 Hello, good afternoon and welcome. My name is Neil Gray. I'm the member of the Scottish Parliament for Airdrie and Shots and also the convener of the Scottish Parliament's Social Justice and Social Security Committee. I would like to welcome you all to this special online edition of the Festival of Politics 2021 in partnership with the Parliament's Think Tank Scotland's Futures Forum. This afternoon's panel is titled Radical Solutions to Poverty, give everyone £5,200 and is held in partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University. We're delighted that so many people are able to join us online today and I look forward to hearing comments and questions from you as we get into our discussion. With one in four children in Scotland living in poverty and the vast majority within working households, is it now time to get radical and adopt a universal basic income? What other radical solutions are out there that would mitigate the detrimental effects of generations of poverty? This panel aims to address all the big questions in the next 60 minutes, so do stay with us. We're delighted that you are all able to join us to take part and I would encourage you all to use the event chat function to introduce yourselves, stating your name, your geographical location and pose any questions that you would like the panel to respond to. I am really pleased to be joined by our three panellists today in a lustrous panel, Professor John MacKendrick, who is a Scottish Poverty and Inequality Research Unit at Glasgow Caledonian University. I've had a lot of engagement with John in the past with those issues, so I'm really pleased to have John along today. We also have Wendy Hearty, basic income project manager of the steering group. Again, Wendy has done a lot of work in that area, so we're looking forward to her insight. We're also hoping to be joined by Russell Gunson, who is the director of IPPR Scotland, the Institute for Public Policy Research. There will be an opportunity for our online audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. If you would like to make a contribution, please enter them into the question and answer box. Make sure to state your name and where you are this afternoon, and I will get through as many as possible. However, I would like to begin by asking each of our panellists the first question to summarise concisely what your definition of a universal basic income is and how that could work in Scotland. I would like to come first to Professor John MacKendrick and then Wendy Hearty, please. Thanks very much, Neil Willough. It's an acronym overload. You've got UBI, UBS, MIG and you could maybe throw in LW and SSS. I'm sure we'll go on to all of them. However, the one that you've asked about is the universal basic income. It's a very straightforward idea in theory. We give people an income that's enough to cover the basics in life, and that would apply to every citizen. Some would suggest that, perhaps, the payment could vary by age. There could be a larger payment for adults and a smaller payment for children, but the thinking is that it would cover the basics. If we do that through one straightforward payment, it would go to individuals or, indeed, the individual's parent. Nice and simple. You asked me to keep it nice and simple, and I can do that, Neil. I can deliver something. You did indeed. Thank you very much indeed, John. Wendy, would you like to come in as well around your vision of what you would see a UBI looking like in Scotland and what your research work has shown you from the work that you've already been doing with the Steering Group? Thanks, Neil, and thanks, John. It's lovely to be here this afternoon. I agree with John. He covered the basics nicely, so I'm just going to reinforce that. I think that there's some key components of a basic income, and without those, they become something else, a different form of social security payment. Essentially, you're right, a UBI or a basic income is a regular payment that's made to individuals, not to households. It's a cash payment that's not payment-in-kind, it's not paid in vouchers or anything like that. People are free to do that as they will. But crucially for me, it's paid to absolutely everybody in the country, including to children, so it's always paid to the parent or the care. It's unconditional, so it's non-means-tested. There's not any conditions in terms of job applications or how you spend your time. There's not that intrusive means-tested aspect to it, so I think there's a few components of basic income for me that sets that aside from other types of social security that we're perhaps more used to in Scotland and in the UK. In terms of how I could see it working in Scotland, I mean clearly we'll probably go on to some of the challenges. I think I want to try and start with the more positives about what it might do in our society. The work that I've done and others in the steering group looking at the feasibility of undertaking a pilot in Scotland, which again reasons we'll go on to has not happened, we did look at the available evidence that's been published looking from other pilots that's been carried out in the world, and what that's found is that basic income could have really quite a transformative impact on some outcomes, particularly on employment outcomes, labour market health and social outcomes. However, there are a bit of a mixed bag, and essentially I think the reason for that is that basic income is really difficult to pilot, and usually what happens is that it's ended up being diluted in some form when it's been tested, or usually in terms of only being delivered to a certain bit of the population, so perhaps long term unemployed or particular geographical locality, for example. I think for those reasons, whilst it's a really intriguing proposition in terms of how we might address some of the issues we're seeing in Scotland, there's some real problems with rather uncertainties around how it might work in practice, both in terms of how do we actually do something like that within a social security system that's already set up, and some uncertainties about some of the impacts that it might have in terms of people's responses to it, and unintended consequences within the broader economy. So I think, like John says, it's a really simple idea, but in terms of the realities of undertaking such a transformative change to the type of social security that we have in Scotland, there's some real intricacies and difficulties and challenges around that. Sorry, not quite as concise as John, but... That's okay. That was very helpful, though, in setting out some of your work and where things are. I suppose I'll go back to you, Wendy, and then I'll bring John in, as well. Could you set out how you feel, particularly around poverty, whether or not you think a UBI, if we leave to one side the challenges, and we could come to that perhaps later, and I'm sure we'll get teased out on some of the questions from participants. Do you think that that has the potential to have the meaningful shift in addressing poverty that we're all looking to see in Scotland? Yeah, I think there's the potential there. The same has many policies. It boils down to how the policy is shaped, how it's implemented, and what other policy supports are around about it. So, for example, if a UBI was implemented in Scotland and it was implemented in a way that other basic services were stopped in order to pay for it, and the expectation is that, you know, if people are being provided with money, they'd then buy the services. I think that really wouldn't have the outcomes that we'd expect in terms of poverty alleviation. So, I think we need to be really clear that UBI is not a magic bullet, and it has to be sitting alongside a range of other support policies, like universal basic services and others. I think in terms of the impact that it might have on poverty, it would also depend on the level that it was set at. So, if it's set at a very low level, perhaps it might not have the impact that it would like to see. I think that the other thing as well is that what it might provide, that perhaps the current social security system doesn't, is provide a freedom for people to move in and out of work and to take some risk, perhaps, around setting up businesses that perhaps are a bit more difficult within our current social security system. Really, it's quite a risky business moving in and out of that social security system, where we find people getting caught up in the intricacy of it, and, like I said, the real risk is taking a chance on a job opportunity and perhaps not working out, or it being short term, or being not a secure 10-year contract, or taking a chance and setting up a business and then perhaps not working. I think something like a basic income perhaps gives a little bit of more freedom for people to experiment within the labour market, which is perhaps a bit more difficult in the current circumstances. The other thing to remember is that poverty is not just about how much money you've got in your pocket, it's about opportunities and freedoms and how you feel about yourself. There's evidence around the impact that has on people in terms of their mental health, having a conditions-based social security system. There are lots of different aspects that a UBI could have on poverty. I think that the main thing that needs to be balanced up with is the opportunity cost of paying for this type of policy versus a more targeted policy, where the spend that's available for government is targeting more individuals, families and communities that are living in poverty, as opposed to a universal payment. I'm not saying one's right and one's wrong, but I think that that's something that has to be in the mix of the debate around that type of policy. Thanks very much, Wendy. That, again, is very helpful. John, if I can bring you in here, something that Wendy touched on there, and we've got a question from the audience as well, Jo and Glasgow is asking, wondering why it should be £5,200, why not £6,000 or £5,000, for example. So could you set out where the £5,200 figure comes from, because that's been worked on, I know. What difference do you think that level could make and what would need to be done if there was a different level and what impact that could have? It's a crux of the issue. I wasn't responsible for the £5,200 figure, but my best guess is that £5,200 is £100 a week, and it's probably used as a demonstrative example rather than a carefully worked out what's needed. It's a really important question to ask, because if a universal income was set at £5,200, my best guess would be that poverty would increase. If we look at just now what we consider to be a poverty threshold, and the estimates just now of a poverty threshold for a single adult, so we're not even thinking about children, a single adult, we currently consider some to be living in poverty in Scotland if they have an annual income of less than £11,200. That's quite a bit above £5,200. If it was a very simplistic introduction of a universal basic income and there weren't complementary strategies to support the income of the very poorest, it could have the opposite impact than intended and it could increase poverty rather than decrease it. The question that you asked Wendy, what can impact would it have? There's three different answers depending on which could, should or will. Could it make a difference to poverty? Yes, it could if it was set at the right level. Could it make a difference to poverty? Maybe there might be other ways in which there are better strategies to introduce it. In the crux of the matter, will it make a difference to poverty that was introduced? Despite the fact that I'm an optimist Neil, my answer would be no. I don't think that those with the tools to make a difference have the political commitment or will to introduce a universal basic income at a level that would eradicate poverty to begin with or perhaps make a significant dent in it. That's really interesting, John, because I'll come on to political will in a second, because I think that that's really important. Around the 5200 figure, I think that this is where it comes into what actually we're talking about with the UBI, because certainly the models that I've seen around that level, you're still involving some level of additional social security. You've still retained an element of housing support or an element of disability support, which makes it a hybrid UBI, rather than a dedicated UBI. You've touched on it a wee bit there, but where do you think we would need to get to for an annual figure for us to be starting to address poverty and not have to include additional social security support so that you wouldn't have your disability or housing bolt-ons, if you like? This is where we begin to scare the living daylights out of people, because if we look at the thresholds that we have just now, they're considerably more than that 5200 figure, and it has to vary, because although the UBI goes to an individual, if we talk about the volume of money that would have to go to households, again, I'm just looking at the threshold number just now for a couple of two children aged 5 and 14. If you get less than £25,500, we consider that to be somebody who doesn't have the ability in that level of income to fully participate in life that they're not able to meet their basic needs, we consider you to be living in poverty, and that's an incredible sum of money to try and convince a public that that should be the single strategy that we use to provide social security. The idea of meeting everybody's basic needs, the idea of simplifying a system, the idea of allowing flexibility that people can have a security that they can, as Wendy says, maybe be entrepreneurial and try something different or take that seasonal job because seasonality of employment is another benefit for those that work seasonally. Lots of benefits that come from it, but the practicalities of it are extremely challenging. I'm not saying that it's not the right idea, full stop, I'm just saying that the implications of it are significant, but we should be ambitious. We never used to have a national health service, we never used to have a welfare state system. It's these big ideas that at the time would have shocked and horrored many in the country that created a very different nation that we're in today. Maybe it's about time that we started to be more bold and ambitious. Maybe it's time that we started to ask more of ourselves in terms of the type of society that we want to create, and at the very least, universal income is certainly worth looking at seriously to see whether it's not the silver bullet but the big contribution to transforming what we are. Wendy, from your work, leaving aside the challenges of political will, are there barriers to Scotland looking at the UBI right now? Yes, that's the short answer to that. If I might go back on the levels discussion, what we were proposing, the idea of the group that I was leading, we were looking at trying to set up a small pilot of it, because we wanted to test out this. As John pointed out, this type of policy is akin to setting up a national health service. We didn't pilot a national health service, we went for it way back when, given that we were starting there with nothing to a health care to NHS, we do have a social security system that's in place just now, and some would argue that it works well to prevent destitution. It has plenty of problems, and those are well documented, so we'll not get into that there, but we do have something in place. We're not starting from the ground up, so we were suggesting that piloting a basic income so that we can compare and contrast it with the current benefits of the match that would be important. To that end, what we proposed was piloting two different levels of a basic income, so one that broadly speaking matched, given the complexity of the current system, that broadly matched what people would get under the current system, so there would be different levels based on what age you were, et cetera. We also proposed piloting a higher level that would be pegged to what was minimum income standard, so what John mentioned, it's 11,000. We worked it out weekly, £213.59 for an adult would be the minimum income standard. We were proposing that we pilot it at two levels because obviously we want to see the impact of the extra income on households and individuals, but we know that generally that's a good thing. What we were interested in though was looking at the additional benefits of providing money to households and individuals in this way, in this unconditional way, so even if we weren't necessarily to put more money in people's pockets, taking the conditions away from that payment might actually have some benefits over and above increasing income. What we were proposing is that we would try and pilot it at two different levels so we could see the benefit of providing money in this unconditional way and also the benefit of providing a higher income. Leaving that aside, in terms of could we do that in Scotland right now? The short answer is no, and the reasons, the challenges for that are set out really clearly in the feasibility report that was published last year. Essentially, the reason why we couldn't do that and we were looking specifically at why the feasibility of a pilot rather than the feasibility of a policy overall. Essentially, there are some real institutional challenges in doing that, trying to pilot it alongside the current social security system. For a number of reasons, we can't take people completely out of the social security and tax system that we have just now because that has implications down the line. Essentially, our current social security system is built on a system of conditionality, and that is built into it. To be able to experiment with that conditionality would require quite significant change at the Department of Work and Pensions, and essentially at the Government level, we would need to allow that experimentation to happen. Even underneath that, there are IT challenges and a lot of the very technical things that I was really quite surprised about. In terms of Scottish Government doing it themselves, there are obviously issues around reserve powers that we are not able to do. We are not able to create social security payments that cut across what is currently provided by DWP. We cannot create new pensions, for example, either. In order to be able to pilot a basic income, it would really require the full support of DWP and HMRC, but essentially those are reserve powers to UK Government. That was some of the main challenges around undertaking a pilot in Scotland at the moment. That answers one of the questions around political will right now and will come to political will in the future shortly, I would hope. We have a couple of questions that have come in from the audience. Again, I encourage participants and people who are watching live to pop their questions in the Q&A box, and I will get through as many of those as possible. The first one comes from a name that I recognise, James Scotland, who is a modern studies teacher and teaches social inequalities and government responses to inequality. Her understanding is that one of the advantages of UBI is that it reduces the bureaucracy around means testing, thus allowing the money to be directed to the actual payment. My question flowing from that is, if you set the UBI at the right level, if you are reducing the social security bureaucracy, are you saving enough or part of the way towards being able to pay for a UBI, John? Probably in a better position having looked at the intricies of it, but any system that wastes money and administrative procedures is a good system to introduce. I think that the crux of the issue that is raised there is the means testing. In many ways, there are dignity issues about how our social security system currently operates, and we know the strong principles that the Scottish social security system is articulated at the start and looking for a very different approach. I am certainly not being part of the political hearer or making comments. That is my independent observation on the character of our social support systems. It is just that it is at the wrong tenor in the UK. There is almost an assumption in the UK that people who are presenting for social security are somehow at fault and somehow have to be kept in check and somehow must prove their entitlement. Those are problems, not just problems in terms of dignity. They actually do not marry up with the reality of people's lives. The quick answer that I would give to James Scotland is that, if there is money to be saved, it would be great, but even if there is not money to be saved, a more dignified system—a system that is not so stringent in means testing and the conditionality—is the right system. That is the type of system that we should be looking forward to. John Wendie, do you think that you might have more detail to add to that? I think that, in essence, the problem is that that interaction is not with the current system that we have just now in terms of the underlying principles of conditionality and means testing. They are there in legislation that underpins that. In order to even be able to undertake even a very small-scale pilot, we would probably need primary legislative change for the UK Government to even do that. I am not making a party political statement here. Is there any sort of political statement? That is a matter of fact. The legal constitution of our current social security system makes it quite difficult to make any changes to some of those things. In terms of the savings, of course, reducing bureaucracy is a good thing not only for cost savings but for individuals that are interacting with that system. It is not just about the dignity aspect. It is about navigating the system in a way that you get access to everything that you are entitled to. We know that we have under claiming of our current benefit system, and there are many reasons for that. I think that there is also quite a lot of stress that sits alongside a conditional system when people know that their benefits can be removed from them for a period of time. Essentially, it is destitution built into the system. I think that that is also potentially a benefit of basic income. Going back to something that you mentioned at the start, Neil, is that there is always going to be additional needs that are over and above these basic needs that a basic income might provide for. There is additional costs that go along with a lot of difficulties. You might be living in an area where there is very high housing costs as well. A basic income is never going to be able to meet all of the needs of individuals and the complexities of people's lives and their geographical area. Even with a very simplified system like a basic income, there is always going to be an additional layer of more targets that we support required. I am saying that particularly in the case of people living with disability, where they do have additional financial needs, and also perhaps in terms of childcare as well. That was the other thing in addition to housing needs. There is additional things. To be able to adequately support people in the complexities of their lives, there is probably always going to need to be an element of means testing in some way, shape or form. We can probably do it better than we do just now, and, like John Sayes, there is an eye to dignity and respect for individuals in the way that they interact with that system. Thanks, Wendy. I have a comment from Archana, who says that the lack of dignity also affects self-esteem and mental health. There is shame associated with benefits, and that touches on some of the points that you are making there, John. It also leads me to the next question that we have got from the audience who are watching live. Again, a reminder, if you have any questions, pop them in the Q&A box on the right hand side of your screen. This question is actually from one of your students, Leanne, Glasgow Caledonian University student. Would it not be better to look at the benefits system overall and so-called legacy benefits? Universal credit can constantly change, as opposed to the original legacy benefits. Universal credit appears to have caused more upset with the constant changes than anything else. Are you nodding, Wendy? I will come to you first. Sorry, I am laughing at something—I am not laughing at that—absolutely and deadly serious, but the fact that we still have people in Scotland on legacy benefits and the majority on universal credit posed additional complexity for us trying to perhaps experiment with something like a basic income. If we took people off legacy benefits and put them on a basic income within the pilot, they could not then return to legacy benefits. They had to then go into the universal credit system, so there were some additional complexities there that we faced in terms of trying to do this type of research. In terms of the benefits or not of universal credit, I think that probably John is more well-versed with that, but I think that one of the problems is the lack of certainty around income funds. It keeps up evidence around the impact of economic insecurity on people on their mental health and physical health down the line. That is certainly one thing. I am a public health professional, so my eye is always on what is the health impact on people's particular mental health impact. That is one of the areas that is probably a bit stronger in terms of some of the evidence of serious basic income experiments that have been done worldwide. All of the issues with those experiments aside, they are usually pretty clear in terms of the positive impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of participants for a number of reasons. I think that that is really important. It is certainly something that we should look at in terms of our current social security system. John, to follow on from that. First of all, I have got to clarify. That is not a plant, Neil Leann can think for herself. She is not averse to keeping her lecturers and professors right if they go wrong. It is a genuine question. A couple of answers, as I said, to approach this. I think that it is interesting because the whole idea of universal credit was meant to be transformative. It was meant to be a new idea to simplify the benefit system. As we know, it very quickly unraveled because the way in which it was introduced did not deal with some of the realities of life and the level at which the money was available was not dealing with the problem. That idea about fundamental change is something that we tried, or at least a step towards a fundamental change that did not work. It comes back again to that it is a good idea to be fundamentally changing our welfare system. It is not working well, but it is a good idea if and only if everything is in place to allow that change to happen. I think that the reality is when Wendy has pointed out for a variety of reasons that is really difficult just now and politically impossible just to introduce in Scotland on its own. In the meantime, in the short term, given the reality of people's lives, we have to make the current benefit system work better. We absolutely have to. That is not to say that if we get that to work better that we should, at some stage, move towards looking at a minimum income guarantee, the idea that we have in Scotland or universal basic incomes. It is not to say that we should not move towards that, but that is absolutely priority to us now, to get that system to deliver social security, to deliver what it is meant to do, and it is not at the current time. Quick answer to Leanne is that we need to get the current system working better, but that does not mean that if we begin to get it working a little bit better, that we should not be looking to those bigger ideas that would be truly transformative in terms of what we are. I suppose that students watching for others that are interested in this area are looking at the difference between what we mean by social security, welfare and the different terms that we have there. That is really important as we look to address poverty, but going back to the comment from Archana about the impact that struggles with the social security system as we are hearing from comment, as we are hearing from yourselves, is not necessarily addressing need at the moment and the implication that that has on poverty and the physical, emotional and health implications that that has. Wendy, can you touch on the impact that poverty has on people's well-being, on their physical, emotional and mental health state? I think that everyone sitting in the virtual room knows that it is much more than just having enough money or not to meet the basic needs, although that is just so important. If you do not have enough money, you have to make choices between eating your home, clothing your kids, eating healthily or otherwise. It impacts on every single bit of your life. You are having to perhaps make decisions about travelling to work or for leisure pursuits or being able to participate in things that all of the things that people are being bombarded with and messages about what you should be doing to look after yourselves and to live a healthy life. There are so many financial barriers put in the way of people being able to do that, but more over than it just being, John has already spoken about it. It is a dignity thing. It is about the shame of not being able to participate in those ways and not being able to have your family participate in things that you see others around about doing. The impact of poverty is just so far-ranging and intergenerational. It is not something that stops just with you, it impacts on your kids and the next generation in terms of both the physical stature of your kids being—had the right nutrition to grow the way that they might have otherwise and to have the social life and educational life. I know that there are lots of features online. The attainment gap is so clearly linked to poverty and the ability to have that enriched home environment and to partake in all the opportunities that are perhaps available at school. It impacts on every single area of your life. We have a fundamental cause of health inequalities. That socio-economic gradient that we see in Scotland is intrinsically linked to the poor health record that we have in Scotland and the health inequalities. We have huge gaps in both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy related to that socio-economic gap ingredient that we have in Scotland. Tackling poverty is the number one priority, really, if we want to impact on our social justice outcomes or health outcomes. Tackling poverty has to be the absolute root of that. You are nodding along to that, there, John. It is getting sore, how much nodding I am doing as Wendy was speaking there. The two-by-priorities at Scotland have gotten, as two-by-priorities going forward, is tackling climate change and tackling poverty. I have absolutely no doubt about it. Both of those are equally important. There is a fusion of issues, which is for another debate or another day, about how those issues are not contradictory, but must complement as we craft a better Scotland. Wendy is right that the impacts of poverty go far beyond pounds and pens in people's pockets. I have carried throughout my career a quote from an interview that I had very early on. It was up in Murray with a lone parent who talked about treating herself from time to time by getting herself a nice bar of soap and having a bath. That really did hit me hard that the different types of life that people lead. An understanding of how life is very different, the horizons are very different, opportunities are very different for many groups. I think that for a long time many in Scotland have been able to shut themselves off from that. Last year, I brought it into focus that we could not because it was becoming to the fore that people were struggling to feed themselves. We began to realise that the core public services that we have got, our school meals service, for example, were fundamentally important in allowing people to exist and never mind live. Last year, I brought it into focus, which is clear from Granton and Spade, the question of why citizens' income is becoming a discussion now. I had a lot of thinkings being run for it for a long time, but what happened over the last 18 months or so is that we began to realise that the fundamental problems that we have are pretty significant. It is easy to throw out a number of millions of people living in poverty, and we suddenly had to shut off from it. Last year, we began to see things differently. We began to realise that things could and should work, and that far too many of our fellow citizens—which comes back to another point that we should pick up with one of the others—are citizens and residents. Far too many of our citizens and residents are not living a good life because our social support systems are failing them. In that vein, given that living in poverty is incredibly stressful and that constant stress is known to adversely affect cognition, if a UBI works, how do you see a UBI affecting mental health, Wendy? I think that I mentioned earlier that that was some of the probably clearer evidence from the work that has been done where basic income or basic income-type pilots have been done elsewhere. The first thing that it does is remove that constant underlying stress that you have of this social security payment could be withdrawn from me. For a start, that is a really basic one that you are not having to meet in this current climate. Over the last 18 months, I have got more difficult and more difficult. If you are living in an area of low job density and you are having to meet a conditionality work contract—I cannot remember what it is—you may have already applied for all the jobs that are available in your area. There are some really basic things about it, not just about people's willingness to take a job or to take a job that they like. It is about what is available in your area. We know that there are some real regional inequalities in job density in Scotland. It is not only about the number of jobs that are available, but the right types of jobs. Is it what people in that area are skilled up to do? We will get into all the discussions about economic regeneration and bringing business into areas, but what you end up doing is bringing in the labour as well, instead of it being a local community benefit. I think that there are lots of different aspects that are basic income could impact beneficially on people's mental health. I think that there is more that we can do within the current benefit system to try to improve that. For me, fundamentally, what it does is open up horizons for people. Things that would perhaps be closed down just now with the current conditionality rules. Someone might decide that I want to go back to college and learn to learn something to try to improve the job prospects down the line. Yes, that might see them taking out of the labour market for a year, but ultimately they will have a better outcome at the end of that. That might not be a possible outcome for them just now within universal credit. I guess for me, it is about opening up opportunities perhaps. I think that the security that you talked about there, Wendy, is one of the key attractions that many proponents of UBI put forward as being the key reason for them to think that it would be a useful thing to do in terms of going reskill to move on, to be entrepreneurial, which you have talked about already, to be creative, to have time to work in the creative industries and to volunteer as well and to potentially recognise the work of unpaid volunteers. You touched on an area there, Wendy, around labour market, which is both topical and touched on a question from Darren Wallace in Glasgow, John. That question is about how would the implementation of a UBI impact on labour shortages? That is one of the key questions that get posed about whether or not a UBI would depress the employment prospects and the prospects of employers to take people on. What do you think? There is a lot of myths about employment. There is a myth just now that somehow the welfare system is a great disincentive for many, many people to enter the world of work. We do not get the full return when we return to work from the welfare system. It would be illogical for some people in social security just now to move into work because they would lose too much. I do accept that, but it is greatly overstated. What happens from those cases is extrapolated to the whole welfare system as if there is a real disincentive to work in the whole of the welfare system, which is not the case. Likewise, in terms of the UBI, it is overstated the potential of that to open up the world of work, because it is not a problem that is as big as people make out in the first place. Going back to the tail end of your response to the last question, it provides security for people to be more creative, to be more entrepreneurial, to have that security that would allow them to not be forced into labour market options but to choose labour market options. My son is a freelance community arts, as he is saying. He loves working with young people. He loves working in different ranges of projects, but he moves from job to job. He has had a horrible couple of months because work has not been available. The risk is that you are going to lose somebody like that to the sector of the talent and passion because they cannot sustain that type of career. I am not saying that UBI would be good because it would allow poor employment practices to persist, but at least to give him a bit of breathing space to sustain that, because I have a bit of security. I am not desperate to leave it behind. To me, there are lots of advantages in terms of the labour market that Wendy has picked up on. It allows that labour market debate to be more of a choice for people rather than a forced option, which has been forced into the labour market because needs are such that you have to enter it. That is simply not a good thing. Wendy, a question that is probably for you, given your study on that. A question from Murtada. Is the proposed UBI for citizens or for residents? Who would get it under the models that you have looked at? I will hold my hands up and say that we fudged that ever so slightly, because that is very much a political discussion. We did, and it was not in our original business plan, but we ended up spending quite a lot of time looking at some of the ethical issues around a basic income, particularly around piloting a basic income. The very issue raised by Murtada about what is the eligibility for a basic income was something that we discussed but did not come to a conclusion on. It is a particularly tricky one about how to decide when someone is eligible and around citizenship, and how do we define that? There is a lot of rhetoric around the current social security system about folks coming to the UK to receive benefits, and I think that that argument or misperception might only be magnified when looking at a basic income. It is something that we would require probably a bit more of a public debate and a political debate around how we set those conditionality rules. I think that it was not really for us as researchers or public health or local government officers to make that call, but we raised that among a whole range of other potential ethical issues that would need to be discussed. If I may just go back a wee bit to that whole debate around the labour market, it is something that we looked at quite closely in the basic income study that we did. We know that it is one of the biggest arguments made against the basic income, but all that we do is encourage folks to withdraw from the labour market. In terms of the research that we have looked at from what had been done before, we certainly found that wholesale folks did the not withdraw from the labour market. That is not what we saw. We saw quite a mixed picture. I think it does get down to some discussions we need to have about what kind of society we want to live in. So where we did see folk withdrawing at least for a period of time from the labour market, it was very specific groups of folk. Usually women with young children, so families, would spend more time in the homes, spend more time with children when they were young. Now we could get into a whole debate around gender roles and whether that's good, but we need to look at what other supportive policies would be around there to encourage dads to be able to take that role. We did see some withdrawal, temporary withdrawal from the labour market. Now whether we see that as a positive or a negative depends on where you come from, kind of your view of that. We also saw in some of the studies young people staying in education for longer before taking their first steps into the labour market, so that would have been seen by some, depending on your viewpoint, as a positive or a negative. Actually for some groups we saw them increasing their hours because we were perhaps able to spend some time getting a better job or something that they enjoyed more or what you felt more productive in. So there was a real mixed bag around the impact of basic income on the labour market. Now how that would play out in Scotland, it's not entirely clear. We have some very specific issues around the labour market which people will be well aware of. Particularly just now in some sectors we have a real shortage of labour. Now a basic income, I don't think necessarily would have a particular positive or negative impact on that given some of the issues around lorry drivers and training and particularly the conditions around folks working. I know John mentioned that we wouldn't want to see a basic income supporting poor labour practice and poor workforce practices. So we wouldn't want it, for example, to become some sort of support to a low wage economy or to support those kinds of labour practices. So we would really need to have an eye on the other policies that were round about it in terms of employment law and other policies as well. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around what it might do in the labour market. Yeah, debunking the misconception around the labour market criticisms was very interesting to hear and also the point that you were making around the misconceptions that are around people coming to the UK in order to get access to the generous social security system. That could be quite quickly debunked when you compare the generosity of the UK system to some of our European neighbours, particularly when you look at as a proportion of average earnings. We've got another question here from Peter and Edinburgh, perhaps briefly from yourself, Wendy and then also from John. Have such systems been tried or even adopted anywhere else in the world and if so, with what level of success? Yeah, so Peter, there has been a number of different studies done and we can take learning from different things. So we've probably been aware of some of the studies that have been done. So there's a pilot of sorts, the basic income in Finland recently and in Canada, the Netherlands. There's a number of different pilots going on in the United States. There's been experiments with basic incomes far back in the 1970s and probably even before that, but in terms of published literature, there's quite a lot written as well. We've seen some pilots in other countries in low income, low-income countries, all with varying degrees of success, but crucially all with varying, varied models and very different levels of income. Some of them in response to different things. So there was an Iranian subsidy that was created, that was a basic income of sorts, so there had been some subsidies around some basic food stuffs that were being withdrawn. There was a basic income type payment made to the households to make up for that, but given the other economic pressures, it very quickly became a very small amount of money just because of inflation in the country. There's been lots of different types of studies that have been done that have looked at basic income or other policies that have essentially worked sort of in the same ways of basic income. So in Alaska, there's a dividend scheme where there's an annual payment made to individuals in Alaska that works sort of as a basic income and there's been lots of studies done around that. Also in some areas in America where there's been casinos built on reservations, so native American casino dividends as well. Again, the way that they are structured has given a rise to some quite interesting impacts as some of those types of things have given a rise to very big annual payments for some individuals that kind of give us mixed responses in terms of outcomes, particularly health outcomes. You might see, for example, an increase of risk-taking behaviour after a big payment. In the casino dividend studies, what happens with the young people's payments is that they put in a bank account and they get access to it at a certain age and it can run in multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. We actually see an increase in mortality after receipt of these payments, so there can be some very specific types of outcomes depending on the way that the basic income or the intervention is set up. Obviously, that's quite different from what we'd be looking at in Scotland, so you would really design your intervention based on what outcomes you were trying to achieve. Like I said earlier, what's probably quite stark and is quite similar across the different types of studies are the labour market interventions. Sorry, labour market outcomes are perhaps not what the myth would suggest, and there are usually quite clear outcomes and benefits on mental health of participants. Lots and lots of studies and there are reports out there. I can put some links in the chat afterwards if you want to look at that. That would be wonderful for Wendy. That would be great. Thank you very much. I am conscious of time. The question from Claire and Granton and Spea about why do you think the discourse about universal basic income has entered public discussions recently? Is it because the current system is so bad or the payment has been made during the pandemic? I think that John largely answered that, unless the two of you have got something specifically that you'd want to say in addition, but we've got a few meaty questions on top of that that I would look to get into. I'm conscious that, with nine minutes to go, we haven't even touched on how that could be paid for, the impact on the taxation system. My next question is a bit of a hybrid in that regard. John Glasgow is asking what the panel's thoughts on Andrew Yang's proposal during the 2020 election to give $1,000 to each American adult every month, which is close to the report from the New Economics Foundation, which suggested £200 a week and with no means testing, but if people earned over £30,000 a year, it could be clawed back the following year. So, looking at an element of means testing, looking at an element of how it could be paid for, John, what do you reckon to those? First of all, the idea from Andrew Yang during the US elections and also the idea of using the tax system in our years to recoup some of that money to those that maybe don't need it? I think that the basic principle of being Yang's idea is to give people money when they need it, so the basic idea is good, it's okay. The idea of pulling it back is highly problematic, and it doesn't really deliver the best of what a universal system would be, so that means that it's not ideal. Back to the customer techniques, I also asked a question about whether it would not just be a subsidy for the rich, and can bundling that together with that question not necessarily? If UBI was crafted in the right way, the higher income tax would be paid. Yes, it might get £5,200 if we stuck with that figure, but it would be paying more than £5,200 to claw it back if it was designed properly. The question that Wendy was asked answered previously about learning from other countries, and I'm not just trying to create more work for Wendy over the years. We have to think about the context, we have to think about what we want here in Scotland, just because it worked or didn't work elsewhere, doesn't mean that it's going to work or not going to work in Scotland. We have to think about what type of country we are, what we want and how it would be designed in a way that could work. Unfortunately, there is no answer that is definitive. It's maybe it could work if we decide to implement it in the right way. The decision about whether we implement it in the right way comes back to what type of country we want. To be one that is more egalitarian and is not punitive but offers opportunity and doesn't create barriers that don't need to be there. Again, I've got to link back to Martada and give a punter's response to Martada's question rather than an expert. Is it for citizens or residents? I don't want to live in a country where a basic income is only for the citizens, I want to do it for the residents. That's a personal opinion, and it's something about what this universal basic income is. We call it what it's trying to achieve, it's trying to achieve a country that provides security for all. I don't think that it's credible for a system that would seek to provide security for all to leave out some people that happen to be living in our country that actually are in pretty perilous conditions. You know, you're a silent seeker's refugees, so if it comes in, when it comes in, I want it to be a resident's income rather than just a citizen's income. That's purely a personal opinion. Wendy, turn into another question from Jim Scotland. Again, this kind of, I suppose, is going to be caveated by what John's just said there, that there are no definitive answers right now, but another positive impact Jim is saying of the basic income is in reducing gender inequality. Single parents are more likely to be female affecting employment also in the study done in America during Nixon's presidency. The reason it was not pursued was that it increased the level of divorce rates when we're more likely, more no longer financially dependent on abusive relationships. Can you comment further on the gender impact of UBI, Wendy? Yeah, I mean it's really interesting that that's picked up because we looked at that and particularly myself and my colleague Marcia Gibson at Glasgow University when we were looking at the previous studies that have been done and that's why I think it's really, really important to be clear about what outcomes you're trying to achieve and what outcomes you're measuring at the start. So what happened in that experiment in the 1970s was that there was an analysis done that looked at divorce rates and, you know, found its force went up and that, indeed, that kind of killed the policy stone dead in that particular political climate. Subsequent analysis was done, found sort of after the studies finished, found that actually the divorce rate hadn't gone up after all. So there was a political decision based on some flawed research there. In terms of the gender impact, again, I think it's something that we would want to have an eye to if we were to pilot or implement it in Scotland. I think it could, it could be beneficial, it could be detrimental. So one of the things that we are kind of aware of is that it could reinforce gender roles particularly around caregiving and child care because it would kind of take pressure off that allow people to look after young children, look after elderly parents, but would we want to be reinforcing that gender role? I'm not sure that we would, but I guess for me then what comes down to what other policies in place around it that allows those responsibilities to be shared. I can see just in the comments about people being able to leave abusive relationships and indeed that might be the case. Obviously we know that financial abuse can happen in multiple ways. Even if the payment is made to that individual, it doesn't necessarily mean that they would always have direct access to it. We need to be careful about how that was constructed and works that were in place for folks in that kind of relationship, that kind of abusive situation. So I think it's not really clear what the impact, the gender impact, would be, but I think it's something that we would need to build into any piloting so that we were measuring the right things and looking at the right things and designing it in a way that would achieve the outcomes that we're interested in. Thanks very much, Wendy. I've got a final question, conscious of the fact that we're due to stop at 2, but I suspect that we might go slightly over. As briefly as possible, please. Would Farm hire modern studies class? Thank you very much for participating, folks. We wanted to know if you think that the UBI will help to close the attainment gap in schools, especially gaps caused by the pandemic when lots of young people didn't have access to the ICT they needed and a safe place to work. 45 seconds, John and Wendy. John, first, please. No, it won't do that. We shouldn't expect that universal basic income to solve every single challenge that Scotland has. What we need in terms of the attainment gap is the Scottish attainment challenge version 2, which has been crafted just now, to be much more effective than the Scottish attainment challenge version 1. It will perhaps make an element of a difference in that families are better resourced and better able to support their children's education, but much more has to be done if we want to narrow that attainment gap. It goes way beyond putting more pounds and pens in somebody's pocket, despite the fact that it's really important that we need to do more. Wendy? Just to take a slightly more positive view, while I don't disagree with John, absolutely more has to be done in terms of the structures and schools and policy to oppose that attainment gap. I think there is a potential for basic income to not only help to provide the more enriched environment at home, but also to reduce that stress, the stress on parents and on the household. I think that that does feed over into how kids are able to perform at school and how parents are able to support kids. I think there is the potential for there to be a positive element of basic income in terms of attainment. However, it's going to be a small part of it. Like John said, there's much more specific part of the work that needs to be done there. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this afternoon. I think that it's been fascinating. We've touched on so much in terms of UBI, in terms of anti-poverty work and a number of other areas linked to it. If they're looking to give each of you a minute to just to summarise where you think we are, some of the things that we've discussed, if you would like, before we draw the meeting to a close. First of all, I'll ask Wendy if you've got anything that you'd like to summarise and then John. I think what I would say is that it's great that, in Scotland, we're having these debates by radical approaches to tackling some of the problems that we have and that we have the opportunity to pose some of these more radical solutions. We've seen some of the challenges around doing that. What I'm really pleased to say is that the work that we did around exploring the feasibility of a basic income pilot didn't stop at a report describing all the challenges. It has been absolutely taken on board by the Scottish Government and working with that and the potential for more radical solutions. It's very much feeding into the current debates and the current work around the minimum income guarantee. It's going to be a long road to changing our social security system in Scotland to provide that real security that we want to see for our residents in Scotland. I'm really pleased to have been part of that journey and very much hope that we continue to be part of that. Thank you very much, Wendy John. Thank you, Neil. I'm going to do the unpopular thing and praise the politician because you've managed, Neil, to allow us to answer every question that was posed by a very engaged audience and thank the audience for that as well. Back to the question then, looking forward, I think there's a long term and a short term. As Wendy said, it's right that we're looking for these transformative ideas about the country that we want to become. It's a big but. We aren't able to introduce universal basic income right now so we need to use the tools at our disposal more effectively right now to address the challenges that people in Scotland are facing right now. Thanks very much, T-Bo. I actually have to correct you, John, even though you're praising me. There was a question in the chat box there from Pauline in West Lothian. It's something that would have really liked us to engage with coming, as I do from Orkney, around whether we think a UBI would begin to affect birth rates or depopulation in rural areas. What this has shown us is that there is a huge engagement in the issue around poverty, around the ideas that we're looking to discuss to address poverty. I think there is a unanimity across people that are engaged in this area, including yourselves, around the need to address poverty. The fact that we're discussing potential ideas as radical as UBI would be is heartening and very helpful for our public discourse on where we should be. I want to thank both Wendy and John for their contributions. Those who have been watching live and posed questions really appreciate your time this afternoon. I would also like to thank Glasgow Caledonian University for the partnership that is working today. Obviously, I thank our panellists Professor John MacKendrick and Wendy Hardy for your time as well. I take this opportunity before you all go to remind you that, later on today, we have discussions on education's role in big building a sustainable society at 5 o'clock. Over the weekend, we'll also be discussing everything from fast-fasting to a just transition, diversity in Scottish politics and climate action. I hope that you can join those discussions around the festival of politics as well. Thank you very much indeed, everybody, including the Scottish parliamentary team, for making sure that this event went smoothly today. Thank you very much.