 I will now introduce each of our three speakers. Shreya Nanda is an economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research, also known as the IPPR, their Centre for Economic Justice. Prior to this she worked for the Government Economic Service, the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group and the World Health Organisation. Her recent work highlights the unequal impact of the government's response to COVID-19. She tweets at Shreya G Nanda. Dr Natasha Kodiroli is a quantitative researcher at Advanced Higher Education, working primarily with data to understand the experiences of students and staff in higher education, with a particular focus on equality, diversity and inclusion. Holding a PhD in quantitative social research from the Institute of Education, UCL, she's worked as an analyst in the civil service, helped shape the research agenda for new civil society charity London Plus and led on the recent report Crisis of Support for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women for the Women's Budget Group, the Fawcett Society, Queen Mary University of London and LSE. Assad Rehman is Executive Director of War on Want, a lifelong campaigner against racial justice and economic justice. Assad has been at the forefront of the climate justice movement, both in the UK and globally, helping to reframe climate as an issue of racialised capitalism, economic and social injustice. Assad is co-convener of the Global Green New Deal Project to connect the climate crisis, neoliberal inequality, COVID and historical exploitation of the Global South. He tweets at Chilled Assad 100. Welcome to all of our speakers and welcome to everybody who is joining us for this fantastic discussion. We're going to turn to our speakers now, who are going to have seven minutes each to do a presentation. Shreya, I'll hand over to you. Thanks very much Rachel, really pleased to be here. So the key message that I want to get across is that, left unchecked, the economic system that we have tends to increase, like tends towards increasing wealth inequality. And that's something we really need to realise if we want to understand this crisis and how to deal with it effectively. So broadly speaking, during the post-war period, we had structures in place to check that tendency. So we had our social democratic settlements and that gave us a fairly strong and fairly equal economy. And we began to think of that as something normal. But obviously a lot of that settlement was unwound during the factor period. And since then our economy has begun to revert to something more stagnant and more unequal with a smaller middle class and a larger group of precarious workers with little to no savings or job security. But the trouble is, most of our commentators and economists still see the economy that we had during the post-war period as normal. So they're kind of confused by the trends we're seeing now. They're saying, well, why isn't the economy returning to normal? Why are we having secular stagnation? Why is it no longer possible for people to live a decent life on a normal wage? But I mean, the answer is quite simple. It's because we got rid of all of the structures that allowed those things to happen. We got rid of the regulations on banks, nationalised natural monopolies, the high taxes, the strong trade unions and wage setting, the protections for tenants and regulations on the private rented sector, the social investment, the strong safety net, got rid of all of that. And so now we don't have the same economic system that we did. We have one that tends towards greater concentration of wealth. So we're not going to go back to that economy unless we change that. But the process of becoming a more unequal economy isn't just a one-off thing. It's something that happens over time and it's accelerated every time that there's a crisis. So when we had the 2008 crisis, we saw that. We saw lots of good jobs disappear and come back as jobs with worse conditions, worse wages, more precarious. We saw home ownership for young people drop dramatically. And we saw inequality rise because we saw a big increase in asset prices. And this time as well, we're seeing a big increase in inequality as a result of this crisis. So that obviously there's the unequal health impacts, where some people are at risk on the front line and other people stay at home. There's the unequal financial impacts where some people have become better off as a result of this crisis because their incomes have been unaffected and they're saving more while others have seen their wages fall or been laid off and are struggling and going deeper into debt. Obviously we're seeing some businesses close, people not able to afford their rent. So we're seeing an increase in inequality. We don't know yet exactly what the total effect of this crisis will be because so much of it depends on what the government goes on to do from now. Will they repeat austerity or will they respond differently? But we can already see that inequality is increasing. As Rachel said, our research found that almost half the benefits of the fellow scheme were going to landlords and banks and the benefits of other government support schemes are occurring disproportionately to banks as well. For example, the coronavirus business loan interruption scheme involves the government essentially taking on the risk of loans supporting businesses, but banks are still able to collect the interest from those loans if they get the benefits with none of the risks. So we're entering this crisis, inequality is increasing and we're at risk of a downward spiral where the economic situation gets worse. So what needs to happen now? So it's imperative that the government takes short-term measures to protect people by introducing a proper system of social insurance, but more broadly, we need to rewire our economic system to stop this tendency towards ever-increasing wealth inequality. So in our paper, Who Wins and Who Pays, we discuss a variety of ways that could look like, so it could look like the post war settlement that we had, or it could look like higher taxes or jobs guarantee or more democratic ownership of industry, probably a combination of all of those things. But I think that change urgently needs to happen and I don't think that can wait until the economies are covered. On the contrary, I think we won't see a proper recovery until those changes are made. But I think that definitely needs to happen and I think the right needs to start recognising this as well because what you see from them is sort of pushing back against the changes that the left is suggesting and saying, oh, but there are all these trade-offs, but without sort of seeming to grasp the bigger picture of the fact that if we don't change these things, then the economy is not going to do well, not going to benefit people, and it's going to become more and more unequal. That's my main set of remarks, that's all right. That was fantastic. Thanks so much, Shreya. So now we will move on to Natasha. Just make sure you unmute yourself, Natasha. Yep, that's a good start. I was just saying I've got some slides to share with my presentation. So just bringing it up. So I'm going to talk about some research I did with the women's budget group, looking specifically at the impact of coronavirus and the lockdown and the economic policies following the start of the virus on women from Black and minority ethnicity backgrounds. So once the economic policies were introduced so things like the lockdown of a lot of the service economy and different rules around closing down parts of the economy, we had quite a good idea of who was going to be most impacted and it looked like those most impacted would be women and people from Black and minority ethnicity backgrounds. So looking at the past data, we knew that women were most likely to work in their health and care sector, but also most likely to work in jobs with the highest exposure to coronavirus. So 77% of the jobs with high exposure to coronavirus were done by women and the majority of these were quite low-paid jobs. Women also, and we have a lot of evidence in research into this, but also have lower pay than men, they're more likely to be in problem debt and they're less likely to have an economic safety net. So they entered the situation in the virus in a more economically precarious position compared to the majority of men. They're more likely to make up the homeless population and they're more likely to struggle with debt and bills beforehand. So there was also some early research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies into the experiences of different ethnic groups to policies after the virus. So a lot of this focused on the health impacts of coronavirus, which disproportionately hit people from black and minority ethnicity backgrounds, but there are also differences in the types of work people were doing and the similar story comes out as with women, people from black and minority ethnicity backgrounds were more likely to be working in health and social care and were also more likely to be working in those jobs that were gonna be hit by the lockdown. On top of that, they were more likely to be in a precarious economic situation. So again, they're more likely to do jobs with very low pay beyond zero hour contracts, have less savings and higher debt. So again, they don't have this safety net to protect them. So this research wanted to look at the intersection between these two characteristics. So what is the experience of Bain women during the virus? Is it just a doubling of all of these issues coming into one or is there some different story going on? So the research was conducted in the middle of April. So after the lockdown policies have been introduced around three weeks after, we got responses from over 3,000 people and it was a representative sample of people across the UK. So people from black minority ethnic backgrounds, parents and people on low incomes were oversampled because the groups were particularly interested in, but then these results were weighted to reflect the general population of the UK. So what we found was quite stark findings in terms of people's responses and predictions in terms of debt coming out of the virus. So we asked questions about how much debt they thought there would be in three months, in three months time, whether they are struggling now to make and meet. So whether they predicted they were going to struggle to pay rent or their mortgage, for example. And the results were quite high. So generally across all groups, Bain women, Bain men, white women and white men, you see around a third of people with anxiety around money and debt. But this was consistently higher for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Now on top of the economic impacts, I've touched on this a bit, but black and minority ethnic people and women were more likely to be working in key worker roles. So they're more likely to be on the front line and doing more in this time. And we also asked people whether they'd spent more or less time caring for other adults, so outside of work, whether they're doing volunteering informal or formal. And we found that Bain women were most likely to say they were doing more than before and also relatively less likely to say they were doing less than before. So those women who were taking on more work outside of their employment was much higher amongst Bain women. So you see this, the two sides of the story, you've got these people who are getting the negative economic impacts in a higher rate than other people, but also picking up a lot of this lack a lot more in work and in their personal lives. And then all of this is going to have an impact on mental health and wellbeing. So again, we asked specifically about life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety and use the same questions used by the ONS to track wellbeing, life satisfaction and anxiety over each quarter of the year. And we found overall it was people had lower satisfaction and happiness compared to before coronavirus and higher anxiety. And life satisfaction and happiness were particularly low amongst Bain people, so Bain men and women, whereas women overall, Bain and white women had higher anxiety levels comparatively. So of course this research was conducted quite a while ago now, it's gone very quickly, but it was conducted in April and a lot has changed since then. But we still don't know the true economic consequences of what's going to happen. So the furlough scheme ends in October and the data collection and the research available from that will take a while to come out as well. But what we really want to know is whether women and Bain people are most likely to be furloughed and then made redundant after that, most likely to lose work completely. I think what I'd also like to see in future research as well is more of a breakdown by ethnic groups. So I presented research looking at the Bain category overall because we had a relatively small sample, but once the administrative data starts coming through we can start to see the impacts more broadly across ethnic groups. So out of this project, I also wrote a report about the impact on disabled women and a colleague wrote a report about the impact on parents, particularly lone mothers. So this is available on the Women's Budget Group and Foreset Society webpages if people are interested in learning more. Thank you so much, Natasha, for presenting the findings of a really important report. So we're now going to move on to Athad. Thank you very much and thank you for the invitation to join you all today. I was reminded that quote from Aaron Dutty-Roy, the Indian author and well-known activists who said of this moment, we have to break with the past and imagine a world anew and that we're in a portal, a gateway between one world and new. And I think the challenge for all of us is being able to understand the world we want to leave and also the world we're fighting for. And that does mean that we have to join the dots between the systemic exploitation of the poorest in the world between the climate crisis, crisis and neoliberal inequality, the impacts of COVID and racialised capitalism. And I think for most of us, even we were switched on our TVs this morning, we're all reminded that the reality of the climate crisis is devastating lives and livelihoods and the homes of so many people around the world from whether it's the pictures of forest fires sweeping across the US, floods in Pakistan, sizes displaced in Sudan from another flood. And I think we're at a moment where we're actually no longer shocked by the killer floods, droughts, famines, to just become the new reality. But I think what's important is for us to remember is that the scale of what we are seeing, what we were told would only occur if we breach the two degree guardrail. And it's all happening at just the one degree. Year upon year, records are broken, most violent storms, most powerful hurricanes, hottest temperatures. But often I think that hides the real story of the people below that and the reality of what this has meant. I mean, the storm that, for example, hit Dominica last year, one storm caused damages worth 224% of that country's GDP. That basically is homes, roads, schools, hospitals destroyed. On Mozambique, if you remember last year, where a single storm destroyed 90% of a major port city, it left a million people facing starvation. And of course the Mozambique government here in London, begging the city of London for more debt-creating loans. I presume probably everybody has seen the report from Oxfam International this week, which shows that the top 1% of the world's population are causing more than double the CO2 pollution of the poorest 50%. What struck me about that was not just that, but also that fact that since 1990, when really the global discussions around climate began, global emissions have doubled. And why? Because we've got an economic model that has relentlessly pursued profit and the extraction of resources and wealth. And that has done little to benefit the majority of the world's population. And we all know the urgency and the importance of preventing a breach of the critical 1.5 degree guardrail, because of what it will do in terms of triggering feedback loops and collapsing food production and increasing the water stress and more violent extreme weathers. But also within the IPCC report, it also talks about how the impact on the economies of the global site. And it talks about how this will dwarf that of the financial crisis. It will rip open the glaring inequalities of poverty and injustices. And to give you a scale that IPCC said, the cost of if we were at two degree would be around 70 trillion just to meet the damages and hundreds of trillions if we're at three degrees or beyond. And of course that is beyond the poultry figures that we talk about globally in terms of climate finance where the majority is already recycled or more debt creating loans. And when that's not shocking enough just to remind ourselves, we're heading to at least a warming of a 2.5, 2.5 degrees or maybe even more. And it was these inequalities and this combining of climate and inequality that made the UN special rapporteur, Philip Alston. He said, we're going to create a climate apartheid where the rich pay to escape from overheating hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer. And he estimated by 2030 another 120 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty because of climate. And then of course we know there's something to say about global inequality because often we told this story that there is progress being made to address global poverty. If you accept the sleight of hand and accept that poverty is measured only in terms of a way that the world banks $1.50 a day poverty line which of course does not provide people with the basics for a dignified life. The reality is since 1990 the number of people surviving on the minimum the $5.50 a day, $5.50 a day has largely remained unchanged. It's still half the world's population three and a half. Just checking there has Assad frozen there for Shreya and Natasha. Yes, okay. So the chances are that Assad has frozen for everybody. So whilst we work on getting Assad back I'm just going to say a big thank you to everything the speakers have said so far. And okay, it seems like Assad's dropped off the call so probably having some internet issues but I'm sure we can get him back on the call. So I just want to, yeah it kind of just sum up a little bit some of the key things we've heard there from Shreya we heard about the need to rewire our economy to stop this tendency towards ever increasing wealth inequality. And if we don't make some structural changes to our economy we're not going to see a proper recovery and that's something that we need all sides of the political spectrum to grasp. Natasha talked about the really disproportionate effect on finances and jobs, on women in particular and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds but also how this then impacts mental health and anxiety levels and also how the impact is still very much unknown so there's more fallout is yet to come. And Assad was talking there about the crisis of neoliberalism, inequality and racialised capitalism and how the systems have done little to benefit the majority of the world's population and we're seeing that so clearly now with inequality and this combination of the scale of the impact of climate change and inequality on the global south is really exposing global inequality and injustices and the problems with these systems. So I'm going to move us into the Q&A and what we might do when Assad comes back is take a pause after the first Q&A and so that he can finish his presentation to us which I'm sure we were all really enjoying and it's a shame we've lost him. So the questions I'm going to start off with there's one from George in Norwich who says, what could the government do differently this time around to avoid increasing debt and inequality further? And a second question is, could the government's manifesto commitments to levelling up and to net zero be used to press for a transition to a more sustainable and equitable economy? So two related questions there that I'm just going to put to our panellists. So Shreya or Natasha, would you like to chime in on those ones? Yeah, I can have a go. So I think, yeah, so the first question was about making the economic system right better. So I think that comes back to what I was mentioning in my talks. I think it's less about the specifics and more about the overall direction of travel but we need substantive change so that could be higher taxes for democratic ownership, better regulation of variety of things. On levelling up and net zero, yeah, I think so from this government we see rhetoric pointing one way but then we see action pointing the opposite way. So I'll believe it when I see it in terms of them taking like substance of action there. But yeah, I think those have the potential to be part of the rewiring but on net zero specifically, I think there are big risks as well as opportunities. So obviously we've seen in France that measures towards net zero if they're not done well can destabilise and make people further more precarious as well as making the economy work more fairly. So, you know, we need to do it in a just way and that's something we're looking at at the moment at IPPR with our Environmental Justice Commission. So we'll be coming out with more on that soon. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point how we come out of this situation, I suppose. I'm just thinking about the specifics of this recession compared to the previous recession. And I think some of that is just tough luck, isn't it? It's just what happened. So in the previous recession, we didn't see this huge gender divide in who was being hit worst. It actually seems to equalise things more for men and women because not in a positive way but men were brought down to a similar level as women. Whereas now what we see is the particular sectors that are here to those that women and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are working in. So it's, yeah, it's a very tough situation in terms of inequality. And even though we need a lot more information, we can already see that this economic crisis isn't trenching existing inequalities. I think there's a huge opportunity to make some quite bold economic changes coming out of this situation that could help mitigate that and then could be continued a long time after this crisis. But, yeah, we'll have to see what's done. I think, yeah, there's opportunity to change it, but here's a particularly stark situation. Thank you both very much. I'll move us on to three more questions. We've got a fantastic range of questions coming in from people from all over the place. So another Rachel says, is there a way to prevent tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and multinational corporations on a national level or would international cooperation be necessary to tackle it? Related to that, Carol asks, is there any chance of dismantling tax havens and getting everyone to pay their fair share? And then a third question I'll throw into the mix is, how can we further the cause of debt jubilee and other forms of debt forgiveness such as that described as taking place in former civilisations by David Graeber's book Debt for the first 5,000 years? So I'll put those questions back to our two panelleth and do just let me know if you need them repeating at all. I might leave this to you, Shreya, because my knowledge on tax havens isn't quite as up to scratch as I think yours would be. Sure, sure. So, yeah, I think that is a really, really interesting and key question. What can you do on the national level? So, yeah, I think ultimately, yes, we want to solve it at the international level through cooperating with other countries. But I think there are also lots of things you can do at the national level. So I think it's slightly overblown this idea that we can't do anything about at the national level. So first of all, there are things that are less mobile that we can tax at the national level. So things like land, things like clusters of industry. Secondly, that we can also design our tax policies in ways that target activities that take place in this country and make it more difficult for companies to do creative accounting to avoid paying taxes in this country. So things like unitary taxation or destination-based taxation, which specifically targets things like sales and jobs in this country. And then, yeah, we do also need to try and achieve more at an international level. And I think we need to do a lot more to hold our government to account in this area because they're doing things that, as the other question mentions, they're doing things like protecting tax havens. That's actively making this problem worse, but that issue, in my opinion, doesn't achieve nearly as much attention as it should as part of our national political debate. So, yeah, in terms of tax havens, I think it is quite a lot just a matter of political will of wanting to do something about it rather than a technical problem. And then quickly on the debt jubilee question, I think it is a matter of making this, making the argument behind it, the reason why we have to do something to change our economic system better understood and then also, I think, doing it well. So doing it in a way where people don't feel like they're unfairly losing out and therefore oppose the changes. So that's very vague, but that's the best answer I can give. Thank you, thank you, Shreya. Natasha, do you have anything else to add off the back of that? No, nothing to add. No, I think, yeah, that's a really good answer. And hopefully, like I said before, there'll be an opportunity to make some changes rather than do the things the same as we always did. So, Asad, we're so sorry that we lost you. There must have been some kind of technical hitch there. And I hear that you were talking for a little while on your own, but you're back. And we'd love to hear the second half of what you were saying. So you were talking about the scale of the climate impact and inequality on the global south and how that's really exposing the systemic problems. So I'll set you off again on part two of your presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you, apologies for that, for the new reality, right? Wifi drops and zooms. I don't know if I covered, you know, I mean, there's a really fascinating report by the UN Special Rapporteur, Pilly Bolston, on who's the rapporteur on human rights in extreme poverty. And he talks about, you know, the climate apartheid that is being created a bit like the COVID and the economic apartheid that we see. So where the rich will pay to escape from all the heating, hunger and conflict while the rest is worth the world is left to suffer. And we've already known that by 2030 another 120 million people are going to be pushed into extreme poverty by climate impacts. And we all know, we know that, you know, the existing reality of extreme poverty. And it's often told, and I think it's something this frame that we told that, you know, progress has been made to address global poverty. If you, it's only acceptable is if you accept the sleight of hand by the World Bank, right, which says, you know, poverty is about $1.50 a day. Now, we know that that is not the basics for what, for a bit of dignified life for the basic fundamentals. If you accept the reality that the minimum at minimum, not even it would be a $5.50, the reality since 1990, nothing has changed. Three and a half billion people still survive on less than $5.50 a day. This is the same amount of people who don't have access to electricity or clean cooking. Two billion people face hunger issues, 1.6 billion people face crisis of housing and a billion other people face issues of water stress. If we were genuinely serious about guaranteeing people right to a dignified life, we'd be talking about guaranteed incomes of at least $10 a day, or the equivalent or an of living wages. And of course, at the other end of the scale, global wealth continues to increase, but it's been captured overwhelmingly by corporations and elites because we've got a rigged economic system as we've heard through unfair trade rules, policies of enforced privatisation, structural adjustment programmes, tax breaks, and of course, the unfettered power of corporations. And in the COVID context, we're now talking about a recession which some people estimate that could lead up to even half of all jobs in the global south being lost, but at least something like 270 million more people are being expected to be plunged into the extreme poverty of living on less than $1.50 a day. And the disparity between 26 people, 26 of the richest people, owning the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50%, just shows you how broken our global system is. And of course, the reality of that decades of structural adjustment programmes, forced privatisations or trade rules, gutted the ability of countries in the global south to meet the needs of their own citizens and the reality that we've got, 46 countries spending more on debt repayment servicing than on public health, just goes to show you that connection. And I just briefly want to touch on COVID and its impact. And of course, we're all supremely critical of the intervention being made by global governments in the global north. But one thing needs to be said, they all ripped up their policies on austerity, they all intervened to save their economies, they all invested in vital public services. And of course, that wasn't enough to mask the reality of the deep racial, economic and social inequalities that exist, but which left the poorest facing the worst health and economic impacts that we've just heard. But actually for the global south, it was much, much starker, much, much starker. Whilst people in the global north were tweeting pictures and celebrating nature returning to our cities, the reality in the global south was migrant workers being left destitute, workers being left without any work, that in Ecuador the dead were left unburied whilst the government was paying debt repayments and being applauded by global banks. It comes to something where the UN Secretary General said last month, COVID is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere, the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all, the fiction that unpaid care work is not work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world and the myth that we're all in the same boat. And of course, there's been excellent work done by Jubilee debt about this growing debt crisis out there. 52 countries are currently living in a debt crisis that's up from 22 in 2015. And way back in April, the World Bank was already estimating 60 million more people will be pushed into extreme poverty because of this health crisis. So if we're really serious about addressing these multiple crisis, I think there's a demand that sits really at the heart of that. And that is about financial transfers and reparations to the global south. And I just very briefly want to say something about that. And I know you've done a webinar already on how racism built our systems. Britain is the fifth richest economy in the world. And that's not because of some peculiar ingenuity of Britain. It's because Britain was a singularly brutal and efficient exploiter of people and resources. And that's not just looking back at slavery where British slave traders massed about 8 billion in today's wealth from the slave trade and invested it back into the British economy or housed the slave colonies, provided Britain with all the commodities from tobacco, chocolate, sugar, cotton that would crucial for its industrial development. It was estimated that in the 1770s something like about 4 million pounds was being invested into the British economy each and every year. Something like 3.8 million of that came from slave profits, slave-based commercial profits. But of course it's not just about slavery. If you look at, I'm originally from Pakistan, if you look at the India subcontinent, Britain, during its domination of the India subcontinent, it's estimated by 1938 had looted $45 trillion from India alone. That's not where from anywhere else in the world, just from India alone. And just to put that into perspective that's about 17 times the annual GDP of the UK today. And of course, and that is what, and that's not just an historical fact. Even today, if you go on to the city of London, 101 British companies are better by the UK government, now collectively control about $1 trillion of Africa's mineral and metal resources. That's more than the combined GDP of every sub-Saharan country. And today continue about one third of all the shares on the FTSE 100 and the city of London come from those extractive industry. Now often we saw that the answer to all of this is, well, we just got to be a bit more generous with aid, or let's do a bit more poor for debt postponement and if we can just restructure global debt. And I just wanted to say some of the figures around that. You know, it's estimated that since 2012, the global south developing country received about $1.3 trillion and that includes all aid, all investment, including all remittances from global south workers living in the global north, but at the same time, $3.3 trillion flowed from the global north to the global south. So that's $2 trillion more that was came to the global north. And if you wrap up all of those since 1980, that's about $16.3 trillion that's been dreaded from the global south. If you put that, and that's not including all the illicit capital flows that flowed, and that's huge. I mean, there are some estimates talking about $13 trillion that's flowed in illicit flows. And of course to tax havens, many of them, you know, UK crown dependencies. And that's on top of the $4.2 trillion that's flowed from in debt repairments. So, you know, in this moment of these multiple crises of both the global debt of COVID, of the recovery of climate and of global inequality, we can no longer have piecemeal responses to them. I think we need to be much bolder and more visionary. We need to be able to put restructuring the global economy, calling out the neoliberal economic system and being able to say, you know, the heart of it has to be the right of everybody to have a dignified life. And that of course means living wages, guaranteed income, basic social protection, public services, the workers rights, but it also means by energy and food becoming public goods. It means about, you know, tackling, you know, the power of big corporations. And of course that brings us back to the role of the UK as the second biggest financial centre in the world. And I hope we can talk a little bit more about that. Thank you. Thank you, Asad. So much information to digest in there. And I hope we can talk about that in the next 15 minutes that we've got on this webinar. So, we did a couple of rounds of Q&A, of Q&A, Asad, whilst you were reconnecting. But I'm going to do another bundle now of three questions. And I'll bring in one of the questions that was already asked just to give you an opportunity to speak to it, which was, how can we further the cause of debt jubilees and other forms of debt forgiveness? So that's the first question. Then secondly, do you think a global wealth tax could be implemented? Is it desirable or feasible to pay for the costs of the pandemic and perhaps other things? And thirdly, something you just touched on again, Asad, is should we be advocating a universal basic income? Is that something that we should all be coming behind now? So Shreya, perhaps we could go to you first. I see you nodding away there. And then we'll go to Natasha and Asad. And you're muted. Sorry. Yes, on the global wealth tax. I think that that would massively help the situation. That would be a really substantial and dramatic thing that you could do to make the global economy work weekly. In terms of whether it's feasible, I think we probably we probably don't have this sort of political institutions at the international level yet to make something like that likely. But I think that we should be doing everything we can to sort of work together with countries and people in other countries who want similar things and who see a need for the global system to become more equal to try and get closer to that position. And then on UBI, I'm very sympathetic. I think you have to develop this narrative about sort of how our economy generates a surplus and there's wealth that everyone is entitled to a share of. And that's the reason why we should have a UBI. So yeah, I see a great idea. I think I agree with Shreya on the global wealth tax. I was just thinking that when I saw the question. I think it sounds like a fantastic idea, but in terms of the power to actually implement that across the world and also how long it would take. And I think a lot of these issues need an immediate response. But yeah, good to think in the big picture and I don't want to be overly pessimistic about that. In terms of the UBI as well, I think it's a real shame that the government didn't implement that at the start of this pandemic. I think that would have been a really good opportunity to test how that worked and how that changed inequalities across the country. But yeah, I think it would definitely be a really good policy going forward to try and mitigate those inequalities. I think one of the biggest barriers with that is maybe public perceptions about fairness. I think if you look on the surface of UBI, it doesn't look very fair. It looks like you're just giving everyone whether they come from a wealthy background or poor background, lots of money. But if you look at the detail, you see that actually it can have really positive impacts on people's ability to pursue things that are, I don't know, close to their hearts and also take part in training and better themselves more generally. So yeah, I think that would be a really good policy going forward. I'm reminded of that quote and I hate to quote him, but Milton Friedman, the very famous quote that he talks about in terms of that it's in the moment of crisis that huge change takes place and our job is to make, in these to have our political demands and to make what is deemed politically impossible to make it the politically possible. And if we think about what's happened even in the last few months of the profound change that people have seen, the importance that people have seen about frontline workers, about public services, I think the window is there for us to actually make much more bolder demands. Even if the political will isn't there, we have to do that because I've always struck, I remember two years ago, when the Gilesian did their protest, the Yellow Vests in France and on the front of their banner on the get back, the carbon tax they had, the elites worry about the end of the world, ordinary people, we worry about the end of the month. And that question about us building social licence for the kind of transformation that's needed, that people need to not just have the vision but need to be able to have demands that they think add up to being able to address this global crisis. That means we should be calling for wealth taxes, absolutely. And in that we should be talking about the fact that we have multinationals, big data that is escaping paying tax. I think people now recognise the importance of everybody doing their fair share. I think there are possibilities of us doing that in terms of around the narrative and making those kind of global demands. And of course, they've been made for a very, very long time. The movements in the global sites have called for a very, very long time inside as very central demand has been around taxation and about taxing corporations and about addressing the illicit capital flows that flow from the south to the north. On the universal basic income, look, I'm very sympathetic to the general space in which this conversation takes place. My personal reflection is we should be calling for a guaranteed basic income, right? And along with it, a call for living wages and call for social protection and public services because there is a danger that those neoliberals say, absolutely, here you are, now the state has no role in your life, right? And the guaranteed income is only one part of the reality that people need services, they need the right to housing, they need the right to health and education, they need their access to food and energy. And I think unless we're able to talk about that demand within that framework, there is a danger that we could get traction on one bit and not on the other. So I very much say we should be calling for interconnected demands around that. Thank you very much. So we're going to try and fit in at least one more bundle of questions. So Paul has said that he thinks change is unlikely to happen unless the 1% perceive it is in their own interests to address inequality and the destruction of the natural environment. So how can the narrative be changed to do this? I know that's a word you just mentioned there, Assad narrative. The second question is from Jen and she says, how would you make the case for more progressive and equalising policies in response to COVID to the current government? And the third question is, how would the role of the Bank of England need to change to begin addressing the issues of UK and indeed overseas inequality? And that question is from John. So Natasha, is it are we OK to come to you first on that? Yep, so I'll speak to the middle question about how you'd make the case to have more equal policies going forward. I think one of the biggest cases here is the fact that inequalities aren't staying the same. They're worsening now. So even just to go back to where we were before coronavirus, which wasn't the best day in terms of inequalities, we would need these progressive policies going forward. So I think that would be my main case to the current government and the current administrations. In terms of inequalities, I think there's a narrative around it just being, oh, we need to be nice to everyone by making things equal, but it's good for our economy if things are more equal. It's good for our economy if people can do the work that they're most suited to, if they have opportunities, if they're not having to rely on mentor and physical health services as much. So there's a case in terms of bringing back our economy and getting people back into work. We need to create opportunities for everyone. Shreya, would you like to come in? Yeah, so the first two questions are kind of related. I think there are elements of people on the right who do get the need for change, but sort of resist some of the means that the left proposes. So I think there is work there, there's potential there to build some allies, but I think in general, I'm not sure that we need to persuade the 1%. I think there are enough other people that we ought to be able to persuade people for whom it is absolutely in their interest to see a change in the system if it's they're not benefiting from the system. So I probably focus on that. And then quickly on the bank of England, I'm sure other people here will know a lot more about this than I do, but I think, yeah, I would concentrate more on the broader role of the government and the Treasury because I think that's where the main push towards a more equal system will come from. I think in answer to the question about the current government, look, there are some opinion polls that say 80% of the British people don't want to return to the back to the past, right? They want something different. So I think there is a possibility of a huge support out there. And I think for me, the question actually is a step back, which is how do we build power to force the government to address and take on the demands that we make? And that is a much deeper conversation that we don't tell, I think, a vision story. We haven't got a story that is compelling that we are confident. We have to be confident that sometimes we have way too many demands. We haven't converged on one of the critical transformational demands that we could build public support for. And I think there are. We all know that there are critical ones and sometimes we get lost in the weeds about those and without recognising that actually political transformation, as it's happened over the last century, hasn't come because we won over the 1%. It's actually when we force the 1% to have to address the demands of the many, right? In that kind of frame. And that's about the power of social movements. It's a power of connecting our latent power, whether it's the trade union movement with grassroots and economic justice movements, with civil society organisations, with faith organisations to create a much more powerful constituency, which is moving the anchor of the debate to a different place and then forces the government to have to respond. And I think that is way by far the more effective. And there are opportunities for us to do that globally, right? Next year, the UK is going to host the G7 and the COP26. There are possibilities for us to really put into effect what we all believe. We need intersectional responses. We need to build them power of movement of movements. But none of us are actually trying to do that as effectively as we need to do. And I think that's a challenge that we've got to step up to. And I agree with Shreya. For me, the focus isn't the Bank of England. Actually, it's the focus should be on the government and treasury because that is actually where power really lies. And there are lots of demands that we can make around them, right? We know already the fact that the government and all governments in the global north are talking about a green recovery, right? That's not because one day they woke up and said, we're going to make everything green. That is a reflection of the fact that the debate and how we built power around climate and forced it onto the political agenda. What we've got to do is be able to combine that with inequality. So if we were demanding like, there's got to be a duty on the UK government, treasury and the city of London of keeping temperatures below 1.5 from a fair share point of view and tackling global inequality, that would rip open government decision-making. It would rip open quite a lot in terms of government policy. So I think there are possibilities out there. We've got to be able to weave them together into something so that we're greater than the individual some parts. Fantastic, thank you. Treyon and Natasha are seeing lots of nodding as well. So I'm just wondering if you want to come in on any of that before I ask a final couple of questions. Not much to add, just I really agree with the idea of power and where that is. And like Treyon and Asad said, do we really need the 1% to change their opinion or if everyone else has power, would we be able to change things soon? So I'm just going to put three final questions there and just then ask our panellist to just answer the one or two as succinctly as you can that you feel you want to most. So the first is quite a broad one. What do you think about applying theories of degrowth as a solution to global inequalities and the climate crisis? The second is from Gail who says, from my own experience of working in multiple low wage jobs, I feel more strongly about low wages than I do about tax avoidance, but I hear complaints about tax dodging all the time and late about wages less often. Is there any argument to be made that higher wages create a stronger economy because the largest way the people then have more to spend? And finally, do we need parallel global institutions to the World Bank, IMF, World Trade Organization, which are not operating based on neoliberal principles? Is there any traction to do this? And that's from Kevin. So we've got just a final couple of minutes. So if any of the panellists want to speak as succinctly as you can on those questions, then we'd love to hear it. Thank you, Asad. Perhaps you could come in first. You're muted. So. Oops, sorry, I was just typing an answer just reminding that Frederick Douglass quote, quote, you know, the the renowned abolitionist who said, you know, power gives gives gives nothing without a demand and power give power and power can only be given up through struggle. And I think that for me is two or two of those key questions. I think the question about degrowth, I mean, I do think making arguments about well-being is important. Personally, I think the language around degrowth is where I'm more hesitant because when you're talking with people who are barely struggling even in this country and then saying this is all about less, you know, I don't think it works. I think we have to start talking about a narrative which is about better. You'll have a better life. You'll have warmer homes. You'll have happier lives. You'll be more, you know, and I think it's so I agree with the principle of, you know, it's not possible for us to have an economic model built on growth. If you look at what the OECD says, you know, we're at 80 billion tonnes of extraction of resources each and every year. Sustainable level is 50 by in the coming decades, we're going to be at 160 or 180 billion. It's just not sustainable. The only way it's sustainable is if at the bottom, the number of people with less gets more and more and more. And whilst we capture more and more of resource extraction, so I think there's an argument in terms of around that. I think the secretary, sorry, I forgot what the second question was, was in terms of global institutions of the World Bank. Look at the heart of it has to be about, you know, we know we have to fix the World Bank and the IMF. These are the Bretton Woods institutions which have become the architects of neoliberalism, right? And even today continue to force global size countries to be able to follow that they're edict. The UK is in a powerful position to be part of that demand and that demand has been coming from global size countries for years and years and years. So yes, we can't do this without either fixing the existing institutions or reimagining the new institutions that are needed. Thank you, Asa Treyir. I mean, I don't have loads to add to that. I'll just say that I completely agree with Gail that they're talking about low wages is really important and higher wages do lead to a stronger economy that works better for everyone. And I think that really helps to explain the economic difficulties that we've been seeing since the last financial crisis and that is something we should be talking a lot more about. Thank you. Natasha. Yeah, that's pretty much just going to say the same as Treyir just did and talk to Gail's point. I think there's a huge argument for increasing wages of people on those lowest wages and the crisis has highlighted the people in our society that we need the most. The people who are key workers, the people who are working in healthcare on the front line that can't just take time out of work and sit at home, that we need to keep going, and then those people aren't properly remunerated. So I think there's, I haven't seen much from any of the political parties about looking at that, but I think that's a real issue. And I think there's at least some public backing now towards paying those people what they're worth. And yeah, like you say, those people spend more on the economy, they'll also need to use services like the NHS and healthcare services, lest they'll be able to invest in their own development. So I think there could be huge benefits to that, that overall might save money rather than us needing to look at taxing people more to afford that. It's just maybe looking at things in the longer term rather than how much things cost in the immediate future. Thank you so much, Natasha. And thank you to all of our speakers who've answered five bundles of questions there. So you did fantastically on the spot. And I think that we've gained a huge amount from hearing all of that. And it's so clear that the impact that COVID is having on our society is really exposing the deep inequalities. And as Natasha says, there's more work to really understand how that's impacting different intersections of society. As Athad said, 120 million people by 2030 are likely to be pushed into extreme poverty by climate change. 26 people own the same amount of money as the poorest half. We have clearly a lot to do to rewire our global economy to stop the tendency towards ever increasing wealth inequality. And instead centering the right of everyone to live a full and healthy and happy life with a narrative that's actually good for everyone for economies to be more equal. So our first webinar a couple of weeks ago discussed how racism built our money and banking system. And the third webinar is going to happen in two weeks time, building back better with the magic money tree. So the event bright link is being shared in the chat right now and on the Facebook live stream. So we're going to just finish by saying a final big thank you to all of our speakers for all of the expertise and energy that you've brought today. And thank you to everyone who's joined us. Thanks so much. Bye everyone.