What businesses and a new Government can do about poverty and how to boost "good" business - Helen Barnard

Most people in poverty in the UK are in working families. Four million workers live in poverty: their resources are well below their minimum needs.

That means 'not being able to heat your home, pay your rent, or buy the essentials for your children. It means waking up every day facing insecurity, uncertainty, and impossible decisions about money.'

And seven in ten children growing up in poverty live in a working family. How have we come to this? And what can we do about it?

Helen Barnard has spent her career researching poverty. She is the author of new book Want, part of Five Giants, a series published eighty years on from the original Beveridge Report in 1942 which identified five barriers to social progress and led to the creation of the modern welfare state (and NHS).

Today mass unemployment is no longer the issue it was:  big factors behind poverty and insecurity are low pay, lack of progression, insecurity and underemployment as Helen explains.

She tells me about a business which trusts, empowers, and supports its workforce – as a result it has happy and engaged employees, and they and the business prosper. She contrasts this with an exploitative approach and gives a three-pronged approach to how we can support more "good" businesses and address the bad ones.

We also discuss supporting people in under-invested communities to support and grow businesses and social enterprises; unleashing the power of civil society and how to create a more level playing field for corporate taxation.

The book involves powerful and heart-rending stories about modern poverty and new,, fit-for-purpose ideas and solutions.

Listen to this interview with Helen Barnard for practical, fit-for-purpose ideas about the power of good business to address modern poverty and inequality today.

Timings and links:

• 0 - 3:00 introduction
• 3:00 interview with Helen Barnard of Pro Bono Economics and The Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Find Helen on twitter and get a copy of her book here, or there are lots of non-Amazon options to buy it here.
• 32:20 wrapping up and upcoming events including Off the Shelf and Celluloid Screams.

Thanks Helen for such comprehensive and thoughtful interview and thanks as ever to Sheffield Live for broadcasting the show on FM radio today, 21 October 2022  https://web.sheffieldlive.org . Thank-you for listening – please go and buy Helen's book if you can!