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Act Now: A Social Safety Net

A visual representation of the issues involved in a Social Safety Net
"Act Now: A Social Safety Net" by the Common Sense Policy Group is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

 The government should introduce a Basic Income for all permanent UK residents, initially set at £75 per week for over 18s, with £50 for each child. This starter scheme requires only modest tax changes and no increase in government borrowing, yet it will have a dramatic effect on poverty as well as host of other advantages. There is a strong argument for increasing the Basic Income over time, to the point where it becomes the main plank of our social safety net. Achieving this longer-term project will require larger changes to taxation, and we lay out that process in the report. The arguments for the starter scheme are compelling, and it can be introduced immediately, with a longer-term pathway providing us with the social security we need via more generous levels of Basic Income payments. This represents a sea change in the way we are protected from wholly avoidable risks and enables us to take the sort of action we need to take to rebuild our society.

Recommendations

  1. Introduce a Basic Income starter scheme immediately.
  2. Move toward a Basic Income payment of around £185 per week within 5 years, which would remove some conditional benefits.
  3. Move toward a full Minimum Income Standard Basic Income scheme of around £295 per week within 10 years, which would remove most conditional benefits, such as Housing Benefit to private tenants.