Universal basic income would eliminate the poverty trap faced by millions Jonathan Bartley is co-leader of the Green Party You don’t have to look hard to find evidence of the failures […]

Jonathan Bartley is co-leader of the Green Party

You don’t have to look hard to find evidence of the failures of Britain’s welfare state. From the sharp rise in rough sleeping, to the four million children living in poverty and the million food bank parcels handed out last year – something is going badly wrong.

One of the most unequal countries in the Western world

Of course money is at the heart of the problems we face. Our economy has, for a long time, been shaped by Governments to serve those at the top best, while leaving those at the bottom to suffer. We’re one of the most unequal countries in the Western world – and the Government’s response to the financial crash has entrenched these divisions.

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It doesn’t have to be like this, but building a fair economy for the future doesn’t have to simply mean reversing cuts to social security either (though we should be doing that immediately). To really get a handle on poverty – and to truly liberate people – we need to be looking at big ideas to rebuild our society for the twenty-first century. One of those ideas, backed just this week by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, is a basic income.

Basic income could be a liferaft

The concept is simple. Every adult would be entitled to a regular payment from the state, whether they were in work or not. The poverty trap which afflicts people on short-term contracts and in precarious work would be eliminated. No one would be kept awake at night dreading a cut to their benefits from central Government or the job centre, and everyone would be provided with enough to get by on. For those with the least, those with disabilities who would be additional support and for workers struggling to get by – a basic income could be a liferaft in the stormy seas of the modern economy.

Such a move wouldn’t just lift people out of poverty – it would allow creativity to flow too. As Mark Zuckerberg said this week ‘we should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things’. For the hundreds of thousands of freelancers and self-employed people in Britain a basic income would offer genuine security – and allow them to innovate without the fear of destitution.

Basic security for everyone might sound dreamy, but it’s what we all deserve and this big idea is catching on across the world. Basic Income schemes have sprung up in Finland and the Netherlands – and think tanks like the RSA and Compass are researching how it might work here in Britain.

Of course we can’t rush into such a scheme – which is why the Green Party wants a Government run a pilot project in the next Parliament, to see how it might work here. And of course there will be a cost to implementing it – though it would see savings in the bureaucracy around welfare payments.

But the cost of failure when it comes to our welfare state is huge. Not just for the children whose life chances continue to be dictated by the wealth of their parents, and not just for creative young people who simply want a regular income to allow them to work at the projects they’re passionate about. Failure will also hit us hard in economic terms too – with poverty estimated to cost the economy £78bn and automation predicted to impact 30% of jobs – it’s foolhardy not to be looking to big ideas for these changing times.

Britain has led the world in innovation before – we built the first steam engine, we pioneered the internet in the last century – and implementing a basic income would mean Britain leading a race to the top on fairness as we face the future.