Bird’s words
‘Data’ tells you lots of things. It tells you, hopefully, what is happening. For instance, the data on the amount of children in child poverty. The data should throw up the figures, and what direction they are going in: is it increasing, or is it reducing?
Data is about proving something. And proving something is about measuring things. Measuring results, outcomes and outputs is now expected in all manner of things to do with social investment – that is, the money that government or philanthropists invest to bring about change.
You have to prove that what you are doing helps outcomes.
When I went into parliament I did so to dismantle poverty. That was my prime objective. I had seen a preoccupation with what I somewhat rudely, perhaps insensitively, described as ‘tinkering with poverty’; doing a bit here and a bit there. Or concentrating on poverty relief, which is the giving out of monies to help people through the day, the week, the month, the year – but which keeps them dependent and never gets them out of poverty.
My strategy was to suggest that we had to get rid of poverty as a whole and that just giving relief, giving the poor more for the moment, was only postponing the day when we’d have to get serious about poverty and work on its ending. Parliament seemed obsessed with giving the poor more but never questioning itself about how inefficient this method of thinking and acting was.
Recently I was questioned about what I had achieved since entering parliament and could I prove with measurables, with data, the effects of my actions? To prove something that is in a way unprovable. If I went into parliament to dismantle poverty and poverty is still with us seven years later, surely I have failed? The various bills I have worked on are evidence of involvement; but what of the big thing, the big poverty thing. How’s that going?
That is where data and measuring are about as useful as a bucket with a hole each end. Because what you need to do is change the thinking to understand that tinkering with poverty – as I saw it – is not the answer. Getting down and deep with one aspect of poverty in isolation will get you nowhere. Unless you wake up government and opposition to the profound problem that an ad hoc, bit here, bit there, approach to poverty will mean that poverty will simply continue, then you are lost.
Hence my campaign over the last few years to create a Minis
