Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

A basic-income floor should be part of a recovery programme

Stewart Lansley 17th June 2020

With the UK’s social safety net full of holes, support has grown for a basic income to underpin a mean and means-tested benefits system.

basic income
Stewart Lansley

With livelihoods shattered, surging unemployment and falls in household incomes, attention across Europe is turning towards the vital question of post-crisis reconstruction. Covid-19 has already breathed new life into a centuries-old idea, that of providing all with a guaranteed, no-questions-asked, basic income (BI) as of right.

Following a campaign by a European network of activists—Unconditional Basic Income Europe—the European Commission agreed in May to register a citizens’ initiative for an EU-wide BI. If the initiative collects one million signatures from at least seven countries within a year, the commission will be required to respond. In the same month, the full findings of the Finnish two-year trial of an unconditional scheme for a group of 2,000 unemployed found significant improvements in wellbeing, including less financial stress and depression, without affecting work incentives.

In the UK, while Parliament has largely ignored the idea of a BI in the past, 110 MPs and peers, across parties, have lobbied the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, to implement a recovery-linked scheme. These voices have been joined by the Financial Times, which has called for a concerted debate on the merits of a BI.

Many flaws

A key reason for this surge of interest in the UK, previously behind the European curve, has been the exposure of the many flaws in the current benefits system, which is a good deal less generous than in most European welfare states. Even before Covid-19, millions fell through a mean and patchy ‘safety net’, forcing Sunak to introduce a raft of measures to prop up incomes—from wage subsidies to easing of the rules on the core benefit, ‘universal credit’, with its heavy work-related and sanction-backed conditionality. 


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

While these government measures are welcome, millions have been missing out, opening up a new divide between those who are well protected and those who are not. This special support is also to be rolled back in the coming months.

Another reason for growing interest is the potential power of such a system to mitigate, at speed, the economic fallout from destabilising shocks, which have become increasingly frequent in recent times. If a basic-income scheme were in place today, it would provide an automatic mechanism for injecting cash into the economy on a temporary basis, while also providing a robust safety net through which no one would fall.

Child benefit

A BI scheme would require a single record of all citizens and a system for paying them, neither of which currently exists in the UK. While such a comprehensive list could be drawn up relatively quickly by Whitehall, there is one immediate step the government could, and should, take. It should raise child benefit—essentially a basic income for children—for a limited period. Paid to 12.7 million children in 7.3 million households, this would be a fast and cost-effective way of getting cash to families.

After compiling a more comprehensive list, this emergency measure could be extended to adults. Giving adults (say) £500 a month and children £200 a month (through child benefit) would provide a family of four with £1,400 a month. The benefit to higher-income groups could be clawed back through tax adjustments. 

The upfront cost of such a scheme would be of the order of £15 billion a month (financed by conventional borrowing or some kind of ‘helicopter money’) but much or all of this would be redeemed by faster recovery. This commitment compares with an estimated £10 billion a month for the Treasury’s ‘job retention scheme’ and the cuts to the annual benefits budget since 2010, when Labour lost power, of nearly £40 billion.

Income floor

A recovery measure could then be used as a bridge towards a more permanent basic income, one with lower rates of payment, which would sit below the existing benefit system. There is a strong case for reframing this debate around theidea of a firm and guaranteed income floor, a vision promoted over centuries by a long list of visionary thinkers but yet to be realised. Such a floor would constitute a powerful instrument for social protection in increasingly fragile times, while building an automatic anti-poverty buffer into the system.

It would bring a modest income for the small army of carers and volunteers—mostly women—whose contribution, as the epidemic has revealed, is critical to the functioning of society but greatly undervalued. By providing all citizens with much more choice over work, education, training, leisure and caring, it would also lay the foundation for greater personal empowerment and freedom.

A study by the progressive UK think-tank Compass has shown that a ‘modest permanent scheme’—placing a new, holes-free, income Plimsoll Line under the benefits system—would be feasible, affordable and highly progressive. It would reduce poverty and inequality, strengthen universalism and cut means-testing, and it could be introduced at a cost which could be broadly revenue-neutral. Adopting such a scheme would of course require a wide political debate, but it would put down a marker for the kind of society which could emerge when the crisis subsides.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

Stewart Lansley
Stewart Lansley

Stewart Lansley is  author of the The Richer, the Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor (Bristol University Press). He is a visiting fellow at the University of Bristol, a council member of the Progressive Economy Forum and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

You are here: Home / Politics / A basic-income floor should be part of a recovery programme

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Russia,journalists,Ukraine,target Ukraine: journalists in Russia’s sightsKelly Bjorkland and Simon Smith
European Union,enlargement,Balkans EU enlargement—back to the futureEmilija Tudzarovska
European Health Data Space,EHDS,Big Tech Fostering public research or boosting Big Tech?Philip Freeman and Jan Willem Goudriaan
migrant workers,non-EU Non-EU migrant workers—the ties that bindLilana Keith
ECB,European Central Bank,deposit facility How the ECB’s ‘deposit facility’ subsidises banksDavid Hollanders

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube