Poverty and Disadvantage

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to address the root causes of poverty and disadvantage in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, it has been a bad morning. A few miles down the river, a commemoration of the Grenfell Tower disaster has been taking place at St Paul’s Cathedral. It is good that we commemorate what happened there and bring justice to those who lost their lives and give them the opportunity to be remembered. I hope that we can move forward to a different situation, where the likes of Grenfell Tower will never happen again. Unfortunately, the social housing end of the economy is where many of the problems that we associate with life and death, and health and safety, are to be found. I do not know that this is the end, but I would like to think that we will come to some conclusions and that Grenfell Tower will be a beacon to us to continue the fight to bring justice to the question of social housing. People in social housing should not be living almost in a third world, where their safety and well-being are not accounted for or supplied by the local authorities and the superabundant number of people who are rushing around keeping us safe in our beds at night.

Last week I had to bury a cousin down in Chatham. I was very fortunate to be picked up at my hotel by a gentleman who came from Pakistan or northern India; I was not quite sure which. He took me to the crematorium and on the way back he pointed out the grammar school and the private school. As we were going along I asked whether he knew those schools. He said, “Yes, my daughter is at the grammar school and my son went through the private school, at £14,000 a year, and is now something big in the City”. He was not sure what he meant by “something big in the City”, but it obviously meant that he was making a shedload of money. It is interesting that that is one of the stories that we all love to hear—about the indomitable spirit of people who do not accept poverty simply because they have no money and very little chance. An immigrant gentleman comes to this country and prospers in a very modest way—because all he does is drive a cab and you cannot make a shedload of money doing that—but he puts all his eggs in the educational basket so that his children can move on. That is absolutely brilliant compared with my own family, who came over from Ireland, who knew how to drink and smoke cigarettes and avoid paying the rent. It is totally different. So there are different immigrations: not all immigrations will lead to a situation where you can tax their prosperity.

I joined the House of Lords just over two years ago, and what I am really interested in is dismantling poverty. I am interested in calling the bluff on poverty, because one problem with poverty is that we have an enormous amount of people involved in measuring it. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for instance, has been measuring poverty for more than 100 years. We have organisations such as Shelter, Crisis, St Mungo’s, the Children’s Society and the NSPCC. We have a superabundance of people involved in poverty. We have Governments who come into office and swear that they will turn the tide when it comes to poverty. We have organisations such as the Big Issue—I have to declare an interest as the person who started it with Gordon Roddick—where we go out into the streets and offer succour and help to homeless people. We give them the chance of making their own money; we try to get them away from the streets because we believe very strongly in the work that we are doing. Because these people have fallen through the normal safety nets, they end up on the streets in absolute desperation.

All of us are involved. Dare I say—and I do not want to say it in a horrible way—that we are all involved in an industry? The industry involves people writing reports; the BBC ringing me up early in the morning to go and comment on those reports; the Times and the media involved in promoting the reports; people collecting money ad nauseam—ad infinitum—for people in need. It seems to me that we operate on a principle around poverty which is called “emergencyism”. Around 80% of social money is spent in and around the problem, once the problem has become a problem. Very little money is spent on the prevention, and as for the cure, it might happen, but mostly it does not.

I am sorry that I got caught on the rails today, so I am only just here; I say, “Bring back British Rail!”. That is another debate. Earlier today, I thought to myself, “What can I say that is different to what everybody else will say and what has already been said in this House? What can I say to the Government?”. The first thing that I can say to the Government is that they are not doing enough and they never will do enough. To do enough would involve tearing up all the accepted frameworks for doing enough. I say to the last Government and also to the next Government—my argument is not with the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems or any coalition—that it is time to make a major change in the way that we deal with poverty, an absolutely miraculous change. We need an intellectual revolution. I came into the House of Lords to stir that concern up.

I have been involved in the Big Issue for 26 years. Before that, I was working with homeless organisations and before that, I was in poverty and crime myself. Before that, I was born into the slums. You could therefore say that there have been 71 years, which is enough to say to this Government, “When are you going to come and talk to people like me, who say, ‘Let us end this conspiracy of dunces’?”. Forgive me, I include myself among the dunces. When are we going to say that enough is enough?

I do not read every report. I have not read the last 10 Rowntree reports because presumably they were like the previous 10 Rowntree reports. I do not keep myself up to date with the facts and figures about poverty, because all I need to do is go out into the street and talk to people there at 2 am or 3 am and see that they have mental health problems and are outside society. It does not matter how much money the Government give: we have a self-fulfilling prophecy—this self-fulfilling failure on the streets. We need to stop and say, “Let’s work on the diagnosis and go forward to the prognosis”.

The biggest problem is that everybody has a favourite project. I can tell the House about the wonderful gentleman whom I met in the cab, and we could have a little chat and then go away, and poverty will still be there. There is a poverty of spirit—the poverty of responses to poverty—and the worst thing about poverty is that many people who are helping the poor are often themselves suffering an impoverishment. We need to enrich them, and I include myself in this, because I do not have all the answers. All I know is that we need to move forward to a stage where there is a co-ordinated, joined-up plan, where we converge our energies. Why is it that, when I started the Big Issue 26 years ago, there were 501 homeless organisations in London alone? Today, why are there thousands of social interveners that do not work together or try to lock in and dismantle the problems? Why is it that every Government who we have promise the earth and deliver a flowerpot?