Lord John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, marks the return of 1,400 of the magazine's network of vendors to the high streets of England and Wales from 12th April after months of lockdown, London, April 12, 2021
BIG ISSUE founder John Bird warned today that “poverty is destroying us” as he marked his 80th birthday.
Lord Bird has been pushing for stronger legislative scrutiny of child poverty through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
He said poverty was preventing schools from “delivering on schooling” and criticised successive governments for failing to end child poverty despite repeated initiatives.
“Four and a half million children are caught in poverty and that is a tremendous indictment,” he said, describing the failure as one of “methodology” passed down through generations of government.
An amendment tabled by Lord Bird would have placed a legal duty on current and future governments to set targets to reduce child poverty, but it failed to gain government backing.
Lord Bird, who grew up in extreme poverty in the slums of Notting Hill in the 1940s and 1950s, founded the Big Issue magazine 35 years ago and became a crossbench peer in 2015.
