Biography
Lord Bird has engaged on health and social care topics primarily through debate speeches, with nine contributions spanning public health prevention, heart disease and stroke, and mental health. His interventions have focused substantially on poverty as an underlying determinant of health outcomes, including references to food poverty's link to cardiac arrest and the connection between poverty and imprisonment, whilst advocating for preventative government approaches rather than palliative measures. He has also emphasised the need for binding child poverty reduction targets and coordinated cross-government action to address health and social inequalities.
Generated from their own Hansard record, below
“The Minister says that he is ambitious, which I am pleased to hear, but where in government is work to prevent people ending up in prison? I cannot see it. I cannot see homelessness prevention, prison prevention or the exportation of poverty from people’s lives—90% of people in prison are there from poverty.”
Record by topic
- Heart disease & stroke75th of 3986.0
- Public health & prevention252nd of 6886.0
- Mental health750th of 8802.0
What they’ve said
“I am very pleased that this amendment is to be discussed again. What troubles me is that it could be such a small, insignificant thing to ask for targets from the Government. Are targets part of the armoury that we use to get rid of poverty? If we are endeavouring to get rid of poverty, we will need more than targets.”
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · 2026-01-28 · Read on Hansard ↗
“To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether new funding allocations to local authorities are sufficient to deliver the prevention commitments in the National Plan to End Homelessness.”
National Plan to End Homelessness · 2025-12-16 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…Look at the fact that 50% of people who suffer from cardiac arrests and cardiac illnesses are those who have food poverty in their background. If you look at the prison system, it is almost a poverty system.”
Autumn Budget 2025 · 2025-12-04 · Read on Hansard ↗
“Amendment 163 in my name would place a duty on the Secretary of State to set binding child poverty reduction targets and report on them annually to Parliament. This amendment will hold the Government to their promise to reduce child poverty and enable them to measure their progress.”
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · 2025-06-19 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…above the water where you could see it, but underneath I could see all sorts of things—abuse, social isolation, mental health problems. I saw 90% of the people I have worked with, who I come from, inheriting poverty. I was with Prince Charles once, as he then was, at a meeting in our building.”
Housing Supply and Homelessness · 2024-12-05 · Read on Hansard ↗
Contributions reproduced under the Open Parliament Licence.