The election is finished and now it’s over to you – it’s time for The Big Issue’s Activist Army to step up.
During the campaign, candidates of every stripe and every party leader, pledged their backing to our poverty-dismantling manifesto and John Bird’s call for a Poverty Prevention Unit.
Now, as MPs, old and new, get to business in Westminster, there is new urgency to our campaign as we push the new Government to put poverty prevention top of its agenda.
Preventing people from falling into poverty will save billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year
Preventing people from falling into poverty – creating a fence at the top of the cliff – will save billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent each year. From health to prisons, unemployment to welfare, the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff has a vast human and financial cost; as much as £78 billion a year.
But if poverty prevention is at the heart public policy in every key department – education and housing, communities and crime, health and social security – the payoffs down the line to society will be massive.