 Good morning and welcome. I'm Siobhan Brown, MSP convener of the Covid-19 Recovery Committee, and I'd like to welcome 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 morning's panel is titled The Covid-19 Decade, understanding the long-term societal impact and its held in partnership with the David Hume Institute. We're delighted that so many people can join us online today and we look forward to hearing your comments and questions from you as we get into our discussions. We're here to discuss how the decade ahead will still be defined by Covid-19 as the social, economic and cultural effects of the pandemic continue to report effect. This is especially true when it comes to exacerbating pre-pandemic inequalities. So who and how will we rebuild society in new ways that address these health and social inequalities? And will policymakers and local and regional and national governments have the vision or the collaborative spirit to overcome the scale of the challenges ahead? This panel aims to address all these questions in the next 60 minutes or so, so please stay with us. We're delighted that you're able to join us and take part and I encourage you all to use the event chat function to introduce yourselves, dating your name and your geographical location and pose any questions you'd like the panel to respond to. I'm very pleased to be joined by our three panellists today, Professor Dominic Abrams, Vice-President of Social Science of the British Academy, Tlat Ykube, Consultant for Royal Society, Edinburgh Post-Covid-19 Futures Commission, and Susan Murray, Director of the David Hume Institute. Welcome everybody this morning. There will be an opportunity for our online audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. If you'd like to make a contribution, please enter the question and answer box. Make sure you state your first name and where you are this morning and we'll get through as many questions as possible. However, I would like to begin by asking each of our panellists to summarise very concisely what is your personal understanding of where the UK is in terms of the social, economic and cultural effect of the pandemic on society. I'll come first to Professor Dominic Abrams and Tlat Ykube and then Susan Murray. Allow us Professor Abrams to outline your thoughts please. Thank you very much, Yvonne. It's nice to be here and I should probably explain I'm no longer the Vice President of Social Sciences in the British Academy but after doing that I then chaired this review which is called The Cove of Decade which contains a lot of the information about the thinking about what might happen ahead. The academy really identified nine areas of long-term impact from the pandemic and these span things like the impacts on the way that communities work, impacts on the levels of public trust in different institutions such as government and the NHS and so on, widening geographic inequalities, exacerbated structural inequalities, worsening health outcomes, this is a long list isn't it, nine things that's been offered through, importance of mental health growing and changing pressure on revenue streams in the economy, sustainable future really and the role of education and skills in getting through all this but I think the important thing to come out of all this is that the effects are going to continue and to reverberate and to develop over time and it is a long-term effect not a short-term one although we all see the short-term ones but the deeper ones will be longer term. Thanks Dominic. Can I come to Tlat Ykube please? Thank you Yvonne, thank you. I agree a lot with what Professor Dominic Abrams has just said there. From my perspective the biggest impacts that we see now and we will continue to see over the next decade is the exacerbating of inequalities. Before Covid-19 hit we already knew that Black, Asian minority ethnic communities had particular difficulties in when it comes to employment, income, access to education and experience inequalities, the same for disabled communities, women, LGBT communities, rural communities, where there are inequalities, those were exacerbated by Covid-19 and how we respond needs to have an inequalities lens attached to it. We can't pursue policy the way that we always have. We have an opportunity now and we must take that opportunity to put people before profits and identify that profit making needs to be for the social goods, needs to be for a larger proportion of the UK than it ever has before. Otherwise what we will see are deepening inequalities rather than the tackling of inequalities that many strategies from the Fair Work Convention to the child poverty targets that we have in Scotland will not be met because we are dealing with a second crisis that was unexpected but we were already on the back foot of as a consequence of deep, systemic inequality. What we need to do going forward is not just tackle inequality from the top down but from the bottom up, which is to ensure that communities and people are participating as equal co-producers or as partners in the decisions that we make so that they are fit for purpose for their lives. Thank you, Talia. Can you come to Susan Murray, please? Hi, everyone. Thank you for inviting me here today. It's a privilege to be part of the Festival of Politics. Just to build on what the previous two panellists have said, it has definitely exacerbated inequalities. Those with resources throughout the pandemic have been more able to consolidate those and able to spend money to meet their needs. Those without have found it much harder and their costs have risen. We have all seen that through the likes of schooling. If you are already struggling with, for instance, data inequality in your household, it was very difficult to have school. What the David Hume Institute has been doing, we are a small think tank based in Edinburgh, but we have done the largest intergenerational research over about this time last year. We started talking to over 5,000 people across Scotland. We did that in very different ways because we thought that not everyone would be able to engage in the same way. We supported people to learn how to use technology with trusted advisers because we knew that we weren't trusted in communities to go in and say, this is how you use Zoom, this is how you engage. What we found is that we were able to reach people through technology that would never have come to a round table event or discussion in a community hall because they would not have crossed a threshold. We had people taking part in discussions that had oxygen cylinders next to them and other people that were afraid to leave their homes. We were able to reach and hear voices that would never usually get hired in a policy discussion. That was a real opportunity. That is something that I think lots of organisations have learned throughout Covid and we need to take that forward with us. What people told us when we spoke to them, and we did survey work to test what we were hearing in the standard way using omnibus surveys, as well as working with partners like the Children's Parliament, the Youth Parliament and U3A, which for those who do not know is the University of the Third Age, but it is now just known by its acronym. People told us of all ages, there was a clear common message. People wanted to be actively kind. Covid had told us that kindness was really important and they wanted to see more of that. They wanted to take more and faster action to support nature and the environment because we all saw that people that, with access to a garden or with access to safe green space coast of the house, were much more able to handle looking after their well-being throughout the pandemic and throughout the various lockdowns. The third thing that is really important to the economy and post-Covid recovery is people told us that they were making more conscious choices with their own money and they wanted governments to be doing the same. That is thought of long-term impact. As we come out of Covid and the exacerbated effects of Brexit and Covid together, we have got so many labour market changes, we have got so many changes to the economy and things that people have maybe been saying for a long time but just dismissed as perhaps in years gone by maybe experts were not listened to or some people felt that they did not necessarily know what they were talking about. People are talking about food security and supply chain issues. They are now front of everyone's mind because that idea of just-in-time, as soon as there is something in the system that makes the system less resilient, we are all talking about resilience in systems. If we squeeze systems so hard that there is not any resilience, just like people, those systems collapse. That is something that we need to think about going forward. Thank you, Susan. If I will just stay with you Susan, if I can, just on a more optimistic note, would it be true to say that we have also seen areas of strength and resilience and creativity and innovation emerge during this time? Yes, definitely. One of the things that we have noticed is the rise of micro communities. You have heard for years people talking about doing things at community level and you hear local governments talking to people in communities, but they are often defined by other people. Throughout Covid people defined their own community, whether it was a street or a neighbourhood or even a block of flats. People came together and quite often using technology like WhatsApp or the old-fashioned way of knocking on your neighbour's door and standing back to make sure that you were not transferring germs. People looked after each other in a way that maybe had not come through before because we were all rushing around quite so much. One of the good things is that people telling us that they wanted more kindness in their lives. The sense that Covid gave us to pause was something that we maybe all need to think. How do we take that good that came out of the pandemic? Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Susan. Dominic, did you want to comment on that? I completely agree with everything Susan has just said, but maybe to amplify it as well. I mean, we did some research involving about 9,000 people over eight ways during the pandemic and looked at the role of these things like community involvement, neighbourhood activity and all of the rest. One of the interesting findings from that was that there were five areas in England where the government had, two years earlier, invested in social cohesion. Those five areas, which are places like Blackburn and Walsall, actually faredd better. The social fabric that had been created, which was really in partnership between communities and local government mostly. The fabric that had been created did indeed provide support and people were more actively engaging, they were volunteering more, they sustained closer connections with those that they already knew. I think there is a lot of evidence that indeed a lot of the strength, the fabric of society, if you like, is on the ground. It's not at the top in government. I think we have learned that we have had the ability to mobilise that capacity. Then communities and localities and neighbourhoods have really done much better. The difficulty that we now face is actually it turns out we don't have a very good structure for mobilising that capacity. There is a lack of clear strong connection between what's happening at national levels and what's happening much more locally. We need to build a much better, closer, more effective and dynamic way of working together. The other thing I think that's probably quite notable, because there are large geographic inequalities both within localities and across them, is actually to get people to have some concern, not just to be kind to one another and their friends, but also to think about the next door neighbourhood, the next door area, the rest of the country, if you like, so actually getting better connectedness, because one of the things that happened following the general election 2019 and all the Brexit wrangles was that there was huge national division between all kinds of different groups, young and old, rich and poor, and remainers leave, as you name it. That did kind of close up in the early part of the pandemic in March 2020, but it's all begun to fall away again. That's a worry. Divisions are growing again. The question is why and how is that happening? One of the things that was sustained, though, that didn't change was the sense of unity and trust in local areas. This is a real strength that we've got that we need to build upon and that does help, I think, to point the way towards policies and strategies for a more sustainable future for all of us. Thanks Dominic, very valid points to that. Did you want to come in? Yes, I certainly agree that community cohesion and micro-communities coming together in the way that Susan described them there absolutely happened, but there's a caveat to that. One of the things that was noticed is why I was able to do some research with almost 400 individuals across Scotland who had participated in some kind of new community engagement on the ground response as a consequence of Covid-19. That might have just been getting the milk for an elderly neighbour because they didn't want to have to come and go from the shops. They didn't want the face mask on, so helping them to ensure that they still had access to the community and what they needed, dropping off prescriptions for another neighbour or somebody nearby, all the small acts of community support and togetherness during Covid-19. That was a report written with the Cora Foundation, Carnegie Trust and others. Although there were many examples of this, many positive examples of communities coming together and members of communities reaching out in a way that they usually would not. What was noticed was a rose-tinted glasses view at the beginning of Covid-19, where we pushed and encouraged people to support one another and volunteer for their communities, etc. That, in itself, has inequality within it. First of all, front-line workers who are more likely to be undervalued and underpaid were not part of that space. Second of all, a lot of that work was around emergency food parcels and those who were experiencing poverty being given support. I would say that that is less about community cohesion and a lot more about communities forced to do that as a consequence of state failure. It is very important that we look at this and think that it is wonderful that communities came together. We need more of that community cohesion. Professor Abrams is absolutely right. Where there has been investment in society and communities locally, they feared better. That is absolutely correct, but that was because of investment from Government. We have to look at where communities have felt the need to intervene as a consequence of state failure and poverty and inequality and where they have been able to add value to support one another without it being interventions to save each other's lives or put food on the table for the week, because that is not the responsibility of your next-door neighbour. We have a question from a member of the online audience and it is Ms Tash, and apologies if I mispronounce your name from Leicester. Is a hybrid model of working a positive step for marginalised communities, if I could start with Professor Dominic Abrams? That is a very good question. I am not sure one can generalise to a whole community. I think it is definitely an advantage for some individuals and it is an advantage for society as a whole to reduce the amount of travelling that people are doing and to reduce the carbon footprint. I think it becomes an advantage for a community if that also releases opportunities for people to do things together other than just work. Working from home is, your time is just locked into work, you are not doing anything else. It is really about the use of time and space, not about work. We begin to rethink that. We have to be addressing our climate change impacts at the same time as everything else, but also to make communities more sustainable. We have to give people in those communities time to do things. We have to recognise that there is actually a value, an economic, but also a social value in the time that people have to work together to talk to each other, to support each other, to build relationships. The kind of mesh that you need to have resilience against dramatic events and challenges is only built up that way. You can have these emergencies, food emergency responses, but actually I think our own research shows that when places had really invested in some of that social infrastructure beforehand, it was much easier to mobilise those kinds of activities. Also, the activities are not then just about providing food or just immediate need. Also, because those people know each other now, they can provide other forms of support, which indirectly support mental health services or physical health services, education, all kinds of other things. I think we have to look at this as a challenge of trying to build a much better mesh or framework in which support comes from multiple directions and to mobilise people's capacity to do more than just one thing, not just work, but also all the other things that are valuable in life. Thanks Dominic. Susan, would you like to come in on this question? Yes. For me, it's a really difficult one because it feels like there's an assumption that a hybrid model of working is accessible to everyone. We need to be clear that it's not because there are some jobs that have to be done in a certain place. When you look at the types of people that do the jobs where you have to do those on site, quite often those could be in marginalised communities. You're also making assumptions about the place in which people live. Have they got good broadband connectivity or have they got a safe space in their house where they're able to work? As soon as those questions come into mind, you're completely talking about that it's maybe not a straightforward yes or no, it makes things more equitable because it certainly doesn't. It can make things much more inactible, so there needs to be choice involved, depending on the individual circumstances, I think. Thanks Susan Tollette. Just to echo what's already been said, if you are from a marginalised community, for example, black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are more likely to be working in jobs where working from home or hybrid models are not available. Those who benefited as a consequence of flexible working in Covid-19 were more likely to be in office jobs, higher than average pay, and as a consequence already had some financial privileges. It could be positive for marginalised communities, but only if the infrastructure around it supported that. For example, it's about a better distribution and access to work that allows hybrid models for marginalised communities. It's about access to data technology because it's not simply just working from home, who are then also taking on the costs associated with working from home. It's not cost-free. Are we talking about universal broadband? Are we looking at that as a utility? Do we need to think about access to internet as essential? I'm using rhetorical questions, but it's pretty obvious where I stand. The reality, of course, is that the infrastructure needed to make it a positive move for marginalised communities does not yet exist. It can be positive, but there are steps that need to happen before that to make it positive. A lot of that is about data infrastructure and the distribution within the labour market. Do you believe that there's actually a will to see this time as a catalyst by key policy and decision makers to rebuild society differently and bravely in ways that address all those inequalities? Start with Susan this time. It's not hard on that, Siobhan. I'd like to be an optimist on this and say when you look at the narrative across the world. If you look at the world economic forum discussion, there's things there on the great reset and really looking at actually maybe we weren't living our lives in the way that was best for the planet or best for ourselves and maybe it was a kind of shock that we needed. However, I also think that there's great forces in play that want us to return to exactly the same as normal before the pandemic. You can see that in terms of what's being advertised at the moment. There's a real strong push on people with the consumption message. Go out, spend money, keep the economy going, all those things. However, for climate change, that's going to be a much bigger shock in the next 10 years. We're already seeing communities across Scotland and the UK severely affected by the impacts of climate change and changing weather patterns. We can't not talk about that. It has to be a massive thing. For houses in Scotland that were already perhaps not as wind and water tight as others, dampness is going to increase. That's going to make fuel bills even higher than they are just because of the changes in gas prices. If we know we're getting a wetter climate and we know that some of our buildings aren't wind and water tight, that's going to exacerbate all forms of poverty. I'm not into segregating different types of poverty to fuel poverty or food poverty. It's all poverty. It's all not enough resources to look after yourself or your family. I think that that's going to be really important. As much as I want to be optimistic, there's a bit of me that says that forces at play are pushing us to go back to exactly where we were. One of the things that I'd like to focus on is the way in which participation and lived experience in communities engaging in policymaking has been talked about a lot in Covid-19. Pre-Covid-19, particularly in Scotland, we were already talking about what participatory policymaking looks like and deliberative democracy. On one hand, there is an optimism there, provided that gets given the resources and the importance and the parity of a theme that's required between politician and public and making sure that there is more of the participative decision-making of more of the public in Scotland engaged. I think that there is a real effort in that direction, which makes for better decisions as we go forward over the next decade. In fact, we make Covid-19 recovery-related decisions. There is some positivity there, but I have the same concerns as Susan. There is already a very clear push, and it's coming from places that are looking to increase profits to embolden the economy, where we're having newspaper articles and reports released saying that people need to get back into work, people need to get back into the city centre, people need to get back into their offices. Of course, we've learned that that's not necessarily the case, but it is about going back to a model of consumption, going back to the previous model of profit before people. If we are going to make any kind of real change and there's going to be a real optimism, then we also have to have the ability to fight those forces that are looking for us to get back to a normal that worked for a very small few. Thanks to that. Dominique, did you want to comment on this? The second part of the British Academy's review, which I'll show you here, recommended seven strategic policy goals, and they're really about addressing exactly these kinds of issues. I'll just note the seventh of those goals, which is about building social purpose to drive the strategy for recovery for the economy and society. The idea that you need shared objectives that aren't just about making money, but they do make money, they do make profit because ultimately, if people are all working towards the same goals, they will support each other and invest their time and energy and do that. That generates an economy, but the point is, yes, we have to take a look at the longer term objectives and a way of having a much more sustainable economy. Now, I think the problem is that politicians are largely aware of these problems and aware of this as an important perspective, but they're constantly attending to their short-term need to be re-elected, and that is a real difficulty. So it's really about the distribution of power, which is not to call to making progress and the way that power is organised in our political systems. So having actually much better and more closely connected structures of power, so the local, the national, the regional and the hyperlocal, getting those all best connected, communicating better, sharing information better, having more participation in power and democracy is one of the ways forward to address this whole problem. I think we clearly have to, we can't just carry on in the same way. We can sort of manage the economy that way, but it won't work in the longer term. This really does mean rethinking how we're going to do things. So, for example, we can't expect people who are living in a one bedroom flat to work from that position all the time as well. I mean, you just, just not feasible and we can't expect them to pay to heat it all day long in order to work better. So we're going to have to think about perhaps more locally available shared working spaces where all those services are provided, the desk space, the social space as well, so that people can work without having to travel miles and miles to do so. We've obviously got to do something about reducing the amount of air travel that people do, but look at the paucity of investment in our public transport systems, in the rail systems, in the bus systems. Now, of course, people are going to carry on using cars and buying battery-driven cars is not the solution to the climate crisis. That just generates more costs in the end and more problems. So, you know, we really do have to rethink this, but it requires a level of short-term sacrifice from politicians, which I'm not wholly optimistic that we can achieve, and the pressure may just have to come from bottom up in the end. Thanks, Dominic, for that. We seem to have quite a few students from Indonesia today online with us in the audience, so a very warm welcome from Scotland. Wilbert from Indonesia. I've got two questions here. What are the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on mental health? We've got Sarah from Edinburgh. Does the report address concerns of the LGBTQ community about worsening mental health as well? Dominic, could we start with you without those two questions? I mean, unquestionably, all disadvantaged groups, it doesn't really matter which group it is, have suffered deeply through the pandemic, and there are several ways in which they've suffered. One has been through isolation and lack of access to services, disconnection from the services that they need, and I suppose the deepening inequality affects those who are already most disadvantaged more strongly. But I think the mental health impacts are quite difficult to calculate, because they're going to be quite long-term. I mean, if you just take 17 to 18-year-olds over the last two years, most of them left school without any properly assessed final exams. They didn't have a leaving celebration. They went to university and were immediately locked up and not able to see anybody. They had totally isolated experiences in a way that was completely unprecedented, and which is going to affect them for a long period of time. Children last year who went to private schools had had pretty much continued education. They ended up getting better A-levels and exam results and going to higher status universities than those who didn't, and those effects are going to last for the whole of their lives. You look at these effects, they aren't just the immediate ones, they're the deeper longer-term ones. But mental health in particular, I think, is an area where it's not just about whether the services are there or the therapists or the rest, but it's about whether people are part of a social structure that supports whether they have the ability to make friendships, whether they can find people to talk to all of those things, people who are caring about them and thinking about them. Those things have been stripped away for many of those people, and that, again, takes a very long time to rebuild those kinds of networks and relationships. The mental health implications are very serious, and I think that most disadvantaged groups and minority groups have suffered disproportionately through the pandemic. Thank you. Telet, do you want to comment on that? Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things that we have perhaps not given enough attention to, although on-the-ground campaigning organisations and national service-led organisations have, we're talking a lot about staying at home as the safe thing to do, but home is not safe for everybody. For women who are in an abusive relationship experiencing domestic abuse, for LGBT young people, we've seen more of them unable to be their full authentic selves or feeling like they have to hide their sexualities because they are at home and at home has not been a safe, inclusive place where they can be out, for example. Whilst we have talked about stay safe, stay at home, that's a contradiction for many people because home is not a safe place, as a consequence that will have significant mental health impacts. It is important that we talk about services having good enough resources, particularly for example women's aid centres or local grassroots mental health services and supports LGBTQ community organisations, to have long-term resources and funding to be able to respond to what has been already a higher uptake of their services and will continue to be over the next few years. However, there is also a wider issue of the system around people that allows them to access, regardless of where they were in Covid-19, access spaces of support when home does not feel safe. That is not just Covid-19 specific, that is pre-Covid-19. As Professor Abrams has said, those who experienced inequalities pre-Covid-19 have suffered the worst during Covid-19. We were in a poverty and inequality crisis before we were in a public health crisis of this kind. If we are going to do justice to what we have learned over Covid-19, we need to think of poverty and inequality as a pandemic in the same way that we have Covid-19. That is the only way that we will make the real changes to people's lives, the tangible difference to people's lives that are required for there to be any tackling of health inequalities, attainment and education gaps, inequalities and income inequalities. I will bring this on to you, but I just want to incorporate another question that has come in that ties in with this. It is from Ronnie from Dumfries. What do you think is the long-term societal impacts of Covid-19 on younger folk, which liars have been affected by Covid, for example, because of the disruption to education, which Dominic mentioned earlier, but if you can just cover that as well. I think that it is going to be different for different people. I know that this is the same answer that is coming through, but younger folk who have got resources on a safe place to live and a safe place to play have been affected very differently from those who have not. Those who are able to access resources and have not had their education as disrupted as others, who have got supportive parents, will probably come out okay. The other ones are going to need much more help and much more support. Here, I see a diverging narrative across the UK in that, in Scotland, we do talk about poverty inequality. We have binding child poverty targets, but in England, the narrative now is much more about social mobility. Social mobility is not going to fix everything. It might fix some things for a few people who are able to get themselves out of poverty, but it is not the be all or end all. We really need to keep the term that is being used a lot in policy terms that is a laser focus on poverty and deep working to do that. Back to Ronnie's question, the thing that I think connects with what Dominic has said is there was a trend in the UK that is very different to the rest of Western Europe in that we had far more young people leaving home to go to university than they did in other bits of Europe. That came with a huge cost and huge debt. For those with resources, you are much more able to manage that debt and you probably have supportive parents who will help you with that, but it affects the rest of your life if you are leaving university with £40,000 worth of debt and an additional 9 per cent tax coming out of your salary each month once you hit that threshold. I think that we need to think about that because I know that young people in my team that might come out in the budget this week with a lower threshold for student debt repayments are scared. They are really, really scared. That is not ones that are in university at the moment. That is ones that have left but have got this debt sitting on their shoulders and it will affect the choices for the rest of their life. I think that we have got to think about that. I think that the kids that are in school at the moment, they are hopefully going to have some resources thrown at them to bring them through and out the other side. We hope that mental health services will be there to support the ones that are struggling, but I think that there are another generation, those early leavers of university, the ones that are entering work that we really need to worry about. If the university student debt threshold goes down, they are really, really scared about what is ahead. Thank you, Susan. We have got a question here from Flo from South Queens for Ferry and I will give us to tell that. Does a basic income provide the space for building a social infrastructure? Yes, it is a pretty short answer. I think that there are multiple interventions that are needed, but a basic income standard is one way to tackle the anxiety, the concern that so many people have of being able to pay bills at the end of the month and get food on the table. Being able to take that anxiety away creates an entirely different focus on life, an ability to be able to focus on health, an ability to be able to pursue meaningful work that you will give you good mental health and allows you to pursue some of the social cohesion and community engagement work that we have been talking about. There are multiple interventions required. A basic income is one very positive thing that we can and should do. Thank you, Telet. Dominic? Yes, the basic plan for a decent society is that everybody should have enough to eat and eat their home and live in adequate conditions. We obviously don't have that at the moment here and a lot needs to be done. I think it is the case that Scotland's policies, if not its resources, are certainly more progressive than many of those in England, and it often sets a standard, I think, which some of us feel quite envious of. But it doesn't really part of the big structural problems about the way the resources are distributed across society. I do think part of the problem is that we keep on trying to shift responsibility back to the individual to cope with everything that's thrown at them. Yet things like the changes in the student loan system are not within an individual's control. Just like the pandemic is not within an individual's control and trying to make individuals responsible for tackling it is ludicrous. There has to be some level of responsibility from government to address the conditions which enable people to do things. I think pressure on mental health services in particular, but also physical health services, is made much worse by the fact that people are isolated, that they don't have decent access to information, both technically they don't have the access, they don't have the computers or the internet access, but also they don't know how to use the information they have available to them. They don't know who to discuss it with. We sort of disable people in a general way. We've made them incapable or unable to get the things they need, not because of their abilities, but because we've just created structures that make it incredibly difficult for them. I think rethinking what those structures are, finding ways to connect people up to another much better and to provide that social mesh as part of the way forward. Then actually also it becomes more apparent to those who have plenty of resources how unjust it is that there are people who really have nothing. They start to take responsibility, not just for themselves, but for others. That's the real key here, is feeling responsible for other people, not just for ourselves. Thanks, Dominic. Susan, I'm going to come to you with a basic income, but I've also got a question specifically for yourself from Sarah, from Edinburgh. There seems to be a big focus or play on people that want to go back to the status quo. Have you noticed if there are industries or private companies, etc., that have decided not to go back to the status quo? I'll come to that question second. If I can, I'll build on what Dominic just said, which is there was a report out last year by the Institute and Faculty of Actories on the great risk transfer. It's something that's happened over the last 20 to 30 years, and it's been slow incremental change that's gone on and not everyone's noticed it. That has meant that people have been much less resilient throughout the pandemic. It's been a slow movement of risk to the individual from state financial services and from employers, and that's meant that individuals haven't been equipped because it's gone on and they've not really noticed. They've not been equipped to manage that risk. We do need to talk a lot more about risk in our lives and help people to manage it where they haven't got the resources to do that. I think that's quite an important point. I think that it was a flow that's asked for the report links to be shared, so I can share that report link in a minute. Have I noticed positive changes? Yes. In economic terms, I'm really proud of Scotland's history. I'm proud of New York Lanark. I'm proud of the trustee savings bank and how it started. I see elements of that coming through now. We've had a social enterprise movement in Scotland for many years, but we also have now a rising B-core movement, though a number of companies that are firmly putting things, other things ahead of shareholder value. I think that's a really good positive one, but the most high-profile B-core to convert recently has been Coot's Bank. I think hearing them talk about it is really interesting, because I couldn't have imagined that happening maybe five years ago. That's a definite positive change that I think we can be pleased about. Thank you, Susan. We have a question from Leonard. What's one thing you would say that further and higher education should focus on in terms of recovery from Covid that can bring you in Dominic? Wow. One thing. Actually, I'll change the question if that's all right. I think what we need to do is realise that education is not something that stops and starts at school or university, and the Chancellor, I think, today announced a bit more money for supposedly lifelong learning, but actually what we're going to need to be able to do in the future is constantly adapt our skills and update our skills and knowledge to address new things that we need to do, and that needs to go across the lifespan. I think there are two ways to address that. One is to create an education system that can provide that education when it's needed for the people who need it at probably relatively cost-free for them, and the other thing that I think is to build much stronger intergenerational relationships and understanding, because I think we're very prone to seeing generations as if they're completely separate things, but of course older people and younger people are totally interdependent all the time, and it's in everybody's interest that both are receiving education and learning and support across their lives and actually doing it together so that they develop mutual understanding as well and can then better support one another. So I think there's a whole package of a new way of looking at what we do with all of those spaces, and I think also the arts and culture are probably quite integral to that because building that is also about getting people to have interests in things in common, and that means having things they do together, whether it be in movies or theatre or making music or design or anything. So I think getting people, it's really about connecting society up better as well, I think, to address that. Thank you, Susan. Yeah, I think, oh, it says I'm reading the unmute bits coming up on my screen, so just checking that I'm muted there. I think for me, I'd noticed a trend over the last few years of increasingly charities when they were bidding to funders having to bid for discrete funds for a specific type of group, and a lot of the types of places that Dominic is talking about where intergenerational groups come together or people with different backgrounds come together and join together on a common thing had gone, and it meant that you were only really meeting people like you, and I know, because I volunteered with the National Trust for Scotland for 10 years on projects all across Scotland with a whole range of different people I would have never met in my professional life, and that completely changed me, but the reason I started doing it was because I didn't have enough money to pay for food at weekends, though I got free food while I was doing it, and that drove me to do something that I loved also that meeting loads of people and experiencing loads of things I wouldn't have done otherwise, and I think it's interesting how funders can drive different behaviours, so as soon as you stop funding and you want specific outcomes for specific groups, you can actually segregate society in a way that you maybe weren't meaning to, and I see that changing now, and it seems to be a tipping point, but much more about convening different people together. In terms of education, we've talked a lot about Scotland and the progressive, rhetoric and moods that it's made, but I do think that we need to put a bit of a spotlight on something that Scotland hasn't done as well, which is when I first started working, I was working in education, and lifelong learning was the phrase of the time it was talked about, it was pursued, it was pushed trying to get people back into education later in life, that does not exist in the same way in Scotland now. The focus has gone back to full-time education and as a consequence what we've seen is a huge reduction in what colleges are providing. We've seen a reduction in part-time courses, we've seen a reduction in those from marginalised communities or second chance learners coming into education again, and the regionalisation process of colleges meant that where we had local access, that was very community level, has become city centre large colleges. I understand why that has happened and there have been some positive impacts of that, but the negative consequences have been vocational courses, opportunities to learn, that is not, here is a career trajectory, here is the thing that you do for four years and then get a job. So what we see is education, the point of access for education and the philosophy behind education needs to become less transactional. You come here, we give you information, you regurgitate it in an exam, we give you qualification, you get a job. There is also education that is good for your health, for your knowledge and your learning and your progress in life generally. There's one thing about the education philosophy, the access to education and its accessibility for marginalised communities and part-time learning that I think needs to be reinvested in in Scotland. The second is education that works for the future jobs that we will have. So we talk a lot about we need more people to be in tech, we need a just transition from oil and gas into renewables, but how realistic are we making that transition when everything really still depends on a four-year course and degree at university level? Is somebody who is in their 50s who's worked in oil and gas going to be pursuing that to get into renewable sector? Is somebody who is a single mum from Westerhales who's never had access to education, never been prioritised, going to think, yes, the first thing I want to do is go to a four-year degree at Edinburgh University in what will feel like a kind of hostile space and an elitist space? Is that person going to say, yes, this is what I want to pursue to get me that job in tech and give me a secure future for myself and my children? So the way we do education, the philosophy behind education and why it exists, needs to be less transactional, more flexible and better resource. Thanks to that. Some really interesting and valid points made there. Susan, I have a follow-up question from Sarah in Edinburgh. Is there any way that we can use the positive examples that you have mentioned as a case to persuade those politicians, companies et cetera, to not go back to the status quo? I think, Kim, there seems to be lots of work going on on that. I'm hopeful that good things will come out of COP26. I can see a couple of comments in the chats on that as well. There is talk that is it cash, coal and trees? Is that what there's a mantra that they're talking about? I heard Eledra Stratton mentioning it the other day. I think that the cash bit, the finance bit, I'm expecting, I'm hoping that there will be an announcement out of COP26 that we'll see and encourage more businesses to lead the way and make changes. I also think that consumers have got a choice there about how they spend their money. When we did research last year, people told us that they were making conscious choices then. I don't know if they're still making the conscious choices now in the same way. We hear that Amazon's profits are up and people are doing more on-demand spending, but at the same time, they're wanting to save their own local high street. If you don't spend money in your high street, you won't be there. It's that choice about how we have money, how do we use it, but also how do we encourage others that are sitting on money in their bank accounts doing nothing with low interest rates? How can we encourage people to make more use of that in a positive way? I think that those are all really big questions, but some of back to Zara's point is that it's about telling the stories and it's about moving information around so that other people know that other people are doing it because as soon as everyone says, oh, it's not for me, I can't do that, then I think people just carry on with the status quo. Thank you, Susan. I think that we're coming closely to the end here, but I just wanted you to indulge your autocratic powers here. What are the immediate and longer term changes you would initiate to address inequalities if you were in charge of the nation or the world? Do we start with Dominic, please? The world. I think I would get this focus on a social purpose in place. I think a lot of employers, a lot of organisations, a lot of individuals are really would like to see a much more humane world, humane planet. The governments have a responsibility to set structures, incentive structures, tax structures, all of the rest to enable people to do that. I think there is an appetite for it all if only we can be brave enough to do it. I think the science and our fantastic academic system in the UK is telling a very strong story about all of that. If the politicians are willing to listen and follow the science rather than just notice that it's happening, we can make a lot of progress. Thanks, Dominic Tillett. I'm often having those cups of coffee with people on a walk during Covid-19, which is what would we do if we could change the world to make ourselves feel better for 45 minutes before we go back to our desk? Certainly, when we're talking about that, what we're talking about is eradicating inequality and poverty. The way to do that is to—is wealth redistribution. We have to think about wealth redistribution in a way that makes sense for an economy that is growing, but growing for who? We need to move away from billionaire hold and stakeholder and shareholders who have power over those things that should be in public ownership, that should be nationalised because they are used by everybody, whether that is water and electricity, et cetera. Within that, the internet also needs to be included in that, because none of us function in our lives without the internet now. We need to think about things that are necessary for us to live our lives and how those things need to be bought into public ownership. We need to think about wealth redistribution in our taxation system, so that more people have more of a share of the wealth that exists. In the immediate things that we're already talking about—like 4D working weeks without a loss of income, basic minimum income—those are things that we can and should do, hopefully in the immediate future. In the longer term, there needs to be genuine progressive taxation and wealth redistribution, not just here in the UK. It is a global issue. Thanks, Gillette. Susan, would you like to come in? I don't know where to start here. If we're talking about Scotland rather than the whole world, I would double down on high-speed broadband and digital connectivity and get that sorted as fast as we possibly can. If money's no object, let's do that. We've already got 30 Mbps to 95 per cent of the country, but we need that other 5 per cent sorted. We need to sort out our nature-based solutions and biodiversity loss, because if we don't, we're scuppered going forward. The thing for me that we've probably not touched on is that we've touched on the safety of communities and how some people can access green space and some not, but walkable communities have much higher levels of social cohesions and all the other benefits that come about from that. If we were to say one thing that would make communities in Scotland better across the board, taking into account that we've got some rural communities where it's not going to work for, but how people can get about more easily and potentially bump into people that they don't know and have conversations about the place in which they live, walkable communities have much higher benefits of people looking after each other and all those things that follow. Let's do some more of that. Great, thanks very much. I'm sorry, but we're not going to have time for everybody's questions today, but I'd like to thank everyone for your contributions to the event. Before we close, I'd like to give each one of our panellists one minute to sum up the issues raised in the discussion. If I can start with Tulaet and then move to Susan and then finally end with Dominic. Thank you. Thank you again for the invitation to be part of the panel. It's been great hearing from both Susan and Dominic as well, and thank you for your questions. The summary is that we all have seen Covid-19 exacerbate poverty and inequality. The question is what we're going to do about that. It's very clear, and Governments have said it time and time again right across the world that poverty and inequality has been worsened, but at the same time we've seen the UK Government make a decision to remove the £20 per week universal credit uplift. What needs to happen now is Governments, not just with the rhetoric but the interventions and the actions that we have learned from Covid-19 and we see poverty and inequality as a crisis in the same way we saw this public health crisis of the last 18 months and the same with the climate crisis. If we don't make genuine interventions that are as drastic as we've had during Covid-19, we will see both our planet and our communities fall apart as a consequence of poor decisions made too late. I think that we've seen too much of that during Covid-19. Post-Covid world does not exist in a vacuum. It's tied up with the effects of Brexit, it's tied up with climate change and biodiversity loss. All of those things mean that we've got an incredible decade of change ahead of us, if not 20 or 30 years ahead. That means that the number one thing that we're all going to need to do is to listen to each other. That skill, we've talked a lot about social cohesion, we've talked about really big issues of poverty, inequality, education, all those other things, but the key skill we're all going to need is to listen to people and listen to people that aren't like ourselves. If we can keep that front and centre of our minds, it will really help us in the next 10 years. Thanks, Susan. Professor Dominic Abrams? Thank you very much. I'll echo those points. I mean, it's worth thinking something like this. If you had 171 people in a room who gave 1% of their wealth, you could take 5.6 million people out of the poverty that the £20 cut in universal credit is. Those 171 people are the billionaires on the Sunday Times Rich List and there'd still be billionaires at the end of it. Now, with that scale of inequality, then that raises the question, why aren't we doing something about it? I think getting people to confront that degree of inequality and that degree of injustice, the unequal outcomes across the world, whether it be what's happening to the physical state of the planet or whether it be what's happening to levels of inequality or to health, getting people to confront that and see it more clearly and to talk about it with each other, I think will help us to address it all, and that's about sharing information and understanding one of the better. Thank you very much, Professor Abrams. We must end there. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and making such a big contribution to the panels brought into the partnership with the David Hume Institute. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to our panel, Susan Murray, Talat Ykuwb, and Professor Dominic Abrams for giving up your time this morning. Now, I take this opportunity to remind you that later today we'll be discussing whether the global north is to blame for the climate emergency, the role of culture and art in wellbeing and health, and the plan to build resilient cities, and I do hope that you can join these discussions. Thank you very much.