Rachel Reeves should see that ending poverty is fiscally responsible. Here's why

In the spirit of Challenge Poverty Week, I am challenging our chancellor to do something she considers radical: invest in people who live in poverty.

On 30 October – Halloween eve – Rachel Reeves will read the first Labour budget in a generation. In the spirit of spooky season, she’s warning of jump scares. No money. Tough choices. Tory skeletons flying out of dusty Downing Street cupboards. But for all her doom-mongering, she’s letting opportunity slip through her fingers. This is her chance to rewrite the playbook on tackling poverty, and change things for 14 million of her citizens currently blighted by poverty.

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The chancellor will let this opportunity slip away. Her stance at the Labour Party conference left little to imagination – fiscal responsibility is her top priority. Sadly, we all know that fiscal responsibility is no more than innuendo for austerity. Reeves intends the maintain the status quo laid down by her Conservative predecessors: no real increase to taxes, no real increase to governmental spending, and it seems to me, no real increase to living standards for those trapped at the coal face of poverty.

The trouble with the status quo is that it has allowed the richest 1% of Britons to hoard more wealth than 70% of the rest of us combined. 3.8 million people across the UK are caught in destitution right now, unable to meet the most basic physical needs – unable to clothe, feed or keep themselves warm. This imbalance costs the Exchequer enormous sums of money. The bills for firefighting the poverty crisis reach into the billions, with costs such as temporary accommodation, prisons and benefits draining the public purse.

If the government is going to make progress on its promised aim of reducing poverty, they must shatter the status quo. Breaking the cycle of poverty will require breaking Rachel Reeves’ self-imposed fiscal rules and investing in people. Investing in affordable housing. Investing in education and skills training. Investing in mental health care. Without comprehensive action, even the government’s most admirable plans – like free breakfasts for primary kids or raising the minimum wage – are unlikely to change things for the poorest amongst us.

But Rachel Reeves’ hands are tied. Or are they? She warned us there was no magic money tree, only for one of her bright-eyed economists to find one growing in Downing Street’s Rose Garden. Last week’s confirmation that the chancellor intends to bend borrowing rules to free up several billion pounds for investment lays bare how these are choices, not forces beyond her control. And her choice has been made – these new bags of cash won’t be spent on addressing the poverty crisis that besieges our nation.

My ever-determined creation, the Big Issue – still as irrepressible as the day I founded it 33 years ago – is campaigning for a new Poverty Zero law, demanding those in power set poverty reduction targets. Like with net zero, these targets would be legally binding. They would force the governments of today and tomorrow to seek sustainable solutions to poverty, rather than just treat the symptoms – as chancellors who only look as far ahead as their next budget so often do.

With the budget only two weeks away, I am not naïve enough to believe my message will cut through the noise. But I hope that, come 30 October, our chancellor remembers she has more choices than she is acknowledging. In a nation as rich as ours, poverty is a political choice. We can only hope this fledgling government comes to its senses and chooses better when the next budget rolls round.

Big Issue is demanding an end to extreme poverty. Will you ask your MP to join us?

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