 Okay, great. We're going to start now and hopefully we've got one final speaker that should be joining us, which is Clive, and he should be joining us in just a moment. But just want to welcome everyone. My name is Fran Boyd and I'm the Executive Director of Positive Money and chairing today's webinar on the end of growth, should our COVID-19 recovery prioritise GDP growth. I'm really pleased to have so many of you joining us. We have over 650 people so far, and I'm sure that number will go up as people grab their lunch and join us. We are really living in unprecedented times. Things that we thought were impossible at the beginning of the year have happened, like monetary financing or the state covering 80% of workers' salaries. The pandemic is causing an enormous amount of tragedy and grief through lives lost, and at the same time it's exposing some of the deep-rooted problems with our very dysfunctional economic system. And with coronavirus hitting after a decade of anemic economic growth, you know, and we see our economy is dysfunctional on many levels, and we are probably heading towards some form of post-growth economy, whether we like it or not. We have a choice whether this will mean mass unemployment, deepening inequality and a lower quality of life for all, or whether it could ensure that we actually are able to live longer, happier lives and whilst avoiding catastrophic climate change. Today, Positive Money have also released a poll from over 2,000 Britons that says that right now, over 8 out of 10 Britons want to prioritise health and wellbeing over economic growth. And when the pandemic is over, over 6 out of 10 Britons want to prioritise health and wellbeing over economic growth, which shows growth at all costs is not something that people will support any longer. We have fantastic speakers and experts joining us today. Caroline Lucas MP, means no introduction, she's the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion and former Green Party leader. We have Clive Lewis MP, the Labour Party MP for Norwich South and former Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics. We have Lord Dieben joining us, who is the chair of the UK Committee on Climate Change. And we have Dr Guy Standing, who's a professor or research associate at SOAS and the author of several books, including one that came out this year called Battling Eight Giants, Basic Income Now. And we've got David Barnes, an economist at Positive Money, who was the lead author on the report we're launching today, which is called The Tragedy of Growth. So we're going to kick off by hearing from all panellists, starting with David on the paper. I'm going to be asking them what they think of one of our key proposals, which is that the ONS stopped publishing GDP figures so that we stopped focusing on it. So we're going to hear about whether our panellists think that GDP growth should be prioritised in the response to COVID-19, as we're hearing from many economists and politicians, including those in the government. We'll then be moving on to question and answer, and we're keen to hear from all of you. But you'll have an opportunity to put questions in the box once we've heard from all speakers. So ask us from Facebook Live, which we're broadcasting to as well, by putting them in the comments box, and they'll find their way over to me. We're really keen to know who we've got listening, so please let us know your name and where you're from, maybe either your organisation or geographical location, that will be great. So I'll initially hand over to David, who's going to talk us through the report. Thanks very much Fran. So in this new report, positive money charts a path to shifting away from the GDP indicator and reducing the economy's dependence on GDP growth. First, I'll outline why we should stop publishing and targeting GDP figures. I'll then explain the barriers to abandoning GDP growth and how we can start to overcome them, and I'll end with what should guide economic policy instead of growth targets. So although limitations of the GDP indicator are widely acknowledged, GDP growth remains the dominant goal in economic policymaking. In response to a question from former leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, the UK government recently stated that their economic priority is to ultimately see the economy grow. Further, the government's main document on climate change is called the Clean Growth Strategy, framed around boosting GDP numbers. However, a close look at the evidence illustrates that this focus on GDP growth is misguided. Growth fails to deliver enhanced life satisfaction or poverty alleviation, and it remains environmentally destructive. Our report addresses these three points in turn. First, cross-sectional analyses show a leveling off of increases in life satisfaction around a GDP per capita of $20,000, with further increases having a diminishing impact. And with extensive time series data, economist Richard Easterlin consistently finds no positive relationship at all between GDP per capita and life satisfaction. This finding applies to countries across the income spectrum. The clearest example is China, which has averaged an annual growth rate close to 10% since the mid-80s, yet has not seen any increase in life satisfaction. In the US, GDP per capita has doubled since the 70s, while reported happiness has actually decreased. And this is related to our second point, which is that growth is not an effective means of alleviating poverty. Here in the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world, over 14 million people were living in poverty already before the pandemic. In low and middle income countries, a lot of recent GDP growth has represented shifts from informal to formal economic activity, often accompanied by increases in inequality, dispossession of land, mass migration to urban slums, and loss of community ties and traditional agricultural practices. India is a good example of this, as its economy has close to tripled in size in the last two decades, and simultaneously its levels of inequality have soared now second only to the US. So we should be very skeptical of claims that perpetuate the narrative that growth equals development. Third, growth is still not decoupled from environmental pressures, meaning that continuing to grow the economy counteracts efforts to address climate and ecological breakdown. Globally, a 1% increase in GDP has been associated with a 0.5 to 0.8% increase in carbon emissions. The UK and other rich countries have seen emissions reductions since the financial crisis despite some growth returning, but researchers have shown that this decoupling is not happening anywhere near fast enough to reach climate targets. And emissions aren't the only problem. For the vast majority of countries, there has been no decoupling of material footprint from economic growth at all. Globally GDP growth has in fact become more materially intensive in the 21st century, contributing to a range of environmental pressures including biodiversity loss, soil depletion and pollution of air, water and land. So in order to alleviate poverty and increase life satisfaction, policy must target those things directly, instead of going through GDP, which as we've shown, does not work. Keeping GDP as the focus for government policy detracts from actually dealing with issues head on. So in the interest of social and environmental well-being, we need to fully abandon GDP growth. As a first step, we recommend that in the UK, the ONS stopped publishing and the Treasury stopped targeting GDP figures. But this alone would still not be enough. We also need structural changes to reduce the economy's dependence on growth, which is the next key argument of our report. While growth fails to deliver on many fronts, we've also just seen how a sudden unplanned contraction of economic activity can bring the global economic system to its knees in a matter of weeks with miserable impacts such as unemployment and food and housing insecurity. These negative impacts occur in part because our system has a number of growth imperatives, meaning that without growth, financial, economic and social crises occur. In our report, we highlight the tension between financial stability and low growth that keeps us stuck between the socially undesirable option of financial instability and the environmentally unsustainable option of high growth. Currently, we need a non-financialized and non-growing economy, but that is unknown territory in high-income countries. And beyond the purely financial analysis, we argue that capitalist economies have growth imperatives embedded in their basic features, because in the absence of growth, they show strong tendencies toward mass unemployment and deepening inequality. And this is what we're seeing right now as unemployment surges and big businesses gain privileged access to financial support through schemes like the COVID corporate financing facility, while insufficient support is reaching SMEs households. In the US, 33 million have lost their jobs, yet the net worth of the country's 170 wealthiest individuals has increased by over $300 billion since the start of the pandemic. And we emphasize that the monetary system is central to growth dependency. Interest bearing debt, which represents the vast majority of the money supply, was a key element in the rise of capitalist economies and their many growth imperatives. It facilitated the extension of capital accumulation across vast geographical spaces. It turned money into a commodity, and it gave creditors enormous power over debtors. So if we want to overcome growth imperatives, we must transform our money and finance system. The guiding principle for this should be the fostering of more balanced relationships between creditors and debtors. We need new ways of guaranteeing access to public means of payment and access to credit that doesn't always depend on the further issuance of interest bearing debt. And since that might take some time, we also need more immediate measures to rebalance power in the system. And we cover a range of policies that the Bank of England and the Treasury should explore to achieve these goals. They include universal basic income issued in the form of central bank digital currency, a direct clearing facility that would provide SMEs with an alternative source of credit, and an ecosystem of public banks to serve local communities and create money in line with public purpose. We also cover credit guidance, modern debt jubilees, monetary financing, and reforms to the tax system. And collectively, these policies offer an ambitious agenda for post-growth money and finance that serves well-being. So as we overcome growth imperatives in the economy, we can then comprehensively shift away from GDP and focus on alternative indicators to guide policymaking. Currently, the ONS has a measuring national well-being program, which includes a dashboard of indicators such as life satisfaction, access to key services, and greenhouse gas emissions. We recommend a review of this dashboard informed by public consultation and grounded in a coherent well-being framework centered on fundamental human needs. We also recommend that the ONS report that covers movements across these indicators be published on a quarterly basis and that the Treasury incorporate this dashboard into its macroeconomic framework and budgeting process. And ideally, we would like to see economics media coverage focusing on these indicators in the same way it currently focuses on GDP. And to collaborate with other countries that are leading on this agenda, the UK government should join the well-being economy governments group, which includes Scotland, New Zealand, and Iceland. And lastly, we recommend that post-normal tools such as participatory processes be further incorporated into decision-making guidance so that high uncertainty and high-stakes decision-making can serve the new economic policy goals of a well-being economy. So to conclude, this report shows that we're currently stuck in a toxic, and as the title of the report suggests, a tragic relationship with GDP growth, where we can't live with it and we can't live without it. Now is the time to escape this relationship and build a new system where the economy is structured around people and planet rather than GDP growth. This process will require fully abandoning the GDP indicator in favour of social and environmental metrics and transforming money and finance for a well-being economy. Thanks very much for listening. Thank you, David, for introducing and thanks to everyone that's joined. We've got now over 740 people, including people tuning in from Edinburgh, Bury St Edmunds, Devon, South Wales, Poland, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands. So we're very much an international audience, which is fantastic. So now we're going to hear from our fantastic panellists. I'm going to pass over to Caroline to kick us off. Thank you very much, Fran, for the invitation to speak and thanks, David, for providing such a compelling presentation. I think it's a really powerful report and it's great to see such clear policy proposals for action. I want to set out a few reasons why this is exactly the right time to be talking about the tragedy of growth and to be campaigning confidently for an alternative economy. And I'll comment briefly on a few points from the report as well. So why now? Well, over the last two months or so during the coronavirus crisis, governments have to varying degrees prioritise public health above economic growth. And that obviously is exactly the right thing to do. But the crucial thing is we want them to do it not just now, but as we move beyond the pandemic. The idea that governments should put the well-being of citizens and the environment above economic growth is at the core of green politics. And yet the idea that we can somehow pursue infinite growth on a finite planet without disaster social and ecological consequences is at the core of how most governments run their economies. And I want to mention just two very recent examples of why that urgently must change. First, there's the interim report of a Treasury commissioned review into the economics of biodiversity, the Dasgupta review. And upfront, it states, and I quote, the havoc that COVID-19 is causing underscores the importance of biodiversity for our health and that of the global economy. And ultimately the need for the human enterprise to live within the safe operating space of the biosphere. Commissioned by the Treasury, it goes on to state explicitly that the human economy is embedded within rather than external to nature. And that we need to recognise that limits nature places on the economy, and thus the need for new measures of success that go beyond GDP. So let's hope the Treasury is listening to that. The second example is the subject of a letter that Clive and myself and others wrote to the Chancellor. It was warned of something that four of the world's leading scientists from the intergovernmental science policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services. It's a real mouthful, but essentially if there's is the IPCC for biodiversity and our letter was based on a warning issued by four of the scientists from if there's and it warned about the risks of pandemics from the destruction of nature. And if I can just briefly quote, the scientists said, as with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prices economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis to avoid sowing the seeds of the next one. So I've tabled a parliamentary motion, a so called early day motion on this so please do ask your MP to sign is number 433. But there's just two examples to demonstrate that, but now feels like absolutely the right time to be having this debate and that there are is open in places that perhaps there haven't been until recently. So turning to the report I wanted to just make a couple of comments. First on the headline grabbing call for the on s to stop publishing or even measuring GDP growth. And I appreciate that the report later explains that this needs to happen simultaneously with structural changes to tackle growth dependency, and that bit is absolutely crucial. But nevertheless, I think abandoning the GDP indicator as a first step is, is pretty challenging, even to those of us who've been lobbying the Treasury and the on s about this. It's frankly quite exciting, I think to imagine a national dashboard of wellbeing indicators, maybe one that does still actually show GDP growth figures or be at those would be coming down or flat lining. All of the well being indicators showing positive signs that our society and environment are flourishing. I think that would be a very beautiful image to show the kind of economy that we want to be moving towards. And imagine if such a well being dashboard were the hot topic in every spending review in every budget at PMQ is in treasury oral question time in the media as well. However, the case against continuing to publish GDP stats at all, even alongside others, I have to say is made quite compellingly in the report. The second part of the report that I wanted to mention was the section on the calamitous financial system and how fundamentally that has got to change. It's a big challenge, but I found it reassuring to see some overlap with the work of the Green New Deal group that I've been involved in now for for around 10 years. The proposals here for a new ecosystem of public banks are particularly welcome and I think it's easy for individuals and businesses to imagine how much better that would be than the status quo, which is a crucial ingredient for change. And that brings me to my third and final reflection on on how we can communicate and campaign and collaborate to get the government and the ons to take up some of these proposals sooner rather than later. The other than having a general election and electing a green government, which, you know, even I would suggest might not happen immediately. But nonetheless, there is a lot happening. But beyond Westminster, there is, for example, the well being economy governments initiative which David mentioned that well being economy governments initiative is flourishing. In the meantime, Amsterdam is embracing donut economics, it's being advised by by Kate Rayworth, and they're doing that explicitly to help overcome the impacts of COVID-19. Meanwhile, the UK government's miserable position is encapsulated by an answer to a recent parliamentary question. They asked for the evidential basis for claims about green growth with reference to absolute decoupling consumption based emissions and the 1.5 die 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. The business secretary simply stated, green growth is absolutely possible. We can't find it necessary to cite any evidence to support this claim and certainly no evidence that would show that decoupling on the scale and speed necessary has been possible anywhere in the world. And you heard from David just now how the Green Party Pia Natalie Bennett raised the issue of an inquiry into growth dependency in the Lords recently too. The reply was very blunt. Our economic priority as a government is to ultimately see the economy grow. Therefore, we make no apology for growth dependency, it said. So we've got a bit of work to do but clearly there are some people out there in the Treasury who who might just be listening so I am delighted to see the report call on the Treasury to establish a formal review, on reducing growth dependency of the UK economy. That was a key proposal from the most recent briefing from the All Party Group on Limits to Growth. That's an All Party Group group of which Clive and I are co-chairs. Please do check out that the documents of the All Party Group and encourage your MPs to get involved. I'll ask the show's important alignment on asks. I think the question I would love us to get to when we have our discussion is whether we can do more together on public campaigning and mobilization. Personally, I would love that to include the natural environment community, because frankly I think for too long confronting the calamitous economic system has seemed somewhat of limits. Expertise and evidence were actually important ingredients of political decision making. The Treasury would have ditched its obsession with GDP growth a long time ago. That's why I'm hopeful that this report will be even more than just another excellent policy document. I hope that it will actually help with a broader conversation and broader campaigning as well, telling better stories about the tragedy of growth dependency, and painting clearer pictures about the economy that we could imagine instead. I think the crucial questions about growth as we decide how we're going to build back better and really imagining what it might look like and feel like to live in a well-being economy. I think some sort of deliberative process or citizens assembly should be part of that process looking at the green recovery, building back better what kind of job our economy should be aiming to fulfill. Similarly, the interim recommendations of the French citizens assembly which was rushed out to inform COVID recovery plans does call for and I quote a different social and economic model. It is more human and more resilient in the future in the face of future crisis. And they suggest policy reforms to promote local distribution networks and to avoid overconsumption. Having observed myself the UK's climate assembly and similar initiatives. It does seem that people are more eager to engage with complex issues, and that they're far ready for radical change than governments tend to assume. So over the coming weeks and months we've seen also how hardwired we are as humans towards care, compassion and cooperation. So it's time to ask what would happen if we chose to design our economy on that basis for the long term. And I look forward to our discussions about exactly that. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Caroline. I'm going to hand over to Clive now. It'd be great to have your thoughts and input Clive. Oh, unmute unmute. There we are. That's better. I think my wife did that earlier today. Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to go after Caroline. There's nothing much left for me to say after that tour de force Caroline and I think she covered so many of the areas that I think we're all touch on throughout our talk today. First of all, I'd like to welcome this report. It's a fantastic report. It's a timely report as Caroline has already mentioned in terms of where we are now as a country and where we are globally economically in terms of the current COVID-19 pandemic. What I wanted to do was very quickly look at one of the things that really has kind of piqued my interest when I spent two and a half years on the front bench of the Labour Shadow Treasury team. My role there was as the Minister for Sustainable Economics and we tried to bring in as a pioneer some of the work that went into helping to formulate Labour's green industrial strategy. And the caveat I will give before I go into my small critique is this. Unfortunately, GDP is an economic and political shibboleth. And what I mean by that is it's almost it's an article of faith which politicians seem to have to be able to talk about convincingly believe in the whole economic and political framework of growth and redistribution is based on that growth paradigm. As politicians, it's very difficult, even under the last Labour administration, which was arguably I would say one of the most radical that we have seen the last 50, 60, 70 years in this country. And we still struggled with the issue of growth. And I will say, there are a number of things in this report that are actually in the last Labour manifesto reform of the tax system, banking reform, UBI pilot SME credit reform, a well being dashboard so we understood that the environment had to be front and centre of all we did One of the things that we still struggled with was the issue of growth and one of the things I wanted to talk about was we talked about sustainable growth, and we often talked about green growth. But at the heart of our economic policies was still an obsession with material and technological investment to increase productivity, we talked about productivity being anemic that it was a failure of our model of the economic system that we were currently inhabiting and that under a Labour government, we would be able to change that to improve that and to distribute that growth better but we were still talking fundamentally about growth and I think there was a, there was a there was a problem for us at the heart of our green industrial strategy, and at the same time talking about growth and one of the problems is I wanted to just very quickly talk just very quickly talk into that and it does relate to this report. The investment that we talked about was aimed at technologies which aimed which were needed to help reduce the number of people number of hours required to make and produce things to do things. And one of the problems of that is that as you begin to reduce the time that it takes for people to produce goods and services that if that is uniform throughout the economy you begin to see unemployment. So therefore to counter that unemployment you have to grow the economy and that was at the heart of the problem I think of the last Labour government in the sense that we understood the environment needed to be front and centre but we also hooked on GDP growth. So there were some contradictions in how we were approaching this and why I really appreciate what this report has done is that it has begun to look not just at the indicators that need to be looked at, but also the financial financialisation aspects that need to be looked at and also the fiscal policies that need to be looked at to begin to wean ourselves off this growth because I think what COVID-19 is showing us and as the research that's come out today is that we are at a unique moment within our history perhaps where the public across many Western democracies and now beginning to see actually our health and well-being is more important than the orthodox economic view of growth at any cost. Now there's a big argument going on at the moment behind the scenes in government and I imagine it's probably going on in the opposition as well about the balance between the economy and growth and our health and well-being and which way the government goes. Well, in many ways determine how we and where we come out of this coronavirus successfully or not. I would just point to a couple more issues as well, which is that you would have heard of recently that what you may have been hearing of in the next couple of weeks and months is that there will be a series of rent strikes, particularly in London, which is where there are a large number of people who are going into debt. One of the things this report talks about is debt jubilees, and there will be rent strikes, I think, taking place in London, which I'm going to be supporting. And my own party's policy has been to extend the time that people have to pay back their debt. And I think it's been worked out that actually if we extend it by two years, the average rental debt will increase by about rental each month will increase by about 125 pounds a month. And for some people that's the difference between eating and not eating. And I think the point here is that what COVID-19 is showing, and it's making people realize that actually our economic system as is configured is broken. And it's not just in terms of the environment, it's also in terms of how people are functioning in that many people now because of COVID-19 because of what it's actually doing to an unsustainable economy, affording through the cracks. And people now are waking up to that in numbers that we haven't seen before. Eight out of 10 people in this country now think that the government after COVID-19 should be prioritizing health and well-being over economic growth. I think that's a major turning point that one that we have to ensure is part of the narrative of building back better, which is something I know Caroline is involved with as well. That's something that we have to make sure that is integrated into anything that we do on the way back in terms of policymaking. So I really, really appreciate this report. I think it's going to fit in and slot in really well with the overall narrative, which I think is now coming out from this crisis. And it's one which is though it is going to be a real fight between ourselves and those on the right of politics and economics who want the status quo. And we'll double down in their efforts to achieve that. And I think there's a real fight on our hands and I think this report will give us plenty of ammunition to help make the argument and the case against those on that side of the argument. So thank you. Thanks Clive. I appreciate your comments. I would like to bring in Lord Diben now to have his thoughts on on the report and whether we should consider the prioritizing GDP growth post COVID. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. The Climate Change Committee wrote a letter to the Prime Minister last week, making very clear our view that GDP was an unsatisfactory measurement of the nature of the society and the health of the society we live in. It's been held for many years. It's the view that the person who invented GDP originally felt that it was only a partial measurement. I actually myself believe that it would be helpful to ban the ONS from measuring GDP, not least because I don't think we live in a society which is very keen on making things less transparent. But they would soon ask why we were not doing that and whether this was to cover up rather than to expose. So my own view is that the real issue is how do you make sure that people measure the success of a society and that's what I want to talk about. The success of a society in a way which does not emphasize in the way we do now a particular form of addition. I think this whole case began, this new framing began with Laudato Si and the Pope's bringing together of all these issues from poverty at one end to the loss of biodiversity at the other and saying that what climate change was was a symptom of what we have done to the world and what we are doing to the world. And of course, if you measure what you do, if the measure of success is nearly GDP, then that is what you will do. And what has happened in the past is that we have ameliorated GDP. I think Clive's report on the thoughts within the last Labour government is a very frank one. What happens is you ameliorate the GDP measurement by saying but at the same time we have got to do X, Y and Z. There is at the same time a need to take some of the wealth that we create and push it in a direction either in terms of helping the poorest or in terms of protecting the environment or the historic environment or the biodiversity or fighting climate change. And there are many things in this report with which I agree and there are many things which I disagree fundamentally because I think that it is an approach which is doomed to failure. As in fact, I think so many of the approaches of either the left or the right. I don't like those phrases because it seems to me that I don't see why I should accept a definition of society which is designed to fit a Marxist concept. I think that both Marxism and libertarianism are unacceptable ways of looking at society. I think neither of them solve the issues that we have to deal with and I don't see why one should be right or left on that basis because I find myself having much in common with both ends of the spectrum. But what I'm interested in is delivering the goods and my trouble mother trouble for me about this report and you asked me to come so I'm coming to do it. My trouble for me this report is that I don't think that it will actually in the end do more than divide rather than unite. And I don't think we are going to win the battle against climate change. If we spend a lot of our time arguing out the kind of theoretical background to which this report refers. What I think we have to do is to take the key bit of the report, which is to say that the measurement of the success of a society is not just the sort of growth we've been talking about. First of all, I think we have to redefine growth. I remind you of the great comment by Cardinal Newman that growth is the only is the only proof of life. And there is a sense in which you have to disengage the feeling that if you say you don't want growth for many people that means a kind of view of society which is sterile and stationary, which is not what we're asking for. It's not what you're asking for either. So I want us to redefine and capture the word growth. This is a good Marxist technique. You choose or you capture the language and we should be capturing the language of growth and saying the definition of growth has got to include the ability to create in material terms wealth because to do a lot of other things you want to do that. But it's also got to include the improvement of health and the improvement of biodiversity and of the environment. And we know that's true because when anybody wants to defend the narrow definition of wealth of growth, they always use those things in order to prove it. If you notice, they always say, well, because of economic growth, we have improved the health in this country or that country. Because of economic growth, we have reduced the number of people in poverty. Because of economic growth, we've improved the health service, all those things. So they know that economic growth can only be acceptable if you can prove that it has that effect. And so it's not unreasonable to turn the tables on them. And I'm all for turning the tables on that kind of approach. And you turn the tables by saying, we now define economic growth. We don't get rid of the phrase. We don't get rid of the measurement of GDP because that looks as if we're trying to do something which is underhand. And what we say is that we are going to define economic, we're going to define success of a society in a way which means that you do have to measure these other things. Now, one of the problems with that, of course, is that people have been hardwired, as I think somebody said, I think that five again said hardwired to accept this particular way of looking at it. It will take some time to win it out. Now, what the Climate Change Committee has therefore said is very simple. It is that you first of all have to accept the first step in this, which is that there is not a basic contradiction between environmental improvement and economic growth. Because the fallacy of the right, again to have to use the language that we use, the fallacy of the right, particularly of the American right and with those foolish people in Britain who follow it. The fallacy of the libertarian is that somehow or other, if you try to do these good things, particularly if society and the state tries to do these good things, that somehow or other it makes people poorer. And that is a fundamental fallacy, and I want to beat that by trying to explain to people that this is actually not a way of making people poorer. And I'm using the word poorer in the whole sense, because sometimes it's merely means that people have got less money in their pocket. This is one of the problems of the GDP definition and the definition of growth. So the first step in the revolution that is necessary in our attitudes is to make people understand that growth can and should and must include the measurements we're talking about if it's to be a measurement of a successful society. The second thing we have to do is to show that these issues we're talking about and concentrating on and which are the most important things that those things are in fact not contrary to a richer society, but actually contribute to that richer society and we are saying are actually essential for that. And that means that you have to make a series thirdly of choices which are different from the choices that you have made before and we made a number of examples of that. But one of them was a very simple example and I'm interested to see that the government has already started to do it. And that was to say, look at your roads program in the circumstances that have now appeared and ask yourself whether actually if you want to service the nation more effectively, you ought to move to spending a lot of that money on connecting people, everybody, some people making sure that every part of the country is able to join in all the activities we're talking about in the way that we are now. I couldn't have done this from my isolation as a vulnerable person I am isolated totally. I couldn't have done this six months ago because there wasn't broadband here. I've got it in a bit of the house I have to say I have to move around to make sure I've got it in the right place but I've got it, I've got it, but there are lots of people who don't. That is a small but important distinction between the sort of ways which we've looked at life before. The whole thing that we have to do which will gain the climate change committee have said is that when you look at what you should be doing you have to do it in a in in the context of recognizing a very good old fashioned English word, which is fairness. So far, missed that out and has a tiny independent chairman of this of this committee I have to say, I can't discern in any of the governments are willingness to do what they should actually do, which is for example, when you wish to pay for the very important steps which were taken, which ended up with offshore wind and the like, you should be making sure that those who pay for it are those most able to pay for it and not do what we did. All both. It was supported right across the board what we did, which was to say that the electricity consumer would pay for it, not recognizing that that means the 20% of the population that only have electricity are going to pay proportionately more, and they tend to be proportionately poorer. Whereas had this been paid by general taxation, you would at least have made sure that to a large extent, it would have been a fairer system. Now, unless we are fair about the transition and transition we have to have, then it will not be acceptable. And if it's not acceptable, it won't happen. The government like all governments have got to recognize that not only is that true. And I come to my last point, but it's particularly true in this situation after the effect of COVID-19. What is what throwing a nation on its resources, its internal resources does is to make people think much more clearly about what they think is important. That's what's happened from our isolation. So people who knew, oh yes they knew that we had dirty air, and were complaining about it, but not enough for the government to take it seriously. So the government took none of those measures that it should have done. But hoped that when we had electric cars it would be better. Those people have now experienced clean air. They know what it's like. It's been taken within them. And therefore they have a different view of it, just like the Chinese in Beijing, when they turned off all the factories for the Beijing Olympics. And for the first time people saw the style as they had seen it when they were young. Then that was seen. So you no longer talked about pollution as an intellectual concept. It was a real concept, something that you had experienced. You knew what it really was like not to be polluted. So you became more determined than ever that you should not go back to this. And that is what the authorities in Beijing have found much, much more difficulty in not putting this right. So I want to end by just saying about COVID. I think it has given people a chance to think differently about their lives. Our job is to make sure that that is not a passing thing. It's not something that's rolled over because of the desperate search for an old fashioned definition of growth. And to do that, just warn you do that by moving people from where they are to where you want them to be by steps that they understand and by transparency. And that's why I deeply disagree with the concept that you do this by saying you have to throw away everything and start afresh, because there is no example in history in which that has happened. And the incremental change which we need has got to be one by making people understand the steps that they take and moving surely along that route. So let's do it that way. And let's not end up by this being another move towards a revolutionary dead end. Thank you, Lord even appreciate your input and all the different aspects that you brought into the discussion we can get into a bit of those in the Q&A. I'm going to hand over to our final panelist who is guy standing to give us a short and snappy input and then we'll be taking questions. We're now over 760 people and we have people joining from Greece, Chile, Egypt, France, Lincolnshire, Reading, Belfast, Cardiff, Liverpool. So exciting to hope you're all enjoying this. So guy, if you can come in now that'd be great. Guy, are you okay to come in with your comments? Yes, I'm narrowly. Okay, I think it's an interesting point that every time there's an economic crisis of this proportion. There's a change of paradigm in the way we depict reality. If you go back to Adam Smith's time he measured national income excluding the work of churchmen, teachers, doctors, clowns, writers, economists, they didn't count in national income. When the 1930s came, Simon Kuznets was tasked to prepare national statistics. And the interesting thing is that he started by producing figures that in his mind would exclude what he called disservices, which was excluding damaging activities, criminal activities, and arms industries and so on. And he actually wanted a narrower measure. And he was overruled by Keynes, because Keynes wanted to measure the capacity of the economy to pay for the war. The emergence of GDP was actually due to a crisis that came in the economy and in the world. I think what we're going to see here is a big paradigm shift. Now if you have a paradigm shift as philosophy of science, no, you have to find first of all that the existing paradigm can't answer the questions that people are asking. And there has to be an alternative paradigm in the wings, ready to replace the old one. You won't get a change unless those two conditions exist. I mean, going back to the 1930s, the interesting thing is not only did GDP develop, but a labor force approach, the statistics. Before the 1930s, labor statistics didn't give policymakers an opportunity of measuring the unemployment rate. So the transition was to answer the question, what is the level of unemployment? Now we're in a situation where that paradigm is broken down and we are going to accelerate it by asking several big questions. How do you include the value of the commons? We don't take any account of the existence and need for the commons. That's one thing. We understand and rather more fundamental that people at the doorstep can understand. When you tell them, they say you can't, you can't be serious. But we don't measure work. We only measure labor in our national statistics. It's ridiculous. So all the forms of work that we sitting here have come to realize is even more valuable than we thought beforehand. We measure care work, community work, environmental work, volunteering. None of that gets measured in our statistics. I say that on the doorstep, people say you're kidding. They must value it, but it's given a zero value. The ONS recently did an estimate of the value of unpaid care work in Britain today. They came out with an estimate of 1.2 trillion pounds per year, which happens to be more than the whole of manufacturing and all non-financial services. So if we in fact insisted that if we went in the direction of Lord Eamon of saying that we can't jettison the term growth altogether, we at the very, very least should be talking about recalibrating what we mean by growth. I don't feel comfortable with the term post-growth, just as I don't feel comfortable with post-modernism in the sense that the term indicates you don't know where you're going. Post something. I don't know where it means. We have to have a sense of using the vocabulary that resonates with the crisis that we've got at the moment. That is the combination of a pandemic type economy, which is subject to huge regular or irregular but of common shocks and crises. It's a bubble economy. So I agree with some of the sentiments in your report that you must put finance back into the box. It's a ridiculous situation that today finance in Britain is given a value of 300% of GDP, which is the financial assets. In the United States it's 350%. We need to put finance right back in its box and give it a very low value in whatever we come up with as an alternative. So I think that's a very useful way of looking forward. The other point about your report, which we briefly discussed before we came on air, is I think the second part needs to be fleshed out much more clearly. And I hope you'll check with my books on the subject, particularly with the idea of basic income. You've got to spell out who would determine the level, who would determine changes in the level, what degree of accountability, how would you be able to build up long term finance rather than just having a helicopter money type of approach, which might be might be conducive to the current circumstances might, but you've got to think of the long term and I think you need to answer some of the questions with your prognosis, where you just sort of schematically come out. But that I think can wait for future work. And the last point I want to make is that part of the challenge we all have is finding the right vocabulary, finding the right terminology and images. And you only alter the paradigm if that third part is built into it. And I think finding the language is one of the challenges of this global transformation that we're trying to move into, where basic income would be part of a new income distribution system. The sort of things that Clive and Caroline were talking about, I think we have to dismantle what's become rentier capitalism, create a new sort of economy, and in the process, we have to have better language, better terminology and so on. So I think the challenge is wonderful one, and you've opened some interesting issues in your report. But I think there's a lot more to be done. Thank you, Guy. Appreciate your comments. Thank you all the panelists. So we've got literally, you know, almost 100 questions that have come in. We're not going to be able to answer them all, but we're going to attempt to answer some. And David is definitely available for doing more talks on the on the report in local groups or local party branches if people want to afterwards. So if you don't get your question asked, please don't be disappointed and come and follow up with us afterwards. I'm going to put out three at a time. I'm going to ask the panelists to keep their answers as brief as possible, and ideally just pick one to answer. The first I'm going to take are from, first from Gordon Sim. So he kind of points to the kind of question of green growth, which was touched on. So as climate change is more important than anything else, what about pushing this against the economy, that one million jobs are created through green energy, renewables, wave power, etc. Then there was a question on consumerism and consumerism and consumption from Quentin from Cambly Surrey, who kind of says, isn't this the kind of chance when we can bring about an end to relentless consumption and kind of unsustainable premise that we've been told that we need to do in order to be happy. And then I'm going to ask a final question that came in on Kate Raworth's donut model so Tim Crosland asked about that and so did the London XR Citizens Assembly Working Group asked about the kind of difference between growth and Kate Raworth's agnostic growth as a way forward. So I'm going to go to David to kick us off with a couple of points in response to those and if you want to pick up on any responses to the panelists you can, but please keep it brief David. Thanks Fran. Those are all really great questions. I would like to answer all of them, but I guess I'll maybe I'll go with the last one on the donut economy. And so for those that don't know the donut model, it was penned by Kate Raworth and it frames the challenge that we face by showing that we need to reach a social foundation where people have enough of the basics to live a good life, but where we're also not breaching the planetary boundaries of biodiversity loss, land conversion, climate change, etc. And if we achieve that then we're in the safe and just space for humanity in the donut. And you know positive money, we have enormous respect for Kate Raworth she does great work and we consider her a close ally in the quest for a new economy. And I think the donut diagram is quite a clear and simple way of communicating a lot of the issues that we face but I would caveat that with a couple points. First, you know, I think Kate argues that it doesn't really matter what happens to GDP as long as we are in that space. And so we can basically be agnostic about GDP. And in the report we do argue that you know we shouldn't be targeting negative GDP because that wouldn't tell us about whether the level of economic activity is sustainable it would imply reduction in environmental pressures but it wouldn't tell us if that level of economic activity is sustainable and it wouldn't tell us much about human well being. We also have to acknowledge that to get into the safe and just space that Kate describes that will entail lower GDP and we have to acknowledge that because then that leads us to grapple with all the structural issues related to growth dependency which I talked about earlier. And I do also have a slight issue with with the diagram in that it presents human needs as being in conflict with planetary boundaries. But I think this really isn't the case. You know having better education health social equity, gender equality, democratic engagement and so on and so forth, doesn't necessarily entail pushing up further against planetary boundaries. In fact achieving those things probably requires less focus on material consumption in some places so I think we have to keep that in mind. So yeah I would just add those two points but I think the donut overall has had an important impact with the public. And I know that there are some researchers including D growth researchers that are doing great work that is inspired by the donut in particular, I would recommend checking out the living well within limits project at the University of Leeds, and I'll leave it there for now. Thanks David Caroline would you like to pick up on any of those questions. Yes thank you I was going to pick up on on the first one about about green growth and the extent to which we can argue for what we want within the kind of current terms of the debate and I mean to some extent it's certainly the case that a massive investment in the green economy will create many more jobs than a fossil fuel economy. That as actually the letter from the climate change committee showed just last week that in terms of recovery after covered a green recovery as much quicker. It has higher returns more effectively than traditional kinds of stimulus spending. The whole kind of narrative around around a green recovery can get us so far and it can run with the grain of conventional thinking to a certain amount but not that there are real dangers in that as well because simply by sticking the word green doesn't mean that somehow the paradigm that you're talking about is sustainable and can fit within the limits of of a finite planet. And I guess the bit that would be interesting to tease out more with with Lord even is the fact that there are real limits to growth. I mean they're not, they're not intellectual they they really are absolute in some cases and they're not for different emissions or different levels of pollution or whatever we're talking about but they are real. And unless we're measuring those and unless we're making sure that we're not simply sort of painting over, you know a new kind of Keynesianism with with with some green paint, then we will run up against those limits. I think that the challenge that we have is to ensure that the recovery that we're talking about yes absolutely does go into renewable energy energy efficiency insulating homes. But unless it's also coming out of other places, then we won't be in balance, and we won't keep within the limits that we set ourselves so if we are having a massive danger of of of renewable energy technologies let's say then we need to stop doing other things like don't expand Heathrow Airport or even Gatwick Airport or any of the other airports come to that do not have a mass road building program. Do not have a mass program of nuclear weapons and there's any number of things that we can talk about but I just worry that unless you've got the growth, the limits to growth paradigm that we're looking through. So I think we need to measure and just thinking we can more or less have business as usual but just redirect it into slightly less damaging forms of the economy. I think that's a real trap. Fantastic. Thank you. Clive. Did you want to pick up on the last one around consumerism shift or you can pick one of the other ones too. You need to unmute again. Sorry, yeah, I mean I think that I think they're interlinked. I mean one of the things about for example as Caroline picked up up there and as the question is argued about a million green jobs. Yes, there's a benefit from those million green jobs retrofitting homes bringing homes up to carbon standard giving us environmentally safe energy or safer energy renewable energy. But where do those wages get spent. Where does the money the tax revenue the government makes from that that energy investment. Where does that end up going if that goes into the same necrotic system of growth, which is killing the planet. We now know that it isn't just about carbon we know that there are multiple planetary boundaries which are coming up against including biodiversity. You're you're giving with one hand and taking away with a number of others. So we've got to have a far more systematic approach to this and I think when I hear terms like green recovery. It makes me shit because we recover we it's a it's a green recover recovery itself back to usual back to business as usual back to a growth economy, which is going to be doing all those things that we don't want it to do, but with some green green jobs. That's not good enough and and I think ultimately that's perhaps where the mainstream of economic environmental policy currently is at the moment and I think what has been talked about is that we actually need that paradigm shift and this crisis may well be able to help us with that but we have to be really clear that as we've been looking at things at the moment we've actually been we've actually been fiddling for our own burns while the planet burns and that's not good enough. The other thing I wanted to also say about the green growth was it feels to me that when we as politicians talk about green growth is a cop out. We're not brave enough to actually talk about the fundamental restructuring of our society and also challenging power that Lord devil was talking about people who often defend the current economic system and point to how it's helped developing countries how if we don't have that growth that it will be the poor that suffer but actually I think we can safely say it's more about holding on to the power hegemony that they actually have. And they're not going to have that up without a fight, you know power can seize nothing without demand and I think that's something we've got to accept. We've got to use what's happening in this crisis to really bring public opinion with us to be able to make some fundamental changes to how our economy works and for whom. And if we don't do that if we miss opportunity then I really do fear for the future. And Laura Deebon would you like to come in on on any of those points. Well first of all as usual I find myself in the great deal of agreement with both Caroline and and the, and I, the, the truth is I hate the phrase green growth to and if you look at our letter to the prime minister it it avoids using the phrase altogether because is, we want something much more positive than that. We want to have a society which puts these things first. And I think Caroline's absolutely right. You can't just do it in the sense of doing additional things which are green while you're going on doing all the old things at the same time. I do think that you have a transitional problem that you have to move from one to the other, but take the single example. We're not going to be able to produce North Sea oil at any sensible price at the level of which oil is now being sold. So you could quite easily transform the jobs which are now there into jobs for carbon capture and storage, and that would be a very important change which you could do. It happens to be very conveniently situated in the right part of the country to do that. I'm taking that as a small example of what can be done, but you do have to do, you both have to decline things that you're doing and do new things. Secondly, to point out to the consumption issue, the reason why the Climate Change Committee is now on a regular basis comparing our production emissions with our consumption emissions is precisely for that reason. We have to use production emissions in our calculations because that's the international way of comparison, but we need to have all the time a comparison with our consumption emissions because it's the reduction of our consumption emissions, which overall means that we are playing our proper part in the world. So my last comment, just to make this, the only reason why I think you have to do this on an incremental basis is simply because I want to win. I want us to succeed, and I'm historian by training, and all I know is that you've never won in any other way effectively, and so we have to do it this way. That's why I'm much closer to Guy Standings' demand that what should come out of this is a new paradigm, but it's a paradigm that we forge out of the problems of COVID-19 and that we then have a language to talk about it on the doorstep, because if we go back to talking on the doorstep with the same old stuff, which sounds as if we're just going back to 1970s capitalism versus communism, we won't win. It has to be fresh, new and real meeting a fresh, new and real challenge. Fantastic. Thank you. And I think the conversation on the polling that we put out today is a good starting point that people do want to prioritize health and well-being over economic growth without talking about political ideology, and also thinking about that dashboard, if we can get an actual conversation around quarterly stats on that. So just using my chair's privilege to check in a couple of cents. Before I come to you, Guy, I'm going to just read out three more questions, and you can comment on the previous conversation or jump in on one of those. So the first one is from Andy Stamp and wants to know the panel's thoughts on what behavioral, cultural changes in the media could help ordinary people understand and make the changes to bring about a well-being economy. So building on that conversation that Lord Diven just started. The next one is from Dave Wells, who is a councillor in Derbyshire. And he says that there are many groups in favour of a green new deal. So he'd like to know the panel's thoughts on making a coordinated approach so that we can actually obtain this to move beyond the pandemic. And Blythe from Extinction Rebellion says, what can the public do to push the government away from the economic strategy of growth alone? Exile are applying mass money rebellion involving rent, tax, debt, mortgage and loan strikes to demand that the government act immediately. Would you support such an action and do you think it could be effective? So any thoughts if you want to take one of those guys, that would be great. Well, there are lots of questions there. So let me just make the point I'd like to make. I think that the report we should focus on is opening up a debate. I quite like the term renewable economy, renewable economy index and trying to avoid a utilitarianism in the way you develop an alternative paradigm. I think that there is a real danger that when you have happiness indexes and everything, you go along with averages and you're not sure with the waiting processes and things like that. And the trade offs between various things. I do think that's the problem with the doughnut. I mean, lots of layers I get confused every time I look at the various circumferences competing for attention. The real need is to bring an ethical dimension to the development of what it is we want to promote. I mean, there are simple ethical principles that one can bring to this discussion. And I think that that should be a guide to what alternative paradigm gets developed. And of course, the ecological imperatives are fundamental. The security dimension is fundamental. That's the one I get when I go around talking to audiences, the feeling of chronic economic uncertainty. We must somehow have that dimension built into whatever measure or alternative we have. And the precariat issues that really should be there as well. So I think that really we have to think about not whether it's a Marxist model or a libertarian model, but a sort of model where we could build a consensus which would help with that paradigm shift. And that's how I would put the debate. And that's why I think basic income is a good door to open many of these issues. Thanks. I'd like to go to Clive now if that's okay. So yeah, it'd be great if you could answer your thoughts on one of those questions Clive. They're all kind of connected around you know, what people should be doing, how can they make sure they kind of make the most of this. And just to chuck in a question, another question, if you or Caroline have any thoughts, there's also quite a few councillors online and they're wondering if there's anything that they can bring to their councils on this topic. So can I go to you, Clive? Yeah, sure. I just want to touch on the behavioural and cultural changes to the media that can help in terms of this discussion and moving things along. I think one of the things that that we could do would be to increasingly, and I'm going to use the term democratise our media, but actually have a media that's actually fit the purpose, a media that actually looks at the issues which are relevant to people. Now, on an issue like this on COVID-19, we know that the media has had no choice but to turn its attention to it because it's affecting our lives every hour of the day. So they have no choice on that whilst lockdown is on. But I fear that whilst the lockdown, when the lockdown comes to an end, very quickly the media will want a series of, if not scapegoats or distractions to take people's minds away from this potential for a paradigm shift. You have to understand who controls our media and where their interests lie. That's some conspiracy theory. I think most people understand that. So that is part and parcel of the crisis of democracy that we have, not just in this country, but across Western Europe, and in the United States, it's across the Western world. There is a crisis of democracy about who is accountable, what transparency there is, and how we as citizens are able to change the way that our society, our economy is wrong. Most people are not happy with the way that our economic system is running, what it is doing with poverty, with homelessness, with wars of destruction, with exporting weapons. Most people say there must be a better way of doing this. And I think ultimately, if you want to have a media, and if you want to have a democracy, which actually is responsive to the climate, to the environment, to pandemics, to all the ills of the world, and that means that we have to look at that and tackle that. And I think unless we do that, and I think organisations like XR, who have now been getting behind citizen assemblies, Caroline's been talking about deliberative processes, there's an intrinsic understanding that it doesn't make a difference how many papers we produce, how many arguments we make, how well they're made, we will come up against people who are quite happy with the status quo. They do not want to let go of their billions, they do not want to let go of their influence, they do not want to let go of their wealth. And that means that again, I say, power can seize nothing without demand. Hence why yes, to answer the other question, I will be supporting those rent strikes where people have built up debts through COVID-19 through no thought of their own and who can't pay them back, they should be given support and help to pay those back. So to the councillors out there who are listening to this, get involved in that direct action, be a part of it, get your local party to back it, to support them, because until more and more of a step up and speak out and say, this system is broken, then nothing will ever change at some point, something is not going to change now, when is it going to change? Thank you very much. Abhaanib to Caroline, if you've got any thoughts on on those questions or want to build on anything that's been said. Well, I agree with Clive. I think he put it very powerfully. And I just think that the lens that we need to bring to this is one around urgency as well, that we don't have forever to get it right. So we could kind of debate about, you know, whether or not an incremental approach might scare the horses rather less. But on the other hand, I just don't believe that an incremental approach, then we can maybe be a bit clear about what we mean by that. But what I understand about that is something that steady as she goes step by step. And we've got 10 years, I mean, you know, to really make a massive transformation. And that's why I think the kinds of strategies that XR and others are proposing are absolutely right. And like Clive, I would support them because I think business as usual is not going to get us where we need to be, even if it's business as usual with some some green trimmings, if you like. So we need to be doing things differently. I think the question about Green New Deal, I think, yes, a Green New Deal is absolutely going to be vital. But I think the question was whether or not it should be a coordinated approach in different parts of the country. And yes, and I know that the Green New Deal group is working with different groups around the country to mobilize. And to my mind, what would be really helpful would be to have Green New Deal groups working really closely with the unions of industries where people will be having to shift from high carbon industry to low and zero carbon. But that process has got to be driven by working people. And when we use this phrase about a just transition, you know, we can wax lyrical about how there are more jobs in a green economy than there are in the fossil fuel economy that it replaces. But if your job is in a high carbon economy right now, then that's absolutely no reassurance to you whatsoever. What you want to know is what that's going to taste like smell like feel like how you're going to put food on the table tomorrow. What is it really like? And so what we've got to have is those bottom up processes led by unions and workers who will set out how those transitions will happen from high carbon to low and zero carbon, because if it doesn't happen that way, then we'll have a repeat of what happened in France and what's happened in other places too, where, you know, ill conceived green projects end up hurting the poorest hardest and then unsurprisingly, you will have a backlash to them. So it seems to me that part of the answer around the councils and part of the answers around Green New Deal is to be really working at a very granular level about what a just transition means in practice. Fantastic, thank you. I'll bring in Lord Diba now if you've got any, any thoughts on those questions. And before I go to you, I'll just read out a couple of comments. So Hugh from Croydon says, to move away from an economic system based on GDP, we do need a narrative which speaks to people's needs for security and their hopes and dreams. And Keith Garrett says, how do we get political parties to stop polarizing and focus on allowing ordinary citizens to meaningfully and responsibly input on the core framework for necessary change? Keith thinks we need citizens assemblies, and we need a united country for some 40 to 60 percent. And he, you know, he would agree with you Lord Diba that we need to get this discussion out of ideology. So I thought I'd just put those comments. And if you want to comment on any of the other things that have been said too, that would be great. Well, thank you. And I have to go after this, as you know. But first of all, I agree with Caroline urgency is crucial to it. My concept of incrementalism is only that you are honest about doing things one at a time. But at a very fast speed, we can't possibly do it other than that. It's my problem with with extension rebellion, which I have great sympathy for their desperate desire, because they know we have to move fast. My great problem is that they ask for things which in all definition, you couldn't do. But then perhaps that's what they have to do in order that I can push people to move faster. And on the media, I am absolutely radical. It is the ownership of the media that has to be reformed. And it's the size of the media. We really do have to have a wider range of views. We don't have to have foreign citizens owning large sections of our media, and therefore making sure that even in COVID, look, the Murdoch newspapers in in Australia have been busy selling the Trump view that this was all created in a place in in China, where it came out of a laboratory. We know that scientifically, that's not true. But they want to say that in order to stir up the the particular battle, which they like. And similarly, in this country, there's been a lot of discussion, which just undermines what the good things that governments do. And you know, even this government does some good things. Wherever people say, you've got to recognize that the media is so univoy uniform, owned by so few people. We've also got by the way to fight for the BBC, because if you lose that, then you've lost a very, very important social. And I just want to end up just coming back to the word that guys put into the conversation. What we need is an ethical approach to this, we have to ask ourselves about whether things are right or not. I'm fed up with people saying things on the basis that this is convenient. And we've never had a period in which politicians of all times are prepared to say things they know are untrue, and have not asked the question, what is right? And unless we ask the question, what is right, we will, in fact, not get the public support that we need, because what this COVID has done is to make people move back from the present rush, and think to themselves, what matters? What is right? And if we really concentrate on that and find the language to express that, then we can transform our view of growth into something which is resilient, changeful, and something that would really react to the basic human instincts, which are decent and honest, and actually about togetherness, rather than conflict. And now I feel I'm just going to do a bit of conflict with that. I'm just going to go to David for the final comment to wrap up, but thank you so much. That was a great input on what's doing what's right. David. Thanks, Fran. So yeah, again, a lot of great questions, and I'll touch on a few to wrap up. First of all, on the question about needs in moving away from growth. I think it's really essential to recognise that human needs are actually at the very centre of all post growth and and degrowth economic narratives. And actually, in our report, we we really insist that the construction of a dashboard and a wellbeing framework more generally has to be grounded in an understanding of wellbeing as the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, and not just for security, but needs for participation, affection, understanding, and so on. Second, on the Green New Deal, you know, I'm a big fan of the Green New Deal. I think it's a it's a really crucial movement right now. The one thing I would say is that we need to make sure that it doesn't get sort of captured by the growth mindset, and it needs to retain its its radical nature. If it does get tied to economic growth, then unfortunately, it will end up reproducing some of the various structures that it was intended to overcome. So that's what I would say there. And third, on the media, I I also fully agree with everything that that Clive said. And you know, I think right now in the media, there is a lot of talk of going back to normal. Also, as Clive was discussing earlier, and we really need to recognise that, you know, normal in the UK was 40 million people in poverty before the pandemic. Normal was runaway climate change headed straight for over four degrees of warming. Normal was widespread destruction of ecosystems. So normal is really not what we want. And, you know, the media should really be amplifying the the the movements for change that that we've been discussing here. And possibly the only way to do that will be through democratisation. And lastly, I would just say also that, you know, when we started writing this report, a lot of the policies we wanted to explore and we ended up recommending did seem really far away. They seemed quite idealistic. And now, actually, many of them seem much more feasible. Some are even are being discussed a lot more and some have even already been to some extent implemented. You know, monetary financing is something that positive money has been talking about for years. And suddenly we've seen in this crisis that the Bank of England has offered to do some direct monetary financing on top of the indirect form that it's been doing for some time already. So yeah, I think that's what I would end with. Now is really not the time for going back to normal and distancing ourselves from these radical changes. It's the time for amplifying them. Thank you, David. And thanks so much for our panellists. Really appreciate your fantastic input you've had. I know that the over 750 people that joined and more on Facebook would have wanted to kind of input as well. You've all got lots of knowledge and ideas and enthusiasm and passion out there. So thank you so much for joining. Sorry that we've gone a couple of minutes over. I hope that you've had your lunch already or if you haven't, you can rush off and have it now. But please do stay in touch with positive money and get in touch if you want David to come and give you a talk to your local group or local party. And thank you again to all our panellists and everyone for joining. I'll see you all soon.