 Okay, we are three minutes after five. We'll start this webinar on UBI and pandemic in Europe. Welcome everybody. We have a wonderful event in front of us and I'm very much looking forward to also presenting our speakers in just a bit. So we're going to hear in the order of appearance, Simo Reivtila, Valeria Koroszek and Natalie Bennett, who is not here yet but will join us in just a few seconds. As I said, the topic of today is UBI and the pandemic in Europe. And I'd like to thank the organizers and that is Luca and Sol in the background for organizing and preparing this event. And overall I'd like to thank the European Foundation for the organization with the support of transition data. So we'll dive right into it. And so there's Simo telling us about the, sorry, about the Jeff publication steps towards universal basic income, the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on welfare policies and support for UBI in the European Union. Before Simo starts, I'll just present all the speakers and then Simo, you can start right away. So as I said, Simo is starting. He's a PhD student in sociology at the University of Helsinki. He's the coordinator of the Finnish think tank Visio that you can see advertised here already. In 2018, he worked on last resort social assistance register research at Kela, the social insurance institution of Finland. And here is Valeria Koroshek Koroshek Koroshek, sorry. She has a she holds a PhD in postmodern sociology is the representative of Slovenia in the basic income birth network, and is also very much involved in the European citizens initiative and additional basic income, of which we might hear also a bit from here. And additionally, she is the representative of the European network for the fair sharing of working time. Very much looking forward to her to hear her contribution. And last but not least, and she'll join us in just a few minutes. She is a green, she's a green member and I think actually the only green member of the House of Lords in the UK. She was the leader of the Green Party of England in Wales from 2012 and 2016. And before that, she worked for over 20 years as a journalist, including for institutes institutions such as the Bangkok Post, the Times, and as the editor of the Guardian Weekly. And now, without further ado, I'd like to give the stage to Simo. Okay, thank you very much for the introduction. I hope you can hear me all right. As I don't need to go through the introduction I'm just weekly going to say that I have followed the basic income for many years and written on it for the Green European Journal. Simo, just one second. What we see from you now is I think you're presenting screen where we see you know. Okay, yeah. You want to change that. Yeah, yeah. Sorry for that. Where is. Does it seem to be right now. That looks better. There we go. If I do this, is it still all right. Just the moment I'm going to try and check it because it worked before it shouldn't be the window but it should be and also if it doesn't work just go on like this I just want to let you know. Yeah. Yeah, for some reason it doesn't really want to do the No worries. The presentation effect doesn't work. But nevertheless, let's go on like this. And yeah, I was saying I have written on multiple occasions on the fitness UBI trial for the green family. And the newest text I have written is in the second volume of the European Green perspective some basic income. Which is something I will discuss later today. And the background or the work that I will discuss now is the summary report that we did in the basic income projects of people in Europe and foundation. Last year, during the COVID pandemic, we decided that it would be a good idea to have a survey of the member organizations to see what kind of social policy changes were made in each country. Additional research was done using era funds database where they also collected different policy reactions. And this was published recently I think that just kind of a couple of weeks ago. A research questions were We were trying to find out if there were changes that could be called steps towards basic income. The idea was that during the pandemic, there were social policy responses to it. And we wanted to know what they are telling us about our welfare states. And additionally, we wanted to know what happened to you we had discussion in these countries and our current policies. And we collected the information in it is huge quality table and kind of try to interpret them from there. What I want to say and why I have research in quotation marks is that this is not peer reviewed scientific research. This is a report done as it has some methodology to it, but yeah, it would not probably go through in a scientific journal. Which is important to understand when citing this or referring to this work. And the steps that we defined as being kind of more towards basic income, or having the same kind of effects that people are hoping from basic income is that it would bring about an increase in benefit levels and decrease poverty, or, and it would be kind of the changes would be more long term than the normal social policies. More people would be, would get the benefit, it would have less bureaucracy than the current systems, and it would eliminate welfare traps so to incentivize working or activation. It would reduce means testing and sanctioning within developer system which is one of the main things that makes basic income basic income. It is unconditional. And I'm not going to go through these long lists in detail, but there is one example on the right kind of what kind of things we looked at. So we had a list of these social policy reactions under these categories of steps towards basic income. And then we kind of interpreted kind of what we found to jump to the results. The overwhelming number of measures were aimed at self employed people, art time workers, artists, and stuff like that. People who we would often identify as being part of the precariat, precariat or small time, small entrepreneurs and people like that. They were quickly recognized as not being supported by the normal welfare system and steps were taken to alleviate this during the pandemic. I think that we found a difference between different countries that corresponds to the old Spain understanding and welfare state regime classification that the social democratic countries didn't really have such drastic changes during the time, as they already had some policies in place that were only introduced elsewhere during the pandemic and our benefit levels are already higher. And some countries with normally more meagre social welfare states and through market interventions, for example, banning evictions or providing people with food and stuff like that. And especially like the United Kingdom, which is something it would be interesting to hear from Natalie was one country that acted differently, mostly supporting people through their employers. So not so much focusing on people not employed even before the pandemic. And the most UBI like policy that I think we found was in Portugal, where they extended the length of the unemployment benefit and temporary temporary suspended or all eligibility reassessments. So if you bear on unemployment in benefit, you could stay on the unemployment benefit during the pandemic, which meant more predictable amount of income in your hands and less means testing and social control. Mostly we didn't find changes to last resort social assistance. Spain accelerated its minimum income sheen and Finland and Belgium increased the level and Finland's temporary suspended its penalization of benefit residents if they fail to seek employment or act in a manner that is not preferred by the system. And then we also looked at the discussion I will only quickly go through this. We saw that there was a lot of discussion on how the current welfare systems were not enough. The pandemic showed her flaws. Emergency UBI so a temporary UBI was discussed in many countries, of course, in a small manner implemented in for example in the United States, not an European country but important to note. And we are currently still kind of in the midst of this discussion as the debate on an European basic income is still going on. There is an European citizens initiatives that is still taking names. And this is the last sentence from our report that in the time of unequal globalization and the climate crisis. Unfortunately, COVID-19 will not be the last crisis we will have to face and protect people from. This was my first presentation for today. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for giving us a background on the publication. I'll post the link in a second or see more maybe you can do that as well so that people can find the publication. It's also like your last slide how the pandemic and the means taking means taken by some governments in order to fight it were. Yeah, how they how they changed the debate in this specific country I think that's for a good conversation afterwards. I'll take questions as soon as the as we had the presentations all done and then open the discussion for the audience. Next in line, we have Valeria. Yes, I hope for my presentation is there. Can you hear me. We can hear you we can see your presentation you can start right away. Okay, thank you very much. I'm very glad that I can speak in this event. I just want to say there's, I believe, important information that I recently joined the freebies micro simulation universal basic income team. So that you will know where to find some additional information about basic income. And now I would like to speak about what happened in Slovenia during COVID. But first of all, I would like to ask the listeners to understand very Slovenia and that it's in the we used to say in center of Europe, that it's very small country, and there's only around two millions inhabitants. I believe this is very important information when we speak about Slovenia. And the first information about COVID measures and the basic income is that Slovenia is actually the only country that introduced universal income during COVID for self employed people. I believe there were three different measures similar to basic income idea. There was also universal unconditionally uniform income on the level of minimum wage for clergy. And there were universal unconditionally hold the vouchers for all residents in Slovenia. And here, down the slide, it's the title of social policy committee annual review of the social protection performance monitor. There are recent information about social policy measures during COVID as well. And here is like universal basic income for self employed for Slovenia, where you can see, well, that it's true what I'm saying. But now I would like to speak how it happened that our government introduced this measure or those measures. So some people might know that Slovenia is only country that succeeded in getting national water signatures in the ECU BI 2020-2022. I'm even more proud that we succeeded that in two months and now we will try to, I don't know, to be the first on the line to the end. The next question is how that happened. Why is Slovenia so, I don't know, special? For now it's special. Well, I can speak about timeline what happened in Slovenia, how we have built our community, how we have built our presence in the news and how well we made the concept of UBI known through not only media but that people, well, at least they said, well, we heard about the concept, although not a lot of people understood it well. How it happened? Well, I would say that we have a really good circulation of information from academia through NGOs, public media, then there were political parties conferences. Two elections ago in 2012-13 and then we had a feasibility study already in 2010 and the first proposal that maybe it's good or I don't know if it's good or bad. We only have one proposal, which is good enough to show people that basic income is possible to introduce even in budget neutral way. But lately, oh, this is just micro simulations, which shows that if we would introduce a basic income, we would have even surplus during those 30 years. And then here is a presentation I did at UNICEF conference. The question was, is basic income for children better than means tested universal child grant? And micro simulation showed that yes, it is. For the same amount of money, we get reduced level of child poverty. But then you see, then I found out where is the problem of implementation of basic income. Just a small reminder, that'd be great if you could come to an end within. Yes, I will. Look, the point is that right now we have success in introducing basic income by the name. But it is the time of the government where Slovenia is almost the worst country in the EU regarding trust. And as you can see, well, what's the problem? The problem is that society doesn't work anymore. During COVID, we have, we have a complete enemy shutdown of all the systems, science, academia, NGOs, nothing works. And that's a Slovenian problem right now. So that I can say I'm not optimistic about universal basic income to be the scheme in the future. Thank you. Thank you so much for your, yeah, for your information about what's going on in Slovenia. That's great to hear and we'll go over to either Natalie Bennett, if she's here. I can see her as the discussion participants. Luca, can you tell me whether she's present? I don't think so. If that's not the case, then I'd suggest we'll start or go over to Simo again who will tell us about UBI during the pandemic in Finland. Simo, does this work for you? Yeah, it works. Just a sec that I can get back to my slides because I was looking at the interesting numbers. Well, as the president did from the citizens initiative. Just a second. I can see my notes, but at least you can see the slides. And as I said, I have written many articles to the Greenhaven Journal. I already said this, we don't need to go through this, and I will actually skip for today the part on the UBI trial or the details on it because I had a presentation on it a little time ago. If you can get these slides later, you can check them out. So I've included the presentation on them, but I'm just going to skip most of them. This one I'm going to briefly discuss, which is the results that many researchers and people even in political parties supporting basic income were not happy in how the trial was done. But the results are so that employment effects, which were most of the interest to the current government at the time, were not really found. No negative or positive effects of basic income on work in the group of mostly long term unemployed people were the recipients, but less robust study, which was not like a controlled trial, found that results on well being a life satisfaction that were similar to earlier basic income studies that is beneficial. That basic income helped people to live more happily and with less mental ill being. And here we are today that there is a full parliamentary term social security committee working in Finland to overhaul our whole social security system. They are working currently, and they consist of experts, officials and politicians from all parties in the parliament. So, they are currently, for example, discussing different models and basic information on it is also available in English. What makes basic incomes future in the working group or not so bright looking are the parties tenses on universal basic income for the only parties that you can see here that are most in based on an elections both matter done by one major party in Finland. Only in the Green Party and the left island's people are staunch supporters, or kind of say, elected politicians are staunch supporters, even in the center party, which officially costs its model basic income. Most are against the idea that in the future citizens should get a basic income without conditions. The party's official stance is pro basic income, but the models they have proposed are more akin to the models proposed by Christian Democrats, the National Coalition and social Democrats, which look more like a universal credit as seen in the United Kingdom. Yeah, and I said before, and there's also Democrats have also proposed and earned income tax credit kind of benefit, which would only be paid for people who are employed and earn certain amount. So that because their effective marginal tax rate cannot be decreased any further. So kind of how much they actually pay in the sense of losing some benefits and paying taxes. When the tax level cannot be changed anymore, they would be compensated by benefit. And there were three trials study or study span in the government program, which were a negative income tax trial, which would follow the universal basic income study, but it seems that there's not enough funding for it. And it seems to have been one, according to the newest information to be watered down even to only being a study of earned income tax credit. This is something that will probably still be forcefully discussed between the government parties. And then there was an academic experiment discussed that would have more compared different kind of incentives to work or kind of effects to increase employment monetary studies like the basic income information and then decreasing bureaucracy. If a trial started in 2023, there might not be enough time or budget to make it any more a worthwhile one than the last one was. And then I have included a lot of reading that has been beneficial to me when I have written these different reports, and which I think offer a quite good view into different aspects of basic income discussions. Thank you. Thanks so much for the input from Finland. We have Natalie Bennett with us. I can't see her now. Natalie, are you with us. I think Luca, do you know anything about her or so. She didn't try to join yet and virtually. No. Okay, so we'll just, I think, continue with the conversation that has a question. Actually, I would like to share some information about political parties and the basic income in Slovenia. So, people in all European social surveys were in favor for universal basic income for years. That's why we have so many signatures of course. And then we had a strategy that we didn't want to give the concept and the possibilities to take basic income idea solely for one political party. So, our organization, a basic income promotion network went to all parties. We said, well, they all need to know about the concept. And even our members of our network, they, they went to all different kinds of parties. We thought this is a good idea. But in this year, we found out it was not so because all parties knew the idea knew how good it is. But if they couldn't make some points during elections on that part, they found it useless. So it would be better to sell the idea to one big party, you know. That's my point. Then during the European elections previously, we started to think and started with independent UBI list for European elections. And we have that in mind for the next elections. This is the first point that what I would like to say is that we have in Slovenia super election year next year. It's going to be local elections, national parliament election, national council elections and a president elections. So everything. And now we would like to see how they, they stay on the universal basic income. They said, you know, in the previous elections, they're all in favor. Even they, they were in national parliament demanding from the Ministry of Finance to calculate again how much is possible. But right now, they are quiet, completely quiet. One sociologist last night said, well, in Slovenia, we have polite neoliberals and not polite neoliberals. Our government right now is not polite, but it's, you know, neoliberals anyway, and anyhow. And what is even worse is that because they have stolen our brand name. We have like universal basic income. We, we made this concept well known. We are using our definition universal unconditional and so on, and they just took our name, and they presented as minimum wage income supplement. And now people are coming back to us and saying, well, what have you done. I mean, you, you are proposing something so bad. It's not my fault. I mean, they just told my name. That's interesting to hear. Thanks so much for the info. I think Seymour had a direct comment to that and then I'd like to open the discussion to the audience. Joop Böhm had his hand up for quite a while and then there was a comment from Reina Hus from also a while ago. So I've noted this I have you guys on the list but first Seymour and then we'll open the discussion. Just to comment that that's kind of using the brand name of basic income is the same problem that we have that with the center party, which is one of the big old parties that they want to call their model basic income because their supporters support basic income or part of them or meaningful amount of their basic income, but then this is not seen in the elected officials and the parties official or kind of parties of models. And the second thing is which I kind of discussed a little bit in my report or the COVID report, which is something that I would like to clarify from your area. So is it so that you don't currently in Slovenia have a minimum income sheen. We do you do. Yeah, but kind of if we would imagine a country without it, a basic income would be a kind of more beneficial in comparison to having in a country like Finland with already a high level of different social benefits. Our problem is to kind of implement it in a very complex system of hundreds of different kinds of benefits. And, for example, in the developing countries or kind of in the case of our report in Kenya, it can have more bang for the buck so to speak. Yeah, I know but let's I want to interrupt here in order not to have only a conversation between the two of you but actually have the audience speak as well. I'd like to give you a chance that you can come up. Luca, can we organize this in a way that we can add everybody to the audience here or like to the discussion panel. Yes, you should be able to speak now. Just unmute yourself. Hello. How does it work how can I admit or like give them a mic basically. So, yeah, I gave you the right to speak. And so you just need to unmute yourself at this point you have that it should work. Does that work for you. Can you unmute yourself. You are still with us. If not, is right at first still with us. Yes. I think you had a question in the beginning that was regarding the first presentation from Seymour, and what was what our social democratic countries do you mean Scandinavian countries. Do you want to explain this a little further. I already said it in text. But if run hard has something else to ask. I can just clarify here that yes I was talking about the Nordic countries, and it was based on the old classic of welfare state regimes by your status being understand the Swedish researcher. Is that what you mean by that. What you meant. Sorry. Yes, if you can hear me. Yes, thank you because I mean I have never heard this term I mean I heard that there are lots of social democratic policies in Scandinavian countries but I haven't heard them as described as social democratic countries so I normally associate parties with the term so thanks. Yeah, I can if I can I will also use this point or time to I will be discussing this more in the upcoming chef publication on on just transition. So there I will also explain this will for a rich in sand, how they relate to kind of issues of universality and just transition. That sounds great. Thanks so much. Are there any other questions from the audience. What is this there was a call in Slovenia is regarding poverty among very developed countries a lot of current benefits that would be replaced so I think that was a response to what Seymour just said I think he didn't want to compare Slovenia to other low income countries somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. And this was to clarify that point right. Okay, I would still like to say something. Okay, well you see. I do believe that in the future, even the European Union will have to check it out a little bit more about social welfare systems in X or post socialist countries. I mean, if you look in equality and everything Slovakia, Czechia and Slovenia, we are the best among poverty alleviation programs for children and even for the others. So I would be, I mean, I think others might be, you know, old. Are there additional questions or comments from the audience. If not, I have a question or more like a suggestion or comment rather. So you guys were talking about how the name of basic income was used by the other parties or other organizations and then used in a different form that basic income has this definition of being unconditional no means testing no behavior testing and so on. And they just take the name because there's obviously no copyright on it and use it for something else and this is something that I see in Germany as well. There was like some one example in at least Berlin, not all over Germany but in Berlin that was the case. And I think in France, there's a Macron who introduced a, he called it revenue universal activity so something like a universal activation revenue or income. And so that also has in its core nothing to do with basic income, but for some reason, and I think it's not a coincidence. It's using these terms that are in universal basic income as well. And I think it's, it's an interesting point you made that people come back to you and then complain, what kind of stuff you suggested, although it wasn't you but other people who just use the name. And, and I think it's something that might appear quite often in the future when there's actually going to be a heated debate in a country about universal basic income. From a Finnish perspective or Slovenian perspective have an idea of how to go about it so I think. Valeria you suggested, not necessarily addressing all parties at once but just going to one so there was some strategic advice of how are going, going about it, but if assuming that that stage has already happened. Basic income is already used as a term for other things than actually basic income. How do you think this can be, this can be fought back like what what can we do about it. Well, in Slovenia, we have three different strategies. I mean, we always jump on any opportunity that comes you know. So, at the beginning when they introduced universal basic income at the beginning of COVID crisis, we were very happy because we said, well, people will get in the ear, the notion of it, the name of it, everyone will know what it is. But afterwards when everything what this government is doing is bad, you know, even the vaccines are bad just because this government is supplying them. So everything that is connected is is I don't know dirty or wrong. So what we can do well, some people already said well just go by any other name. Just go with the I don't know citizen wage, or social wage, or whatever, but you see, I don't think that's that's very clever. I mean, we, they can steal another brand name easily as the first one, but we have the theory behind it, and we cannot just jump around with, I don't know definition explanation and the concept and everything. So I am planning to fight it for the brand name and get it back. Okay, that sounds good. Do you have any recommendations. Yeah, yeah, definitely. As I'm working so closely with the Green Party, I, I have less of an idea on how to actually kind of go to other parties and help them in understanding basic income. I need to think that what has been so beneficial in Finland is that we had the trial. And before we have the trial we had to micro simulations on the costs. And the greens have kind of gained expertise and and expert status on it because we have been once publishing publicizing such studies. We also, I think we have a pretty good kind of respect for kind of non political experts in Finland. So for example, when the kind of we have social policy expert publishing reports. We have a lot of weight in the political discussion. And that is kind of one thing that we can use to curb the discussion in the right direction, which is of course something that I am interested in, because of working in a political think tank that studies basic income. So just to quickly touch on the social or citizens dividend or different names discussion. I think it's okay to use a different name, if you are talking about a different thing, because we could use kind of things like basic income, for example, in in the green decision to pay a social dividend to compensate some losses to the poorest people in our societies. But that is not kind of the same thing as basic income as the main block or main benefit of our social security systems. Okay, thanks so much there. We have another question for Seymour but I'd like to put that back for a while because not only Bennett just joined us and very happy to have you here, Natalie. And, and yes, today for our session on UBI and the pandemic in Europe will also hear the national report from the UK from Natalie Bennett, Natalie the floor is yours. Natalie, can you hear us. She might just have lost reception or so. She was with us just a second ago right. There she is. Let's see. Hi Natalie, can you hear us. You're still muted. Can you hear me. We can hear you we can see we're very happy you're here and we're very much looking forward to your contribution about UBI during the pandemic in the UK. Thank you very much. And I want to apologize profusely to everyone from my extreme like this I was in a debate in the chamber and it was expected to finish finish about 45 minutes earlier than it did and once she committed to the chamber you really can't leave. Just the nature of sometimes one get caught so apologies for that. But I think I bring some really exciting news in terms of the impact of the COVID pandemic on the debate on universal basic income in the UK. I think even before the pandemic started we were sort of seeing universal basic income as an issue rising up the agenda and we were starting to see real grassroots support for it. But COVID-19 pandemic has very, very much highlighted the extreme insecurity of so many people's lives in the UK. And the fact that whether it's zero hours contract insecure employment are simply inadequate pay to meet people's needs benefit sanctions. I've just been listening to a bishop in the House of Lords speaking very, very strong terms for a bishop about the impact of a benefit cap that if its families with more than two children who were simply left without enough money to live on. So we've seen a really acceleration we've seen the development of a large number of UBI labs, which is a grassroots based organization, starting started out in Sheffield spreading far beyond the UK but is particularly strong in the UK. We've seen a significant number of local councils starting to perhaps have the same level of power that councils and regional governments have in other parts of Europe but nonetheless there are indication of local support saying they very much like to run a trial. And recently at the BN conference the basic income earth network conference posted online but at least putatively in Glasgow. We saw the first ministers of both Scotland and Wales there to express their support for the idea of a trial at least possibly even going further in the case of Wales and so we have really strong support for the idea of a UBI. And I think what we're seeing many people may be seeing reports about what's happening in the UK about the that we're seeing just you know as we head into a winter with prices rising fast energy prices as they are in many parts of the world rising very fast. Inflation food prices rising a real rising level insecurity what government support there was has either ended or was being ended. And so I think we're going to see this this whole issue potentially jump to the next new stage. And you know, I have sort of standing. There's a minister who when she sees me in the corridors goes, so are you going to ask me about UBI today. And my answer is usually yes because it's a matter of there is rising interest we don't see, you know, the Tory party the Conservative Party not going to back it soon. Unfortunately, Labour has moved away from it and ideologically is not very keen on it. But it's something we're starting to really see a real groundswell of public support. So that's where I'd say in short that's what I'd say is is what's happening in the UK at the moment. I did many years ago after the being conference in Finland, write a piece you're speculating on whether it would be a country with an already advanced welfare system that would go the step further or go to UBI. Or whether it would be a, you know, country which has a really inadequate welfare system, which would suddenly see the need and making great love jump. And I think, you know, at the moment, if you force me to put to put a bet on this, I think I'd probably go for a country that's, you know, really has an utterly inadequate welfare system like the UK. So thanks very much for that. That was really interesting. I mean, it's sad to hear what's like the causes of all these of all these movements but it's it's great to hear at the same time that there's quite some movement outside of Parliament outside of the political parties happening that are fighting for basic income. I think that's encouraging for all of us. Are there any questions to Natalie Bennett's directly. So guys, we have next in line, a question to see more but first I think their questions from Seymour and Valeria to Natalie if I understand so Seymour you had your hand up first. Yeah, because because kind of the study that we deal with you learn about the steps towards basic income during the pandemic. I would like to hear a clarification from Natalie, kind of on kind of what kind of support the government provided during the pandemic in the UK, because the needs had seemed that the government mostly supported employers or employees to employers and there was only kind of more local money given to social benefits necessary but projects. Is this accurate. You are. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't hear any of that the the entire call the question dropped out apologies I'm having technical problems here but Okay, I can try to ask it more quickly. It seems to me that during the pandemic in the UK, the government mostly worked through to support employers or employees to employers, and they were not so much done to the social security system. Is this correct. Yes, I would broadly say that's true. I mean the key thing thing in terms of the social security system was a 20 pound uplift in what's known as universal credit. And that's something that's just ended, and that's going to throw an enormous number of people into poverty. What we saw was the furlough scheme so a huge number of wages salaries were paid to employees through their employers. What was expected to happen and what was feared would happen was at the end of the furlough scheme they would be a huge drop off in employment. So what we're seeing as many countries are seeing perhaps more extreme than most because of the whole issue of Brexit, which is a whole nother area on the side is that we're seeing, you know, not the higher levels of unemployment might have been expected. There is some real problems in that there's a lot of job vacancies but many of them are for jobs that many people can't take whether that's HDB drivers. So that's obviously, you know, an issue of skills, but also an issue of the kind of jobs. You know, it's not a job that fits in with a family life with carry responsibilities. It's not a job, you know, physically even that that many people would be able to do. So that is where a huge amount of the government money went. We also saw a lot of support for businesses including businesses like airports, etc. So direct support to businesses. There was some support through the Universal Credit Uplift but broadly speaking it was done through businesses. But we're not seeing the fallout from that side of things that perhaps people were predicting 12 months ago. All right, thank you. Before we go over to Valerie, just a short response but really short from Zimo. Yeah, we had the same kind of furlough scenes also but the problem with kind of only increasing Universal Credit that you are and working through furlough scenes is that you are missing out on the people who are not either on Universal Credit or people who were not employed when the pandemic started. Yeah. Okay, thanks so much. Then over to you, Valerie. Thank you. I would just like to say that also in during the COVID basic income got got people who were not beneficiary for social assistance or unemployment benefits self employed people and clergy. But I would like to join to Natalie with optimism about UK and basic income. Of course, people from all around Europe. Well, we were looking closely what happened in UK after Brexit. During this basic income conference and Bristol conference and everything what we can see is actually like your civil society is very much alive. And I would say this so civil society come alive through Brexit or because of Brexit. And now you have such a great opportunity to put this movement in the right direction. I mean that's why I'm so optimistic. Thank you. I can just quickly respond to that. One of the reasons why we have a powerful civil society is we have such a weak and inadequate politics. I'm speaking to you can probably see the wood paneling in the background from what's known as the mother of all parliaments but we have a government that was one the support of 44% of the people who voted in 2019. I'm just reminding you from the unelected House of Lords. The very weaknesses of our politics, the fact that we fail to represent people or debate issues properly is partly the reason why we have I think such a strong civil society. But you know there are positives and negatives of that and we're definitely working on the positives. I just have to say, I mean your breath Brexit is very similar to our independence in 91, you know, so I can, I can see this resemblance. That's why I said it. Okay. Okay, thanks so much. Yes, so we've heard today from the Jeff publication on the policy measures taken during the pandemic in Europe that Seymour is a co author off in the beginning. The national contribution from Valeria the national contribution from Finland from Seymour, and then a tab later from from Natalie as well from the UK and I think from these three countries at least we have a good overview of what was happening during the pandemic, what what kind of measures we're taking by the government, and to which degree it is encouraging what's happening regarding basic income, as in, it is picking up, yeah traction and picking up speed in these countries, although I think at least for for Seymour you said like there's the there's the Green Party and there's the there's the there's the left, but other than that there there are no big supporters let's say at least in the, yeah in the in the established parties. I want to thank you again, Jeff for so the Green European Foundation for organizing this and the transition for supporting the event. I'd like to thank our Luca and soul in the background and especially I'd like to thank you, Valeria Seymour and Natalie for reporting from your side and letting us know what's happening or what was happening during the pandemic regarding UBI. I'm just unmuting for a little bit of colour if you can hear those bills in the background that means the House of Lords is having a vote so that tells you a bit about the life in the House of Lords. Okay, thanks so much.