2

Contents

What is a Basic Income? ........................................................................ 3

Why discuss Basic Income? .................................................................. 3

Our engagement so far ........................................................................... 4

About this discussion paper .................................................................. 5

A tried and tested approach? ................................................................ 5

Scotland and Basic Income ................................................................... 6

Political support for Basic Income ........................................................ 7

Civil society arguments in the debate .................................................. 9

Issues with Basic Income for disabled people .................................. 12

Defining a “Basic” Income ................................................................... 12

The cost of a Basic Income .................................................................. 14

Extra costs of disability ........................................................................ 17

Assessments and conditionality ......................................................... 18

Simplicity vs responsiveness .............................................................. 20

Interaction with the current system .................................................... 21

Conclusion ............................................................................................. 23

3

What is a Basic Income?

The Basic Income Earth Network defines Basic Income (BI) as follows:

‘A periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual

basis, without means-test or work requirement.’1

Proponents argue that a Basic Income could act as:

‘a floor. Not to raise the average, but to provide a floor below which

people cannot fall. Not just a safety net but a proper floor upon which

people can build their lives.’

There are many different models of Basic Income (also known as

Citizen’s Basic Income, a Citizen’s Income or Universal Basic Income),

varying in the level of payment, eligibility and the degree to which it

replaces and interacts with the existing social security and tax systems.

Why discuss Basic Income?

Basic Income has become something of a hot topic within civil society

across the UK, and particularly in Scotland where it is gathering

increasing levels of political and public support. Scotland is at the

forefront of countries giving serious consideration to whether Basic

Income is a viable means of tackling poverty.

The discourse around BI in Scotland is extremely significant for disabled

people. Forty-eight percent of people in the UK who are living in poverty

are either disabled people, or live with a disabled person as part of their

household (20%).2 Disabled adults of working age are three times more

likely to experience deprivation and hardship than their non-disabled

peers, with reports suggesting that around 650,000 disabled people in

the UK were destitute in 2017 alone.3

4

However, the position of disabled people within the discussions and

debates over Basic Income, particularly the issue of meeting their extra

costs related to disability, can be ambiguous and uncertain, with some

disabled people feeling concerned that potentially they could be actively

disadvantaged by proposed schemes.

Some disabled people’s organisations have expressed concern that

there is a tendency in discussions of Basic Income by proponents of it to

treat the needs of disabled people, and any necessary reforms of

disability benefits in the light of Basic Income, as a matter of additional

complexity, to which attention must be paid at some future date.

Of course, no advocate of UBI excludes disabled people from receiving

Basic Income; but by treating the issue of disabled people’s extra costs

as a secondary problem it may appear that the rights of disabled people

are not structurally essential to BI, or that they are somehow less

important. This accentuates the ‘otherness’ of disabled people, making

them feel distinctively blackballed from the very participative and

inclusive society BI wishes to build.4

Our engagement so far

The Solutions Series is a series of ‘Pop-up think tanks’ hosted by

Inclusion Scotland’s Independent Living in Scotland team. These events

aim to bring together disabled people and others from across a range of

sectors for meaningful, focussed and strategic-level discussion about

emerging or timely issues that impact on disabled people in

Scotland.Participants are targeted for their expertise and their sphere of

influence and capacity to represent their community of interest or sector.

In a context where Basic Income for disabled people is contested but

fairly unchartered in Scotland, we held a ‘pop-up think tank’ in July 2019

to discuss and debate Basic Income.

5

Chaired by Peter Kelly, Director of the Poverty Alliance, the event was

attended by a range of stakeholders, including disabled people, their

organisations, third sector organisations, academics and local authority

representatives. It was designed to bring proponents, sceptics and those

with a neutral position on Basic Income together to explore how to

ensure that the interests of disabled people are properly considered in

the debate in Scotland.

About this discussion paper

This paper, which draws from the discussion on the day, as well as from

academic and non-academic sources on Basic Income, aims to provide

an overview of the key issues surrounding Basic Income for disabled

people.

A tried and tested approach?

A BI remains untested in its pure or ‘full’ form – that is, a periodic cash

payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without

means-test or work requirement.

To our knowledge, a full BI has not yet been implemented in any

country, although there have been a number of pilots of initiatives that

meet at least some of the basic criteria for a BI, in countries including

Finland, Canada and the Netherlands.

Finland has published interim results from the first year of its pilot study.5

However, as yet there have been no comprehensive results published of

tests of BI in the UK or countries with similar welfare state provision. This

means there is no empirical evidence of the impact of a full Basic

Income for Scotland to draw on.

6

Scotland and Basic Income

In September 2017, the Scottish Government announced in its

Programme for Government that it would support local authority areas to

explore a Citizen’s Basic Income (CBI) Scheme by establishing a fund to

help areas to develop their proposals further and establish suitable

testing.

The amount of funding offered was £250,000 over the two financial

years 2018/19 and 2019/20 for a feasibility study.6 This complements

funding already committed by some local authority areas, with the local

authorities of Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow and North Ayrshire

collaboratively preparing and submitting a joint bid to the Citizens' Basic

Income Feasibility Fund.

These four local authorities are now working together in a two-year

Basic Income pilot feasibility study, supported by NHS Health Scotland

and the Improvement Service, and have formed a Scottish Basic Income

Steering Group to advance this work. Since commencing research in

May 2018, the Citizen’s Basic Income Steering Group has started work

to explore key aspects of undertaking a pilot in the Scottish context,

including political, financial, psychological, behavioural and institutional

issues.

The Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) within NHS Health

Scotland is currently modelling the direct impact of Citizen’s Basic

Income (CBI) on household income and poverty, anticipating that their

economic model can be used to describe the direct income and poverty

impacts of different models of CBI. This work is being undertaken from

March 2019 and the results will be used to produce a full business case

by March 2020.

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What is learned from this work will be used to inform a decision from the

local authorities and their partners about whether to progress plans

beyond the feasibility stage, as well as whether the Scottish Government

would support a further stage and eventual Citizen’s Basic Income (CBI)

pilot in Scotland.

Partners involved in exploring the feasibility of CBI pilots in Scotland

have published an interim report into their findings.7 They are now

working to deliver a final feasibility report with fewer uncertainties and

clearer recommendations on appropriate next steps.

Specifically, this will involve completion of the econometric modelling

work to estimate the overall impacts on the economy of introducing a

CBI; further work to establish the legal options for piloting; further

negotiations with the DWP and HMRC to establish whether and how a

pilot could be facilitated in Scotland; further work to detail an evaluation

plan for any pilot that might take place; and further detail on the ethical

considerations and the degree to which these can be addressed. The

final report will contain a recommendation to Scottish Government about

whether and under what circumstances a CBI pilot is feasible, how it

could be undertaken, what it would be able to consider, and its likely

cost.

The Poverty and Inequality Commission have also been asked to

consider how it could help to draw together findings from local

authorities to inform the Scottish Government’s thinking on Basic

Income.

Political support for Basic Income

Basic Income enjoys a level of support across much of the political

spectrum in Scotland. It has been a long-standing policy for the Scottish

Green Party, and the SNP Government has provided the support for the

8

feasibility work in Scotland, with motions passed in support of the policy

at their national conferences.

The Scottish Labour Party has not yet taken an official stance, but the

growing interest in Basic Income experimentation across the four local

authority areas in the feasibility group was strongly driven by Labour

councillors. It is also worth noting that the UK Labour Party, particularly

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, has been open to Basic Income

experimentation. There has been wider interest from the Labour

Government in Wales and the Labour-led administration in Liverpool. A

recent poll, commissioned by the Royal Society for the encouragement

of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) and conducted by

YouGov, found that 44% of Labour MPs are in favour of Basic Income in

principle.8

The Liberal Democrats have a comparatively long history of interest in

what they term ‘minimum income’, with Citizens’ Income proposals

forming part of the party’s platform in its 1992 manifesto, and in recent

years their proposals to abolish the sanctions system for social security,

which they adopted in 2016, have seen them move back towards

unconditional income policies. In 2019 over fifty candidates for the UK’s

Liberal Democrat party signed a personal commitment to back Basic

Income pilots and ‘minimum income’ is already an official part of the

party platform, as part of the party’s ‘A Fairer Share for All’ package of

anti-poverty proposals’9

The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is officially opposed to

Basic Income, supporting the UK Government’s policy of Universal

Credit.

However, while interest exists across the political spectrum, there is no

coherence around a view of the correct model of Basic Income and

9

capacities and features of a Basic Income or its relationship with the

existing social security system and the rest of the welfare state. UK and

Scottish parliamentary committees have taken evidence and discussed

Basic Income10 but again there are mixed views on the efficacy of the

policy and on whether a pilot is to be supported even from afar.

It is worth noting that no Scottish MEPs signed the European appeal in

favour of a ‘Citizen’s Income’ when it was brought before the European

Parliament. Nor does cross-party support represent coherent backing,

as one Pop-up Think Tank (PUTT) participant noted, when explaining

that different parties and organisations can see BI as serving a range of

purposes and addressing different problems:

‘But sometimes [there can be] very different and sometimes

overlapping but different policy intentions behind [BI]’

Civil society arguments in the debate

Some of the leading advocates for Basic Income have been building

support for it across the UK for many decades, although its new

popularity in Scotland has also been accompanied by some trenchant

criticism from policy-makers, economists and academics – on both

ideological and practical grounds.

Civil society organisations, foundations and think tanks, including the

World Economic Forum, Nesta, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and the

Adam Smith Institute, have recently added their support to the BI

movement and there is considerable long-standing interest in Basic

Income from many civil society organisations in Scotland.

The fundamental case for a Basic Income (BI) is concerned with the

freedom that can flow from economic security. Namely, that by providing

every individual with a foundation of a regular, unconditional, cash

10

payment, their ability to make a wide range of contributions is enhanced.

These contributions could come in the form of care for others, pursuit

of good and fulfilling work, development of skills and capabilities, and

through voluntary action.

Basic Income is perceived by proponents in Scotland as having a

positive impact on what are known as the ‘underlying drivers of equity’,

including empowerment, participation, democratisation and equal

opportunities for all through fairer redistribution of resources and social

justice.

Common Weal, for example, frames Basic Income as a way of reducing

the conditionality built into contemporary welfare provision and

addressing the current issues with rapid withdrawal of benefits when

earnings rise, which can create a disincentive to work. This first point,

providing income security, has been the impetus for Reform Scotland

who, in 2016, published a report calling for a Basic Income guarantee to

get rid of the ‘welfare trap’.11

Meanwhile, Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland states Basic

Income’s primary aims are equality, fairness and a human right to be

free from poverty, while also pointing to reductions in inequality and the

benefits of simplifying the bureaucracy of the current welfare system.

The recent work by the RSA to model Basic Income in Scotland has

covered similar bases. Following dialogue with stakeholders and welfare

recipients, they also highlight issues such as reduction in benefits-

related stigma, increased opportunities to learn and retrain, and

promoting stronger communities.

11

NHS Scotland have considered the potential health benefits of a Basic

Income in Scotland and have recently suggested that the introduction of

a CBI, with additional payments for disabled people, would be the most

cost-effective method out of a range of income-based policies, for both

reducing premature mortality and reducing inequalities in premature

mortality in Scotland.12

The Centre for Welfare Reform have also recently focused on BI and

health and made arguments that a Basic Income would provide freedom

to shape work, personal development and positive social networks,

which all help make work healthy. In short, they argue that BI could be a

tool for increasing the chance of ‘good work’ and reducing the health

risks of ‘bad work’.13

There is also some strong feminist support for Basic Income because of

its potential to recognise and remunerate the reproductive and caring

contributions of women. It is very clear that the current wage system

does not account for all women’s contributions to economic production,

and excludes too many to function as a credible mechanism of income

allocation. The thinking is that, if deployed correctly, Basic Income could

be a tool that might enable waged work, marriage contracts and

childrearing to be more a matter of choice for women than they are at

present. It follows that a Basic Income might better enable women to

make choices about whether to enter into a particular household division

of domestic labour, whilst also serving as a resource for exiting an

abusive household relationship. This emancipatory narrative provides

that a Basic Income might also give women a greater measure of

economic freedom to either engage in or opt out of childrearing as they

choose. As such, it is material support for the possibility of cultivating

more sustaining and sustainable relationships of caring and sharing.

12

Feminist critics however have argued that Basic Income will do nothing

to directly challenge the gendered division of labour. In fact it may well

reinforce these divisions if unconditional cash benefits increase the

incentive for women, in particular, to reduce their labour market

participation, given their relatively weaker attachment to the labour force

as a group relative to men, and the central role that this plays in broader

inequalities such as income gaps and poverty risks.14

Other progressive think tanks, such as the New Economics Foundation

and the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) have been much

more critical of BI. The IPPR in Scotland recently modelled a Universal

Basic Income (UBI) set at just above £100 per week per adult, and £50

per week per child. They calculated that this would cost around £20bn

per year. Their stated findings were that, far from reducing child poverty,

a UBI at these rates would increase relative child poverty by up to

35,000 children – because it would raise median income and move the

relative poverty line, thus bringing more children into relative poverty

than it would take out of relative poverty.15 There is little evidence about

the potential impacts of a Basic Income on absolute poverty in Scotland.

These issues were among many discussed at the Pop Up Think Tank,

and are explored in the following sections.

Issues with Basic Income for disabled people

Defining a ‘Basic’ Income

The intention of a BI system is to provide a monthly payment that will

allow people to live without the need for any additional income. This

raises questions around what standard of living should be attainable on

13

BI – should it fund a ‘frugal lifestyle’, or provide sufficient freedom that

individuals can choose not to take on low-paid work, forcing employers

to offer higher wages?16 The Pop-up Think Tank was presented with a

definition of Basic Income, championed by the Basic Income Earth

Network (BIEN), which suggested that:

‘If the amount [of BI] is sufficient that someone can live independently,

given the other social services that are available, then the amount is

called a full Basic Income […] and it [the amount you would need for a

full BI] depends on the social and cultural context.’

The concept of a Basic Income supporting an ‘independent life’ means

specific things for disabled people who define Independent Living as

‘having the same freedom, dignity and control as other citizens at home,

at work and in the community. It does not mean living by yourself or

fending for yourself. It means the rights to practical assistance and

support to participate in society and live an ordinary life.’

Participants were unclear whether a Basic Income, as it is most

commonly framed, would truly support and promote Independent Living

for disabled people.

There was also concern that there had been little connection, or indeed

disputed arguments between those organisations seeking to calculate

basic needs and those proposing a Basic Income. One participant

stated:

‘[The Joseph Rowntree Foundation] regularly ask people throughout

the country “what are your basic needs, and what do you think other

people’s basic needs should be?” At the moment, it stands at around

£220 per week for an individual. And that’s after housing costs have

been considered. […] I’ve not seen a Basic Income figure for this

14

country that’s been produced so far that’s come anywhere near £220

per week for an individual… that does take into account the

circumstances in the UK and what the vast majority of the UK consider

an adequate income to have. So it’s not a vacuum that we’re having

this conversation in but it often feels like it is.’

The cost of a Basic Income

The International Labour Office (ILO) has calculated the costs of a

Universal Basic Income (UBI) in 130 countries, at a level sufficiently high

to reduce poverty and ensure at least a basic level of income security for

all. It used two scenarios, one that paid a Basic Income at 100% of the

national poverty line for all adults and children, and one that did the

same, but with income at 50% of the poverty line for children up to the

age of 15. It found that ‘for most world regions, the average costs of both

scenarios are in the range from 20 to 30% of GDP.’

The scope of the paper however does not allow for a broader discussion

of possible implications of the introduction of a BI on other dimensions of

decent work, including the creation of decent jobs, labour market

participation, wage levels and wage setting, as well as its impact on the

informal economy and the formalisation of informal employment.17

Further calculations have been offered by UK organisations

campaigning for BI. In 2015, Malcolm Torry of the Citizen’s Income Trust

discussed a Universal BI scheme that would pay £60 per week to adults

of working age and maintain some existing benefits. He calculated that

this could be rendered revenue neutral by increasing income tax by 3%

across the three existing tax brackets.18

15

A research paper prepared for Fife councillors concerning plans for their

local BI pilot explains that most models set the level of Basic Income at

£73.10 for working age adults. There is no detail on what benefits will be

replaced but the paper is clear that: ‘housing and disability benefits

payments would need to remain and be kept separate’ and that ‘means-

testing of benefits would continue, but the amount received by each

household or individual would be recalculated to account for the amount

of Basic Income’. The paper presents the possibility of enabling people

to choose not to work as a positive feature of BI, but this is unlikely on a

weekly income of under £75. As one member of the Fife People’s Panel

commented: ‘£73.10 per week plus benefits is not enough to live on”.19

Glasgow Council has commissioned the RSA to develop its proposals

for a Basic Income pilot. The RSA Basic Income model proposes £71

per week for working age adults, which appears to replace Employment

and Support Allowance (ESA). Although again it proposes housing and

non-means tested disability benefits, including Personal Independence

Payment, would be retained (so it is unclear how this would work under

Universal Credit), and this nevertheless represents a loss for disabled

people in the ESA support group.

Modelling of the RSA scheme undertaken by the Scottish government’s

Housing and Social Justice Directorate estimates that over 10% of

households in the lowest decile in Scotland would experience negative

financial impacts, over 30% in the second-lowest and just under 50% in

the third-lowest. Most households would be losing in the region of 20%

of their income.20

Using proposals from the Scottish Greens as the basis for their financial

workings, Reform Scotland have suggested a Basic Income could be set

at £5,200 per year for adults and £2,600 for children, which would

replace the personal allowance, tax credits and a number of benefits.

16

Under this model, Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit,

Severe Disablement Allowance, Carers Allowance and Personal

Independence Payments are all retained. The cost of this model would

be £20.4 billion. It is also not clear how this model would interact with

Universal Credit.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation are strongly critical of BI, citing

potential negative impacts on disabled people and ‘vulnerable’ groups

and pointing out that most governments will not be able to afford both

CBI and a generous welfare state. The higher the CBI the more likely it

is to lift people out of poverty, but the higher the public finance cost to

fund it and the harder it would be for government to fund other

supportive social policies.’

The JRF conclude that a ‘significant modelling effort would be required

to establish levels which did not impact negatively on vulnerable

groups’.21

In 2016, the pressure group Compass modelled a further range of

schemes. The most generous of these, which involved payments of

£151.20, £73.10 and £44.30 per week for pensioners, adults and

children respectively, abolition of almost all existing benefits and

pensions, and increased tax and national insurance rates of around

10%, was estimated to cost £43 billion.

Luke Martinelli of Bath University has also considered various proposed

BI schemes for the UK. In the most generous scheme he considers, UBI

is set at the level of existing welfare benefits, with extra payments for

disabled people. This would cost £326 billion, or approximately one and

a half times all current expenditure on welfare payments offset by tax

and national insurance.22

17

A much more modest scheme which pays everyone the equivalent value

of the UK personal tax allowance (worth £2,200 a year in 2017/18), while

abolishing the allowance itself, and paid in addition to existing welfare

benefits, would have a net cost of £140 billion.

If it were possible to build the political momentum required to raise the

extra funds required for Basic Income, some participants at the Pop-up

Think Tank suggested that this may come at the expense of investment

in the wider welfare state:

‘Where such schemes require the total current public welfare budget to

be used, there is a real risk that BI may lead to cuts in existing targeted

programs such as public housing, public subsidies to childcare, or

universal systems like public transport and public health, all of vital

importance to disabled people. Which government would choose to do

this?’

Extra costs of disability

It is vital to realise that Scots disabled people face significant financial

exclusion due to higher costs related to their disability.

Life costs more for disabled Scots people and their families, who spend

more on essential goods and services like heating, insurance,

equipment and therapies. These extra costs mean disabled people have

less money in their pocket than non-disabled people, or simply go

without. The result is that disabled people in Scotland are more likely to

have a lower standard of living, even when they earn the same as non-

disabled people.

One study has found that the average disabled person in the UK had

extra costs amounting to 24-35% of their income (depending on

household composition)23 and research by Scope shows that on average

18

disabled people across the UK face additional impairment related costs

of £570 a month, with disabled Scots facing substantially higher

additional costs of £632 a month.24

The impact of these extra costs on disabled people was captured by an

earlier Ipsos MORI survey carried out for Scope, exploring the issues of

financial inclusion for disabled people. The research found that more

than one in five disabled people felt their financial situation is insecure,

one in eight (13%) had been turned down for credit in the last five years,

with most of these being turned down for a credit card (66%) or a loan

from a bank, building society or commercial lender (30%). Because of

this financial exclusion, disabled people were more likely to use loan

sharks (10%) than non-disabled people (3%).25

When discussing whether a BI scheme could potentially become a tool

to help lift disabled people out of poverty, participants at the Think Tank

stressed the importance of recognising and accounting for these costs.

One participant wondered:

‘If that isn’t recognised, so there’s not an additional amount for

disabled people within a Citizen’s Basic Income, is there a relative

detriment then? Disabled people might be being paid the same as

everyone else, but 50% of their income is being spent on disability

related costs. So, there’s that issue too when looking at whether,

financially, disabled people would lose out [under BI]’.

Assessments and conditionality

The Scottish Government has committed to delivering a social security

system based on dignity, fairness and respect. The principles set out in

the Social Security Act clearly state the Scottish Government’s position,

including that social security is an investment in people, a human right,

19

that should be delivered in a way that respects and involves people and

contributes to reducing poverty.

Disabled people at the Pop-up Think Tank said repeatedly and clearly,

that they are not treated with ‘dignity and respect’ within the current UK

benefits system. Instead disabled people are mistrusted, scapegoated

and suffer from the erosion of levels of payment, conditionality and

sanctions. They also describe being subjected to a never-ending series

of intrusive, inadequate, inaccurate and degrading assessments.

They therefore commended the Scottish Government for delivering on

their public commitments to take a different path.

Some participants at the Think Tank felt strongly that a BI in Scotland

could improve the lives of disabled people by removing them from a UK

system that aims to ‘segregate and stigmatise them, humiliate and reject

them’.

It was also felt, however, that even where BI might be able to address

income inequality, disabled people in Scotland would still face extra

costs, and as such would be still inevitably be required to navigate an

assessment process. One participant noted:

’Yes, you can have a much more fair and humane assessment

system than we currently have but I think it’s wrong to portray BI

as a means of getting rid of assessments. Which is how it’s been

sold to some disabled people. It will not get rid of assessments… it

could change how we go about assessing people, but you will still

have to have some means of testing whether a person is disabled

or not, and therefore entitled to the extra assistance that comes

from being a disabled person.’

20

In this context the removal of conditionality from the current UK system,

and an improved and co-produced assessment regime within the

Scottish social security system was deemed by some participants at the

Think Tank to be more efficient and equitable for disabled people than a

Basic Income.

Simplicity vs responsiveness

The lure of a ‘simple’ social security system was felt at by some

participants at the Think Tank to be potentially problematic for disabled

people as it might neglect the need for a ‘responsive’ system, that can

meet urgent, significant and individual needs, and in particular respond

to changes in disabled people’s circumstances. One participant noted:

‘The current social security system is very complex. But part of its

complexity is because of responsiveness to actual individual need. Now,

if we take away that complexity, we might lose some of the ability to

respond.’

This would, it was argued, not only impact disabled people whose needs

and requirements were consistent over time, but those who might be

living with conditions where their impairments varied or those who

suddenly become disabled following an accident or health event but

whose costs at that point were higher than BI could cover. One

participant asked:

‘What happens if you have a stroke and become permanently impaired?

[…] What happens in that short term when you’ve got a big increase in

need, you know, but not necessarily addressed by the floor that BI

provides. So, in other words, is there still going to be a need for some

form of sickness benefit, some form of additional costs related to

housing which are not about rent, but about ownership and mortgages?

21

And if UBI can’t address that, are we talking about some other form of

insurance?’

Others felt however that minutely tracking not just need, but changes in

need, leads to unnecessary complexity, stigma and reduced take-up,

and that universal benefits can be a better way of reaching people in

need than targeted benefits.

Interaction with the current system

Participants at the event discussed how any pilot scheme for testing BI

might work for disabled people in the near future. Participants reflected

that in order to successfully pilot a Basic Income initiative in Scotland

there would need to be close links made between the new Scottish

Social Security Agency, Department of Work and Pensions and the

HMRC in order to establish whether (for example) Basic Income would

be considered as ‘income’.

At the time of the Think Tank, it also remained unclear how a BI pilot in

Scotland could be effectively managed so that disabled people would

not be financially penalised for having taken part.

Other participants reflected that it was vital that disabled people be

included in any pilot of BI in Scotland. They were concerned to ensure

that disabled people not be avoided because their participation

represented something that was ‘too difficult’ to achieve under the

current system, due to the administrative challenges of moving disabled

people between systems.

There were also significant concerns raised at the Think Tank about how

a Basic Income might interact with the current system of financial

support, in particular for housing for disabled people.

22

It was felt that a Basic Income would not address many housing issues –

high relative rate of inflation, lack of housing supply, rent control, and

geographic discrepancies in housing costs can be very significant issues

for disabled people. It was felt that a Basic Income might not help with

saving for rental deposits for example, a key barrier to Independent

Living for disabled people, who are less likely to have savings.

Even strong proponents of Basic Income recognised that the buy-in for

the universality of Basic Income may not transfer to the universal

support required for housing costs, given the variation in housing costs

nationally and even within local areas in Scotland. Pilots of BI in

Scotland are likely to omit housing costs completely, and retain Housing

Allowance/Housing Benefit, or the housing costs element of Universal

Credit; and as one participant at the Pop-up Think Tank put it:

‘as more elements are required to be added to BI, the case for it

lessens.’

However, some proponents of BI at the Think Tank were clear that it

was not for BI to solve issues around housing costs:

‘It’s not a social security problem. It is a housing policy problem, which

has grown up over the last four decades. And until it’s solved as a

housing policy problem, social security of any sort is not going to

address it.’

Nevertheless, participants reflected that it was vital to discuss issues

around housing, health, education, social care and so on alongside BI,

because any investment into a BI system would likely have financial

implications for these other systems. One participant warned:

‘We can’t come into this discussion and think “UBI, just put that down

there, everything else can magically sort itself”. We do need to be

23

thinking about how it interacts with every other policy, and how every

other policy interacts with UBI. […] Basically, nothing is right until

everything is right, […] so if a critique of UBI is based on a broken policy

elsewhere, you know, maybe we need to think about those

interactions.’

However, other disabled people, attracted by the concept of a Basic

Income, argued that many of the critiques of Basic Income were in

essence a failure to imagine an entirely new welfare system:

‘Our discussion should be about an entirely new system rather than

what elements do we retain. […]I do wonder how far a reductionist

approach would take us if we were talking about setting up an NHS that

did not exist. I suspect if that was applied post war, we still be doing

tests in cottage hospitals […] and it’s going back to the [neoliberal]

goggles. I think that it’s very difficult when you’re swimming in that

water to stand out of it and say what would it look like if I didn’t have

these goggles on and I wasn’t swimming? And I think that’s the

challenge for us when you’re talking about disability and Basic Income.

It is to almost imagine what it’s like to come out of this water, […] and

it’s very difficult.’

Conclusion

There is a sense in many developed countries around the world that our

social security systems – complex, under pressure, and subject to

widespread public suspicion – are no longer fit for purpose.

Disabled people in Scotland are among those groups have been

disproportionately hit by austerity measures and welfare reforms through

cuts to the various different inter-related social security payments and

public services that they depend upon.

24

In 2015, researchers from Sheffield Hallam University estimated that the

financial loss to Scots disabled people because of the cuts to just two

benefits (Disability Living Allowance (DLA)/Personal Independence

Payment (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)) would

be £600 million a year. This was 40% of the total financial loss to

Scotland from all ‘welfare reforms’ up to that date.

A Cumulative Impact Assessment of tax and welfare changes and public

spending cuts since 2010 finds that the more disabled a person is, the

more adversely they have been affected.26

Since the transition onto PIP began in 2013, 25% of people undergoing

a reassessment in Scotland have lost their DLA award without being

awarded PIP. This represents 39,000 people experiencing a loss per

person of between £1,200 and £7,740 per year.27

Conditionality – the idea that social security claimants must prove they

are looking for work and be involved in work-related activity in return for

out of work benefits – has intensified progressively. The roll-out of

Universal Credit will further extend the reach of benefit sanctions to

those in part-time work not deemed to be looking hard enough for

additional work. The introduction of the Health and Work Conversation

within the application process for Employment and Support Allowance

will bring conditionality to all disabled people, including those with high

support needs and terminal illness, with very few exemptions.

In such desperate times, a vision of a Basic Income, and a new social

settlement where poverty is eliminated, where everyone has a secure

income, where unpaid work is valued on par with paid work, and where

punitive sanctions and assessments are a thing of the past, has an

obvious attraction for many disabled people.

25

A Basic Income could in theory remove the poverty-traps caused by

means-testing and conditionality, and enable disabled people to do paid

work on terms that make sense to them.

Many disabled people can and want to carry out paid work; but they may

not necessarily work in exactly the same way as other people. For

example, people with chronic illness such as energy impairments need

to work when they have the right energy levels; freedom to choose work

patterns could be emancipatory.

However, for some sceptics, a Universal Basic Income (UBI) would not

be enough to help those in severe need but be a generous gift to the

wealthy who don’t need it. Here BI is not seen as a route to effective

welfare reform for disabled people in Scotland but rather a powerful new

tax engine to pull along a tiny cart.

If current disability benefits were replaced by a BI there are fears that

any assessment for an enhanced level of BI could end up mirroring the

current assessment processes which many disabled people find

inadequate, penalising and stressful.

The additional costs incurred by disabled people may be underestimated

within BI and it is felt that Basic Income experiments and significant

changes to welfare and social security could be very disruptive to

disabled people’s lives. The definition of citizenship is complex and ill-

defined, particularly for disabled people, and the impact of BI on the

behaviour of individual disabled people is not easily predicted or

assessed.

Sceptics suggest that it is one of the unfortunate mirages of BI that it can

‘mean all things to all people’, but the closer you get to it ‘the more it

seems to recede’, particularly for disabled people. They also argue that

the estimates of funds required to provide a UBI at anything other than

26

token levels are well in excess of the entire welfare budget of most

countries.

The lure of a ‘simple’ welfare system in Scotland could also potentially

be very problematic for disabled people as it may neglect the need for a

‘responsive’ welfare system, that by its very nature is necessarily

complicated because it can respond to urgent, significant and individual

need, and in particular to changes in disabled people’s circumstances.

There are concerns that BI may make disabled people in Scotland

poorer, divert funds from those most in need of support or that the tax

take required to provide an enhanced Basic Income that addresses

disability-related expenditure would make it untenable, unpopular and

ultimately politically and economically unsustainable. Which could

ultimately increase stigma for disabled people.

To our knowledge, there has been little to no involvement of disabled

people and Disabled People’s Organisations in the design of BI pilots or

feasibility studies globally, with the exception of a BI pilot in Ontario,

Canada, that gave disabled people an additional $500 per month to take

account of additional living costs.28

Despite this lack of explicit involvement there is a burgeoning view from

some disabled people and their supporters in Scotland that BI could

benefit disabled people, with parallels and shared goals being drawn

between the Basic Income movement and the Independent Living

Movement in terms of a similar understanding of social inclusion and

social justice.

Proponents argue that an ‘enhanced’ Universal Basic Income (UBI), or a

UBI+ that includes support costs, would help achieve a long-standing

objective of the Disabled People’s Independent Living movement – by

establishing a universal system for funding care or support.

27

There has been important progress in disability rights in shifting control

over service funding into the hands of disabled people. However, these

systems are often complex and unreliable, applying multiple systems of

eligibility and means-testing.

It is felt that Basic Income might mirror direct payments and other forms

of Self-directed Support (SDS) in terms of a shift to a model that focuses

on choice and control – thus freeing disabled people (and non-disabled

people alike) to develop in a manner and purpose they themselves see

as fit and feasible.

However, there are real questions that remain about whether and how BI

would work in practice for disabled people in Scotland – how elements

might be added to Basic Income to support disabled people to take

control over their own lives and to participate in and contribute to their

communities as full and equal citizens. How would any assessment

process for this support actually work in practice?

Through Universal Credit and personalisation, disabled people in

Scotland have experienced how what can be presented as progressive

ideas can in practice effect widespread harm. It was felt by some at the

Think Tank that BI could also be implemented in a way that harms them,

principally through a lack of consideration of disabled people’s needs,

particularly their extra costs, and an erasure of disabled people’s

concerns and voices from discussions around BI.

We hope by outlining the key issues for disabled people around Basic

Income that we have provided a useful resource to others keen to see

the inclusion of disabled people and their interests in this debate in

Scotland.

28

29

References

1Basic Income, Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), 2019. https://basicincome.org/basic-income/ 2 “Disability and Poverty”, New Policy Institute for JRF, 2016. https://www.npi.org.uk/files/7414/7087/2444/Disability_and_poverty_SUMMARY_REPORT_FINAL.pdf 3 ‘Destitution in the UK’, Fitzpatrick et al, Heriot Watt University for JRF, 2018. https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/news/over-1-5-million-people-were-destitute-in.htm 4 ‘UBI – Solution or Illusion: the implications of Universal Basic Income

to Disabled People in Britain’, DPAC, 2019. https://dpac.uk.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/UBI-Solution-or-Illusion.pdf 5 Finland published preliminary results of its pilot (January 2017–December 2018) in February and April 2019. Full results of the pilot will not be available until 2020. https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-incomeexperiment 6 ‘Scottish Citizens Basic Income Feasibility Study – Project Update Report’, Basic Income Scotland. https://basicincome.scot/2019/03/14/scottish-citizens-basic-income-feasibility-study-project-update-report/ 7 October 2019: Assessing the Feasibility of Citizen’s Basic Income Pilots in Scotland: An Interim Report Prepared by the Citizen’s Basic Income Feasibility Study Steering Group. https://basicincome.scot/wpcontent/uploads/sites/75/2019/10/CBI_Feasibility_Project_Interim_Report_Sept_2019_FINAL_FOR_WEB.pdf 8 ‘A Basic Income for Scotland’, RSA, 2019. https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/basic-income-scotland 9 United Kingdom: Lib Dem candidates back Basic Income pilots. https://basicincome.org/news/2019/12/united-kingdom-lib-dem-candidates-back-basic-income-pilots/ 10 Social Security Committee agenda 26th Meeting, 2019 (Session 5) Thursday 28 November 2019 https://www.parliament.scot/S5_Social_Security/Meeting%20Papers/SSCPublicPapers_20191128.pdf 11‘The Basic Income Guarantee’, Reform Scotland, 2016. https://reformscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/The-Basic-Income-Guarantee-1.pdf

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12 Income-based policies in Scotland: how would they affect health and health inequalities? https://www.scotpho.org.uk/media/1734/scotpho181003-income-based-policies-in-scotland-briefing-paper.pdf 13 Health-promoting potentials of Basic Income: an analysis of the psychosocial environment in work and welfare https://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/uploads/attachment/631/ubi-and-health.pdf 14 Gheaus, A., (2008) ‘Basic Income, Gender Justice and the Costs of Gender-Symmetrical Lifestyles’, Basic Income Studies 3(3): 1–8; Robeyns, I., (2001) ‘Will a Basic Income do Justice to Women?’, Analyse 23(1): 88–105. 15 ‘Citizen's income could increase child poverty, claims think tank’, Herald, Naysmith, 2018. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16260333.citizens-income-could-increase-child-poverty-claims-think-tank/ 16 Révauger, J. P., (2016) Citizenship and Social Policy: the Debate on the Citizen’s Income. Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, French Journal of British Studies, 21(XXI-1). 17 ‘Universal Basic Income proposals in light of ILO standards: Key

issues and global costing’ 2018 Geneva: ILO. p.13. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ilo/ilowps/995008692502676.html 18 ‘An Evaluation of a Strictly Revenue Neutral Citizens Income Scheme’ Torry, 2015. 19 The People’s Panel is a group of volunteers set up by Fife council and others to give their views on various policy issues. See: http://isj.org.uk/universal-basic-income/ 20 Solution or illusion? – the implications of Universal Basic Income for Disabled people in Britain News https://dpac.uk.net/tag/ubi/ 21 ‘UBI – Solution or Illusion: The Implications of Universal Basic Income to Disabled People in Britain’, DPAC, 2019. https://dpac.uk.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/UBI-Solution-or-Illusion.pdf 22 ‘The Fiscal and Distributional Implications for Different Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK”, Martinelli, L., Bath: Institute for Policy Research, 2017. 23 Zaidi, A. and Burchardt, T. (2003) Comparing incomes when needs differ: Equivalisation for the extra costs of disability in the UK. CASE paper 64. London: CASE. 24 SCOPE (2018 Tackling the price tag of disability. https://www.scope.org.uk/news-and-stories/tackling-the-price-tag-of-disability/ 25 Ipsos MORI (2013) Disabled People and Financial Wellbeing. London: Scope.

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26 Equality and Human Rights Commission (2018) The cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms. Available at: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/cumulative-impact-assessment-report.pdf 27 Scottish Government (2020) Welfare reform: impact report on benefits for disabled people. https://www.gov.scot/publications/welfare-reform-report-impact-welfare-reforms-disabled-people/pages/8/ 28 Finding a Better Way: A Basic Income Pilot Project for Ontario, a discussion paper by Hugh D. Segal. https://www.ontario.ca/page/finding-better-way-basic-income-pilot-project-ontario

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