Harry McNamara
Head of Press, Easter 2018
Email:
Cambridge, 3 October 2018
PRESS RELEASE
‘This House Supports A Universal Basic Income’ - Thursday 26th April
The first debate of Easter 2018 term took place on the evening of Thursday 26th April, debating the motion: ‘This House Supports A Universal Basic Income’.
The alternative welfare model is based on an unconditional sum paid by a government to its citizens. In recent months and years its has gained increasing attention and support, with the Finnish government trialling the model, as well as recently certain Scottish local authorities.
The proposition was comprised of: Dr Louise Haagh, the Chair of the Basic Income Earth Network and an academic at the University of York; Jonathan Reynolds MP, the Labour Cooperative Member of Parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde, currently serving as Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury; and PhD student and two-time semi-finalist at the European Universities debating championships, Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell.
The opposition: economist and regular Sunday Telegraph columnist, Liam Halligan; General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Andrew Harrop; and finalist at Peterhouse and regular Union debater, Alasdair Donovan.
The debate was lively and faced regular interventions from both sides, and floor speeches. Both opposition and proposition considered the implications of universality, with John Reynolds MP suggesting that the way to deal with complexity in the provision of services was through universalism. Reynolds also examined the existing welfare state, praising the post-war Labour government, but concluding that the ‘present system is not fit for purpose’. Expanding on this with the explanation that it was designed for a different time, when the labour market was very different and more secure.
Reynolds agreed with and quoted back the first proposition speaker, Dr Louise Haagh, in their shared view that ‘services that are just for poor people will always be poor services’. The proposition agreed that the system was the most pro-work policy.
Liam Halligan objected to the inefficiency of the project, and weighed up the motivations for work, as well as raising the questions of affordability. This question was extended upon by Andrew Harrop, who began by saying that he would usually agree with Reynolds, and put forward a leftist opposition to the motion.Using the model of a Cambridge pensioner, he explained that to roll this out universally, the pay out would be approaching 50% of GDP. He associated this with ‘eye-wateringly high taxes for everyone’.
Both floor speeches and the main debate speakers considered semantics and society’s discomfort with universalism. The proposition pointed out that the NHS and state education are both universal services, available to the billionaire as well as those on low incomes equally: it was suggested that they are just not called universal.
The opposition raised the point of equity: ‘it is unjust to treat people who are different the same.’
The pre-debate vote was split directly in half, with a rise in abstentions leading to a small swing to the opposition at the concluding division.
END