Please don’t be put off by the diagrams. I am trying to help the current government understand just where its money is going.  

Prevention of poverty, the emergency of poverty, coping with poverty and the cure of poverty; this in essence is what the government spends its money on when tackling poverty.

I invented P.E.C.C. because I wanted to alert government and the public to just how much we spend on maintaining people as poor people. And it is very expensive ‘keeping people poor’.  

In 1948 aspiration was the name of the game. Alas the diagram shows what the reality on the ground is 77 years later.

Now in the region of 40% of government expenditure is spent on the damage caused by poverty and we have very little social investment in prevention.

We have a large-ish budget spent on emergency, because of the lack of prevention but the behemoth is the money spent on coping.

Simply holding the hands of people in poverty rarely brings opportunity to get out of poverty. 

The last category in this sad 2025 reality is Cure. It is, like Prevention, a Cinderella.  

I hope I have shown you why we need to get real about poverty. Once we had hope; but we have lost it over 77 years. Now’s the time to get real about those budgets that are spent on maintaining the poverty status quo. 

With best wishes, 

Lord John Bird

Founder of the Big Issue and Peer in the House of Lords

Big Issue is focused on curing poverty

With 3.8 million people in the UK currently living in destitution, there's no denying that when people first come to our office, most are in a crisis situation. They may be struggling to support their children or street homeless, carrying all their belongings with them as they have nowhere safe to keep them.

As soon as somebody has their first meeting with our specialist team, we start to focus on the cure to help them work their way out of poverty and forming plans to prevent them falling into that situation again.

A source of income is the primary service we offer, enabling people to earn an immediate and legitimate income through selling our award winning magazine. We help new vendors locate a pitch and provide five free issues to get them started. As a vendor's confidence and stability starts to improve, we’re able to help them create pathways to better their lives.

But we can’t do this without the help of our generous supporters. Could you make a monthly contribution of £10 to help us support more people to work their way out of poverty?

Thank you for supporting our work.

Natasha

Big Issue Team

The Big Issue is a social business, any financial contributions raised go to supporting our programmes to improve the lives of the individuals we work with, through our Big Issue Changing Lives Community Interest Company (14786850) 113-115 Fonthill Road, London, England, N4 3HH