Universal Basic Income

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan)—a fellow Greenockian, as he acknowledged—on securing this important debate.

I agree that the pandemic has made the case for UBI ever more urgent. At the outset of the pandemic, I and others welcomed the Government’s financial support schemes and, I admit, generally accepted that existing HMRC mechanisms were the most efficient way of getting support out quickly and effectively to employers and employees. However, time has passed, and we now need to recognise that millions of people missed out on any support and continue to do so. Many constituents have been in touch—I am sure the same is true of other Members present—to say that they had missed out on support either because they were employed a day after the furlough cut-off or because their old employer would not re-hire them. Others missed out on the self-employment income scheme because they were not able to jump through the Treasury’s hoops. They were, therefore, unable to access the support they desperately needed.

We have all heard these stories, which is why many of us are members of the all-party parliamentary group on gaps in support, ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). It is impossible to listen to these stories without feeling a huge amount of empathy towards these people, who have faced an incredibly difficult year and now find further months of restrictions looming. Some 3 million people were excluded, in some cases on an entirely arbitrary basis. Despite the campaigning of many, the Government consciously continued to exclude those people—if they got no support at the start, they are still not getting any now.

Other Members have referred to members of our society who are sadly all too familiar with the challenges involved in engaging with our welfare system. However, without access to the current support schemes, many who thought they would never have to do so have engaged with DWP and universal credit support for the first time. DWP staff have worked incredibly hard at this challenging time. I commend them for that, and acknowledge that, as a Member, I have had direct support from them. I also acknowledge that the Government have temporarily increased the universal credit standard allowance for 2021 and relaxed the minimum income floor for the duration of the crisis. However, that demonstrates that every support mechanism currently available has eligibility conditions, and it is therefore inevitable that people will miss out. That is often why they contact us, as their Members of Parliament, and it is why UBI is such a powerful idea: there are no hoops to jump through and no complicated terms and conditions that exclude people. There is no sense of arbitrariness.

We heard yesterday about further restrictions—more restrictions have already been put in place in Scotland—and I am glad that the Government are bringing forward further economic support. However, I am disappointed that, several months on from the initial lockdown, and facing renewed restrictions and a surge in infections and hospital admissions, we are still no clearer on test and trace or on a job support scheme that actually reflects the reality of operating under the current restrictions and the seasonality of work in constituencies such as mine, which relies on tourism. Indeed, it feels like we are back in emergency measures, calling on the Paymaster General to unblock issues and get responses from Government Departments.

Beyond covid, there has been support for UBI pilots. In Fife, the preparatory work has been done; they just need permission to run the pilot scheme. Instead of relying on evidence from elsewhere, let us develop our own evidence base, then we will be best placed to assess whether UBI will work and the income and infrastructure required to deliver it. This work could arguably start quickly, and report quickly as well. This year, many who assumed that the safety net of our welfare system would be there to catch them have found the holes too big. Exploring UBI is a way of addressing those holes and providing a platform for future prosperity and economic recovery.