'Poverty destroys us': Big Issue founder John Bird urges Labour to set targets to end child poverty

Big Issue founder Lord John Bird has revived calls for targets to reduce child poverty, warning that it is a “tremendous indictment” that millions of children are living in poverty in the UK.

Lord Bird tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Wednesday (28 January) in which he urged the government to implement legally-binding targets to tackle child poverty.

Speaking in the House of Lords, Bird said: “Poverty is destroying us. Poverty is stopping schools delivering on schooling.”

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He added: “Every government I know has had all sorts of initiatives to get rid of poverty but we never see the end of poverty.

“Four and a half million children are caught in poverty, and that is a tremendous indictment – not of this government, not of the last government, not even of the government before that – it’s the indictment of the methodology. It’s an inherited methodology.

“Every generation of government passes down and takes the same form as other governments. Let’s look at targets. Let’s be honest about targets.”

Bird received backing from a number of peers in the Lords.

Baroness Lister, who has sponsored the amendment, said: “I am grateful to Lord Bird for continuing to press this. An evaluation strategy without its yard stick, targets and milestones is like putting on Hamlet without the prince.”

Big Issue has been campaigning for Westminster to implement targets modelled on those which have been set out by the Scottish government.

Analysis from Big Issue has showed Scotland has seen a 12% drop in child poverty since passing legally binding targets in 2017, where England and Wales have seen a 15% rise.

Baroness Lister added: “I don’t think anyone argues that targets on their own will reduce poverty. Their effectiveness depends on the government of the day taking them seriously. But it is generally believed that the existence of targets in Scotland has galvanised action there.

“And as I remember it, there was a time under the last Labour government when they started to lose momentum in reducing child poverty, and civil society were able to use the targets to exert the pressure which resulted in them putting their feet back on the pedal.” 

The Labour government has been praised for its child poverty strategy, with the end to the two-child limit on benefits set to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation projects that 4.2 million children will still be living in poverty by 2029, only slightly down from 4.5 million children currently living in poverty.

Lord Hampton said: “I am, in fact, a school teacher. Every day in Hackney I see the effects of poverty. We still have 55% on free school meals in our schools. School teachers are very used to targets.

“Every pupil has a target grade and if they don’t hit that grade, we have to explain why. If we can solve child poverty, this entire bill is going to be so much more powerful if we can solve poverty and the best way to do that is targets. I would beg the government to accept this amendment.”

Bird is also calling for “better coordination of government departments” with a centralised Ministry of Poverty Prevention and Cure.

He said: “I would like you all to consider that the government should at least allow us our targets, and then we can look at all the other things that we need in the coming months and years, all the other things where we converge and concatenate the energies necessary to get rid of poverty.

“I inherited poverty and that makes me a fierce warrior to end the inheritance of poverty. I started from behind. Most people who live in poverty don’t get to the starting line. We can’t all be Boris Johnson.”

Representing the government, Baroness Smith of Malvern, minister for women and equalities, thanked Lord Bird for his “commitment” and “campaigning” to reduce child poverty.

She said he posed a “rightful challenge to government to ensure both that the structure within government and that the measurement of our objectives meet the challenge has been set here”.

Labour is set to achieve the largest reduction in child poverty by any government in a single parliament, she said, through the end to the two-child limit and the expansion of free school meals.

“But of course we need to measure and demonstrate progress being made on this strategy. I completely take on board that challenge,” said Baroness Smith. “That’s why, alongside the strategy, the monitoring and evaluation framework, which was published alongside the strategy, set out that a baseline report will be published in the summer, with annual reporting on the progress thereafter.

“It will be quite clear what progress the government is making in a range of areas. It will be possible to hold this government to account.”

However, this is an analytical tool rather than targets, and some peers argue such methodology will not have the effect of “galvanising” political will.

Lord Storey said: “Targets can galvanise. They need to be clear. They need to be measurable. And I think the basic targets here are measured anyway. These figures are available.

“We’re clear what it means by deep poverty and living in poverty. Those definitions are out there. At a high level these could actually be very useful in just pressing forward. And the government, if it believes that this is what it wants to do, ought to put some measurements in place.”

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