POLITICS
Big Issue founder Lord Bird wants to ‘redesign’ government to end poverty
Big Issue founder Lord John Bird has launched a new plan to help governments finally end endemic poverty. He wants it to “redesign the ways governments work” and create as much of an impact as the launch of The Big Issue.
Bird will co-chair a new All-Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Business Responses to Social Crises, launched to tackle issues such as poverty and the housing crisis through entrepreneurship.
“I want to redesign the ways governments work and I want to begin with poverty,” Bird said at the APPG’s first event, which brought together leading figures from businesses, charities and financial institutions on 17 May.
There are more than 14 million people living in poverty in the UK, and hundreds of thousands of people are recorded as homeless. The situation is only getting worse in the cost of living crisis.
Bird explained that The Big Issue was launched as an entrepreneurial response to poverty.
“The Big Issue is a business response to a social crisis,” he said. “We have always tried to be business-like.” The magazine gave vendors the opportunity to work and make their own money, and gave them the skills they needed to look for further employment opportunities.
Big Issue Invest, which supports social businesses and charities to deliver social, economic and environmental impact, was an extension of this mission. The Big Issue provides a hand up, not a hand out.
Bambos Charalambous, the
