Declan Gaffney’s critique of Universal Basic Income published on Comment is Free today is in large part fair and well considered. Most of the critique is aimed at an ‘ideal type’ Basic Income rather than the more nuanced systems that most advocates (myself included) support. Once these nuances are in place, such as having separate (reformed) housing benefit and disability systems on top of UBI, then much of the ‘ideal-type’ criticism weakens. There is no ‘pure’ welfare system so it seems pretty unreasonable to demand purity of UBI (though Declandoes make it clear that his is a thought experiment).

There is one aspect of Declan’s argument that does require a response: the notion that a critical advantage of the current system over UBI is ‘conditionality’. He states:

“Single parents in the UK offer a test case, as up to 2008 they were effectively in receipt of something very like an UBI, when not in employment. They had no obligation to actively seek work while tax credits ensured that most would be significantly better off in work. Employment rates had increased since the 1990s in response to improved incentives but remained relatively low, and from 2008 obligations to look for work were imposed. By 2014 the employment rate outside London had risen from 57% to 61%. In London the increase was dramatic from a lower baseline: from 45% to 57%.”

He then goes on to argue:

“But if UBI were subject to conditionality much of what it aims to eliminate would reappear: sanctions, eligibility testing, welfare bureaucracy.”

The same applies to universal credit (and note the ‘if’ in the above statement). Once you have conditionality you have sanctions, arbitrary bureaucracy, cost, complexity, food banks, distress and insecurity. In other words, it is a major failure of the current system.

Personally, I don’t think the benefits of ‘conditionality’ are a good argument in favour of any system. Yes, it has a small impact on employment rates (if the police decide to suddenly increase the arrest rate for petty offences then there is some reduction in petty crime but is that a good use of police resources and what are the wider impacts of that strategy?). But why are we accepting the employment rate as the primary arbiter of a system’s success? What about wider well-being? Mental health, family life, agency and responsibility? Should we not be concerned about people becoming locked on a merry-go-round between low paid insecurity and an intrusive welfare state? We spend billions on a complex and often coercive system to get a few small percentage points on the employment rate of targeted groups and that’s before we’ve counted these wider costs.

Conditionally is a blunt and often harmful tool. We need to think more creatively than that if we are not going to do more harm than good. It is important to encourage employment but conditionality has become too harmful a method of achieving that — sanctions etc become intrinsic to any system of hard conditionality.

Moreover, while tax credits provide an initial incentive to work, they soon constitute as massive disincentive as taper rates hit eighty percent or so at relatively low levels of earnings (see the Resolution Foundation Review of Universal Credit). They aren’t really like Basic Income at all — they are in an entirely different category of welfare. Basic Income provides an incentive to work not just at very low earnings but above this rate too — it has a benign impact on work choices.

For me, conditionality is one of the most problematic elements of the current system rather than a core advantage over Basic Income. We should demand more. I’ll be publishing on Basic Income soon to demonstrate how it could be a stronger all-round system- albeit in pragmatic rather than ‘ideal-type’ form. In fact, you can come to hear me talk about it next week if you’d like — or watch it live on the RSA website.