My manifesto for ending poverty awaits the next government
“No teacher, no doctor, no police officer is trained to get rid of poverty, but they have to deal with the problems thrown up by poverty,” reads the statement in the small but perfectly formed manifesto I published last week for the next government’s attention. It is an unhappy truth that our public servants are in the poverty firing line, but are capable only of responding to poverty’s toxic outcomes.
Would we expect a doctor, teacher or police officer to have the tools, the skills, the knowledge to reduce poverty? No, of course not. Rather, we expect other parts of society and its government to fund and run poverty prevention and cure programmes so that the doctor, the teacher and the law enforcement officer do not have too much on their hands. Rather we expect a reduction of poverty so that it no longer stymies the actions or distorts the working practices of these professionals. Yet poverty does distort their jobs – completely.
My manifesto is previous. It awaits the next government to give advice on how to reduce poverty and points out how the present structure of government is incapable of so doing. That we have to break through “Westminsterism”, a dreadful illness that has befallen politics, causing government to spend the public purse unwisely. And very little of it on poverty prevention and cure.
The creation of a Ministry of Poverty Prevention, to end the scattergun effect of government policy, is my main argument. That over 80% of government expenditure on people caught in the Bastille of poverty is spent on emergency and little on prevention or cure. Treading poverty water so to speak.
It is alarming how much poverty and need for emergency support there is. And it increases, with apparently – depending on whose figures you use – one in three children living in need.
I was therefore pleased to be asked to debate this situation on BBC Radio 4 recently, putting forward my argument that even in the middle of an emergency, a crisis, we have to be aspiring, building the means of ending future emergencies. Because however good we are at responding to emergencies, it doesn’t actually help us get rid of the next one.
All the food banks and top-ups of social security will not bring us anywhere nearer the nirvana which is the cleansing of poverty from socie
