John Bird, Baron Bird

John Bird, Baron Bird, is a British social entrepreneur, author, and life peer who has served as a Crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2015. Born into poverty in Notting Hill, he experienced homelessness and incarceration in his youth before founding the influential street newspaper The Big Issue in 1991. His parliamentary work is primarily focused on poverty prevention, social mobility, and the well-being of future generations. He advocates for structural reforms to address the root causes of deprivation rather than relying solely on emergency relief, and he successfully introduced the Offenders (Day of Release from Detention) Act 2023 to improve support for individuals leaving prison.