Income Equality and Sustainability

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the most reverend Primate. This is the time to take bold action to tackle poverty and economic insecurity. A brutal light has been shone by the coronavirus on the underlying inequality in this country, where people in poor and deprived areas are twice as likely to die. Income insecurity, low pay, temporary work and poor housing have all taken their toll on health, as the recent Marmot report showed. A recovery of universal basic income must be the way forward as the country tries to emerge from this crisis. We need to begin to build a fairer, more resilient and good society and economy, as we did after the Second World War.

Welcome though the employment support schemes put in place by the Government are, they will soon come to an end without a further commitment to extend. With over 2 million people applying for universal credit in the last two months, delays in paying out cash mean that families have gone hungry. Now is the time to put in place a mechanism to distribute cash to everyone without delay, to provide an income floor that nobody falls below, and a springboard to recovery.

As the lockdown is eased, many sectors such as aviation and hospitality may never recover, and the jobs lost permanently will mean that people must be helped to retrain and reskill. Many are calling for temporary hardship schemes to cover the gaps that the self-employed must endure while they wait for funds, but a UBI would ensure no one had to rely on a food bank or face homelessness because of benefit sanctions or delays with universal credit. It would not replace wages but would instead help to boost them, especially for those front-line staff in the care sector, who have finally been recognised as key workers that society relies on to look after the most vulnerable.