Evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee on Universal Basic Income

I gave oral evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee at a session on November 3rd, and have only just got round to reading the transcript, which is here. I made three important reservations about Universal Basic Income: the distributive impact, especially if it was to be funded by closing down existing benefits; the impossibility of defining a level that would be ‘adequate’; and the many other purposes that benefits have.

There are two points in the transcript at which the MPs misconstrued what I was saying, and while the format of the session wouldn’t allow me to go off on a tangent to explain, I can clarify the points here.

Q116 was not addressed to me – it was answered by Jonathan Williams.  Q117 was, and Geraint Davies MP seems to have taken me to mean that people should be forced to work. I can’t see where he got that from, which makes it difficult to answer; I said no such thing, and wouldn’t.  I did say that conditionality does not work and was counter-productive.

In Q143, Robin Millar MP thought I was arguing to ‘tweak’ the system. This, at least, is an understandable misapprehension; I should have been clearer. I have argued, here and elsewhere, to break up big benefits into smaller ones.  However, I don’t think that’s a ‘tweak’ – it would be a fundamental reform.  See, for example, my blog on How to abolish Universal Credit.  The rationale for redesigning the system about simpler,  smaller benefits with common pay-days is that then ‘income packages’ – the money people finish with – can be adapted to their needs without massive intrusion or putting everyone on the same conveyor belt.

 

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