We’ve been saying for years that prevention is the answer to poverty. People are finally listening

The week before last, Big Issue had a staff day full of workshops about where our work is taking us and the problems we face. Founded 35 years ago on the double yellow lines of the West End of London, among the rough sleepers that filled almost every doorway, it has certainly changed. Founded as a business response to a social crisis, it now is a cluster of businesses. Homelessness, employment, social investment, measuring social impact – it feels to me as though it has never been richer in its intentions and delivery.

It is still a weekly publication that is distributed to people in need, covering the homeless, ex-homeless and the vulnerably accommodated. It still fulfils its original remit. It still endeavours to improve people’s time in the crisis of need, whether that’s for a month or a decade.

I went along to observe – I have never been a workshopper. The buzz was incredible. My role was simply to give a speech towards the end of the day. There was an overwhelming feeling of optimism and commitment. A joy at being together, intent on our social shared mission. It was a powerful elixir of the joy of doing something that needs to be done: bringing justice and hope and opportunity to people who often get ignored.

Big Issue Invest helped support a novel social programme. Outside on the street was a food van to feed our staff at lunchtime. Run by young people who fall into that unforgiving category called NEETS (not in education, employment or training), they provided wholesome food with what can only be called passion. A passion to learn work skills and break out of the categorisation that doesn’t quite explain what is going on with them – apparently a million or so young people.

So many corners have been cut in modern life. Public provision through education, health and community has been knocked about through budget cutting and modern-isation. We have seen an increase in costs while cuts have been made. 

It’s a bit like buying a cake or a pie that is well wrapped but tastes crap: the costly ingredient being the wrapping, not the contents that you actually eat. So bureaucracy increases, not the quality of public life. The wrapping flourishes but the pie gets increasingly inedible.

A public life was delivered post-war that was created by government to cover virtually all eventualities. Providing a well-policed, fair and socially inclusive society was the intention. They did not quite get there but a bold attempt was made. Yet almost from the moment of creation a process of erosion set in. With the blessings of the electorate, government has engineered a complexity of delivery, a big government that fails to deliver what it used to deliver. Or it does so more ineptly.

Read more:

• Big Issue founder calls for a Ministry of Poverty Prevention ahead of the general election
• NEETs crisis: How did one million young people fall off the career ladder?
• Andy Burnham wants to prevent homelessness. But can he do it in ‘landlord-class Britain’?

Big Issue was born out of that post-war crisis of government which had slashed mental health provision but did not provide for its replacement. Enormous cost savings were made. But the streets filled up, the A&Es filled up and the prisons filled up. So costs were saved in one departmental budget but increased in others.

Big Issue was created to support the thousands who were decanted onto the streets by government policy: closed mental institutions, closed industries, rationalised government spending on public life. Cutting local authority support, cutting police and police stations; and changing the NHS so that it’s full of managers and measurers with fewer doctors and nurses. And shockingly, almost counter-intuitively, increasing the number of people on benefits and outside of society and work.

Big Issue is in some ways a bit like a hole-filler in society. It recognises a gap and tries to plug it. Through its street work it tries to provide help to carry on and improve the quality of life of those caught out. Through its Big Issue Invest work it tries to invest in providing social business support for initiatives that don’t get supported adequately – look at our website and see the range of our investments, over 600 of them.

I described the wonder of visiting the Independence Initiative in Bootle in Liverpool with the prime minister a few weeks back. To see the help Big Issue has given to this impressive rough sleepers project. Lifting people off the streets and helping them to stay off.

Our staff day should have been filmed and shown to interested parties. To governments, charities, homeless people and the general public. To see a body of people trying to address the gaps thrown up by the erosions created by government in the face of public need.

Of course, government can say it’s so costly to run society’s requirements these days. And it is. 

But a hard look at how expensive it is running an increasingly socially poor country would throw up the fact that the money is spent on patching and mending, not on preventing. 

Ah, prevention! More people are mentioning prevention. Perhaps the tide is turning and our efforts will be redundant as government grasps the problem by the scruff of the neck. And stops spending all our money on the wrapping.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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