An Income Floor - Basic income or a Minimum Income Guarantee

Start: 2021-07-08 18:00:00 UTC British Summer Time (GMT+01:00)

This is a virtual event

Click the button on the right to register for our event An Income Floor, Thursday 8 July 6pm - 7:15pm UK time. This is an online event and you will be sent a link via email.

The idea of an income floor is built on the belief that no-one should earn less than they need to live a decent life.

It suggests we should design policy that ensures everyone has access to an acceptable level income.

There is work ahead to establish an income floor that guarantees everyone an acceptable standard of living, and this includes deciding on the tools we will use to build it.

Basic income and a Minimum Income Guarantee have been put forward as policy solutions.

At this event we will hear about the similarities and differences of the two policies, their pros and cons and whether they're competing routes or related steps towards an income floor.

Our speakers include:

  • Alfie Stirling, Director of Research and Chief Economist at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) - Alfie leads the foundation’s research and policy teams across economics, social policy and the environment. Alfie has particular expertise in fiscal policy, monetary policy and social security reform, but has published research across a range of areas including finance, labour market reform, industrial strategy and family policy.

    The New Economics Foundation is one of the UK's leading proponents of a Minimum Income Guarantee. They recently launched their Living Income campaign and proposed a Minimum Income Guarantee to sit alongside the government’s job retention and self-employed income support schemes and provide income security in the wake of the pandemic.
  • Baroness Ruth Lister - Ruth is a Labour peer, emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University, a former director of the Child Poverty Action Group and now its honorary president.

    Ruth will give her expert opinion on proposals for both a basic income and Minimum Income Guarantee drawing on her vast experience working on social policy.

  • Stewart Lansley, economist and financial journalist - Stewart is a visiting fellow at the School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol. He has written on inequality, wealth and poverty for academic and specialist journals as well as several newspapers.

    Stewart advocates a guaranteed, automatic, basic income floor, including in, including in the Compass paper Basic Income for All: From desirability to feasibility he co-authored with Howard Reed. He contrasted a basic income floor and a Minimum Income Guarantee in his chapter for the 2021 book The Return of the State. He is the author of The Richer, the Poorer, How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor, published in October.