them are already booking theirs to Clacton-on-Sea, the seaside town where he’s standing, and which is in all our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. 

When a solitary voice at the BBC broke with the choir last week and referred to his “customary inflammatory language”, Farage demanded an apology – and got it! Thus the only true statement made about him in this election was considered off limits thanks to sacred BBC impartiality.

In this media paradox, which we might call the “bias of impartiality”, it’s not OK for a TV presenter to (correctly) call Farage’s language inflammatory, but it is OK for Farage to (falsely) suggest that British Muslims are a terrorist fifth column. Thus politicians are free to lie, but journalists may not tell the truth. 

This paradox was in full swing on Thursday’s Question Time, when chair Fiona Bruce (who defended his appearance in the name of hosting “a wide range of views”) neglected to mention that Farage is a journalist too, or rather that he plays one on GB News. Instead it was left to Farage to bring this up, inadvertently revealing that he already has a millionaire-funded media platform for his views.

With coverage like this, it’s little wonder Nigel Farage feels entitled to demand a “live TV debate on immigration” with the prime minister, adding nonsensically: “If he refuses, that will confirm the fact that he can’t stop the boats.”

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

But what is the basis for this former city trader’s preposterous demands? Farage’s two great achievements in politics, according to him, are Brexit and the 2019 election of Boris Johnson. On these stellar victories for national self-harm and stupidity Farage dines out in London and Washington, where he is feited like a political savant. 

Now that the fan dance is over and we know he’s standing for parliament, Nigel Farage is finally being asked some good questions. In an exemplary interview this morning on the BBC’s Today Programme, Mishal Hussain challenged Farage on his immigration policies, to his obvious irritation. After all, his policies aren’t meant to be taken seriously, they’re meant to grab headlines and pressure the government. This week our valiant prime minister caved again to the xenophobes, with a pledge to cap legal immigration every year – another bet on public vice that deserves a crushing defeat on 4 July.  

Hussain also confronted Farage on his lying propaganda about British Muslims and terrorism, including his dodgy polls and attempts to blur this with immigration. And he was forced to concede that he can’t up sticks and campaign full-time for his friend Donald Trump in the US (another worthy cause!) if he’s elected MP for Clacton-on-Sea. It’s well worth a listen. 

Perhaps now interviewers will quiz Nigel Farage on his racist record, his calls to betray the people of Ukraine, his climate denial, his millionaire donors, and the damage his great Brexit crusade has done to the country he pretends to love. At the very least, it’s high time the British political and media class stopped treating Farage’s every burp as if it were breaking news. 

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!

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We’re already more than week into this election campaign, and the silence around poverty has been deafening. No party has even mentioned the issue, let alone put forward policies to support the ever-increasing number of people who are struggling to get by.

I can’t understand this. We know that 79% of the UK public agree that poverty in the UK is a big problem, with almost three in four believing it’s the government’s responsibility to change this.

In my day-to-day life, I couldn’t agree more. I see people coming through the doors of the food bank because they are living in a state of deprivation. They haven’t got enough money (because their income is too low) to afford even the essentials, like food, heating and toiletries. Luxuries like having a holiday are a million miles away from their reality.

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Unfortunately, the palpable apathy that political candidates and the main parties are showing at the levels of poverty in the UK, suggest that they consider concerns around the cost of living to be temporary.

The cost of living payments, while gratefully received, were not enough to cover the rising costs of food, fuel and rent over the past few years, and our food bank numbers prove it. And without even these payments in the coming year, I fear life will get even harder for the people we support.

In Southend, we’ve seen food bank need increase at a rapid rate, especially in the last few years. In 2019/20 we distributed 6,525 emergency food parcels, and this rose to 20,491 over the last year – that’s a 214% increase in the past four years, with no sign things are ever going to improve.

The tide needs to turn quickly before more people are pulled into poverty, and that’s why the next government needs to prioritise urgently reforming the social security system so it provides better protection from having to go without the essentials.

In the longer term, we need to be working towards an essentials guarantee in universal credit, ensuring that universal credit at least covers the costs of essentials. That is the best shot we have as a nation at ensuring that people on the lowest incomes have a chance of coping with the core costs of life.

Reforming social security so universal credit goes further to cover the cost of essentials would mean people would have the dignity of being able to purchase their own food. They would be able to afford the bus to a medical appointment, and a school uniform that fits their kid.

And they would no longer be burdened with the relentless stress of an unexpected bill plunging them deeper into debt. It would also mean that we would likely see a reduction in the number of people we are supporting because if people can afford food, they won’t need to be referred to a food bank, and they can move towards the financial security that they deserve.

No one wants to visit a food bank but for many people it is their only option. If you are in a job that doesn’t pay enough, or have caring responsibilities that prevent you from working, or you don’t have family or friends who can support you, food banks like mine are the last resort.

We, and food banks across the country, welcomed the uprating of benefits in the last fiscal statement but this was only a temporary reprieve from the pain. The uplift didn’t come in immediately and, in the time that it took to implement, inflation continued to rise. That meant that even with an increase in the rate of universal credit, by the time it came in prices had already skyrocketed.

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The people I meet at the food bank aren’t being given the opportunity to lift themselves out of the situation they’ve found themselves in. Every person in our society has the right to a basic standard of living. We are all part of society: children, pensioners, people with disabilities that prohibit them from working. All are as much a part of society as a working age person with a well-paid job.

Every single penny in the pockets of the people I meet is accounted for long before it even comes into their bank account, and that is why our team at Southend Foodbank are there. We provide emergency food, we provide advice to help people access the financial support they’re eligible for, we provide so much all in one place so that people know they’ve got somewhere they can turn to and trust. However, charitable food aid is not the answer in the long term – the change needed to end the need for food banks has to come from the government.

We need our next government, and the opposition, to take urgent action to turn back this tide. Reform universal credit so it gives better protection from going without the essentials. Improve support for disabled people and speed up access to disability benefits. Strengthen workers’ rights so a job really means someone doesn’t need a food bank. Build more social homes so people don’t end up at a food bank because their rent is unaffordable or they’ve been made homeless. We need MPs to shout loudly from back benches about the changes needed to better support their constituents.

If they don’t prioritise addressing poverty and commit to long-term solutions rather than short-term sticking plasters, my fear is that food banks will begin to be seen as the new normal. And there is nothing normal about people not being able to afford something as essential as food.

The generational trauma I have witnessed of seeing a grandma, a mum and her daughter from the same family, sitting in a food bank together, waiting for food they didn’t get to choose for themselves to be given to them, is horrifying.

Our next government needs to give us hope. We know what needs to change but we need the decision makers to take action. And only when that happens will I be able to close the door of our food bank for good.

Cass Francis is communications and campaigns coordinator at Southend Foodbank.

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

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.

All property is in the realm of fantasy these days. A one-bedroom flat in Rochdale commands the kind of money only an oligarch could secure. And even if you made an offer, you’d be pipped to the post by an army of mysterious trust/hedge funders who are paying in cash.   

So instead, let us sit in our pestilent hovels with our Fray Bentos pies and watch a bunch of varnished idiots trying to sell Mayfair houses with home cinemas. Yes, Selling Sunset – the show that’s populated by terrifying alpha females and very, very small men who look like toys you get free in a packet of cereal – has spawned yet another offshoot. We’ve already had identical formats set in Paris, Sydney and Florida, and now there’s Buying London.  

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The formula for these shows is very simple. We see fast-cut interior shots of soulless/vile houses that cost between five and £300m, set to a pumping soundtrack of truly crap music with lyrics like, ‘Yeah, I’m a boss bitch so you can get lost bitch’ o,r ‘New York, Paris, London, LA, you can’t stop me cos I’m so SEXEEHH.’  

Then there’s always a tense scene in the office where Chandelierra has been asked to show the Hamilton Park house, even though she’s not got as much experience as Krustinche. After that, glamorous real estate women in high heels walk on marble floors, and later there’ll be a Real Housewives-style dinner, during which someone will say something inflammatory and a secret will be revealed at a table with an ice sculpture on it.  

Buying London is exactly the same, except the star of the show is a man, the nominatively deterministic Daniel Daggers, who looks a bit like Ben Elton and says things like: “There’s no I in team, but there is an I in super prime, and that’s me.” (Can I have a C, please Carol?) 

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The other thing that differentiates the show is the actual market itself. Super prime isn’t a new Amazon sale, but the top 1% of real estate. And of course, there’s no ACTUAL mention of the Russians who buy up London homes like they’re three-for-one at the Co-op, but there’s definitely some Eau de Putin going on – a rival agent casually drops a “Spasiba” into the conversation as if that’s a regular British way to say thank you.  

In fact, most of the buyers are absent, last seen on a superyacht off the Cayman Islands, but we get a proper nosy at what they’ll be dropping their millions on. One is a house in Radlett that looks like it was built by Keith Moon during one of his three-day benders dressed as a chimney sweep – a faux-Jacobean Wetherspoons that cost an eyewatering £17m. Then there’s an 18-bedroom Mayfair house that has its own ballroom. I found it a bit gaudy, to be honest, and why do all these luxury homes have a carpeted entertainment room that looks like a P&O ferry from Hull to Rotterdam?  

Still, despite being hugely problematic, I love Buying London. The glam employees at DDRE Global, which appears to be on the same floor of The Shard as Alan Sugar’s office, tick all my reality show boxes. There’s Rasa, who may poison you in your sleep; posh Rosi who wears pussy bow blouses; Lauren, who could have been created by Meta AI; Juliana, who has so much Botox she can barely speak; and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen doppleganger Oli, who seems like he may struggle to understand how socks work.   

Also, despite my better judgment, I quite like Daniel Daggers – he looks like he’s half a bottle of Chablis away from telling you that he’s crushingly lonely. Maybe he’ll make me an offer I can’t refuse for my house, which comes with its very own swimming pool… I mean, a Fray Bentos pie tin filled with rainwater.   

Buying London is streaming on Netflix. Lucy Sweet is a freelance journalist.

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 today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.