I love democracy.

I was born in the London Irish slums of Notting Hill, but we moved to Fulham. On my road, I fell into being a friend of a guy whose family, like mine, came from Ireland. His father had accumulated a number of jobs. He was a very clever guy, even though, like my family, he was ill educated. He became very wealthy and bought his house, so he had a house in Fulham Broadway at a time when my family were living around the corner in social housing—what was called council housing. He became very prosperous and employed 20, 30, then 50 Irish people to make money for him, so that he could buy a house, then a bigger one. There were two kinds of poverty. That guy did not inherit poverty, but my family inherited it and made damn sure that we and other members of my family inherited poverty and the mind-forged manacles that go with it.

What do we actually do to break that situation so that people in poverty are given something—a “je ne sais quoi”, a little thing—that will mean they do not imitate the inherited poverty of their own family? To me, that is the big issue: Patrick Crowell and his mum and dad built a business, made money and became middle class and prosperous, but my family remained in poverty. Their children and their children’s children are still in poverty and stuck in social housing, having all sorts of problems.

I want to know how the House of Lords and the House of Commons, with all their great brains, can help us dismantle the mind-forged manacles that come with poverty and its inheritance. That is my passion. Over the next few months, as we move towards a general election, I will be campaigning through my work in the Big Issue, and in Parliament in general, for a reinvention of social housing.

Do noble Lords know that there are so many people in this world who are defenders of social housing? These people absolutely love it and think it is absolutely brilliant. But do noble Lords know that the children of people who live in social housing rarely finish school, get their qualifications, get skilled and move out of poverty? Do noble Lords know that a fraction, an infinitesimal number of people in social housing, ever get to university or college so that they can then start living a fuller life away from poverty? Do noble Lords know that in housing associations, on average 70% of people are unemployed? I do not want to be interpreted as rude or insensitive, but if you really wanted to condemn somebody to poverty for the next 100 years, you would give them social housing.