Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Denise RQ
On September, 23, 2013, in London,
a man named Michael O’Sullivan killed himself.
That would be a tragic event in any circumstances,
but what was most shocking about his death is that the coroner’s report
listed the DWP, the Department of Work and Pensions,
as a contributing factor to his death.
Michael had been summoned in to attend a fitness-for-work interview,
which, despite his many physical and mental problems
he had faced over many years,
deemed him fit to return to work,
regardless of the impact that it might have on him,
and left him in a position
where he felt that taking his own life was his only way out.
Last year, at a football tournament in England,
a group of kids who had reached the semi-final stage
had to drop out of the tournament
right at the stage where they had a chance of winning this entire thing.
The reason?
They couldn’t keep playing; they hadn’t eaten properly in days.
They literally did not have the energy
to finish something that was fun and exciting for them.
This was despite the fact
that for most of them, their parents were working,
and actually, their parents had been going without food
to try and keep them fed.
But the lack of access to food during school holidays
meant that these children were going hungry
in a country like ours, which is one of the biggest economies in the world.
Here in Glasgow, just earlier this year,
Matthew Bloomer was found dead in the center of Glasgow.
He’d been living homeless, and he died in a cold Glasgow night.
On average, four homeless people are dying in this city, a month,
despite everything we have access to.
This should be a source of national shame and national outrage;
and yet, it ends up looking like statistics.
These are only the tip of the iceberg,
only a few of many, many stories happening around us.
How have we got to this stage?
The problem is that we created our welfare state in the post-war period.
The country came together at a time when we’d experience
devastating loss of life, of property, of resources,
and made the decision
across party lines, across social boundaries
that actually, we had the responsibility to each other,
that people should be protected from the cradle to the grave,
when they were at their weakest.
Yet, we see now a system
where that right to protect you and get you a house
didn’t help Matthew and those others dying.
The right to work should count, should matter,
should be able to allow you to live,
but it doesn’t help those families going without food despite having jobs.
The idea of protecting people from cradle to grave,
when they’re at their weakest,
didn’t support Michael when he needed it most.
The welfare state, which is a source of pride and joy for us,
was created to try and deal with five giants,
five evils that we felt plagued society.
The problem is those giants still exist:
but they’ve changed, they’ve evolved,
they’ve adapted and taking on new characteristics and new impacts.
But our system hasn’t evolved with them.
We live in a world that is changing at an exponential pace:
previously, societal change that would have taken decades
is now taking years,
and as we move into the future, will be taking months.
We have to learn how to adapt with that, we have to start to have a space
where the challenges and opportunities we face
through globalization, climate change,
artificial intelligence, robotics, and so many other areas
can help us to grow,
to open up opportunities for creative lives for our citizens,
and not keep us trapped where we are.
The theme of today has been about “lead or follow,”
and that’s exactly what we’re faced with now.
We look at these looming changes,
and we can choose to wait, we can choose to hope
that maybe, enough of us can just about manage it,
can just about get through,
that we can cope with the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and resources
into a smaller and smaller focus of society as sustainable,
that we can cope with the environmental challenges,
and hopefully, not too many people will be lost during that process.
Or we can choose to lead,
we can choose to find a new social contract,
a new approach to society
that actually lets us take those opportunities
and flourish with them.
And I believe, here in Scotland,
we have that chance to take that leadership,
and I think it will be routed
through the introduction of a basic income.
Basic income –
the idea that every citizen receives a payment every month
from the state, directly into their account
isn’t a new idea; it’s been around for centuries.
But it’s an idea that fits
the world we’re in and that we’re moving into.
It has three core components:
it’s universal; it’s unconditional;
and it’s secure.
Security means
that you know every month that that money will be in your account
to cover your basic needs.
It allows you to start to plan for the future.
When so many people are living and working through jobs
where they are not sure
how long their employments are going to last for,
with zero-hour contracts or short-term employment,
this gives security to look to the future.
It’s universal.
This is a right for every citizen: man, woman, and child.
This isn’t on the basis
of whether we feel you have to have it at a certain point,
or in the basis of your economic activity, or the levels of money you make,
or the resources you own.
This is your right.
This reminds us that we have
a responsibility to each other and a relationship as a society.
And it’s unconditional.
We’ve got to a stage where we have a system
that is based on conditions, on sanctions, on punishments,
on presuming the worst of people.
Basic income is the idea that actually we believe in people.
We believe that by giving people
their access to this money, to this security,
they will choose and have the opportunity to live creative, fuller lives.
It’s a positive affirmation of where we can go.
And it’s not free money, it’s not money for nothing,
it’s not the idea of giving people nothing
for we all share or should share the benefits of society around us.
Because is true: no man, woman, or child is an island.
All of us rely upon the structures of the state,
of international relationships,
and of what has been done
for the generations that have led to where we are today.
Just stop for a minute and think about the worst job you’ve ever had.
Most of us probably can think of it pretty quickly;
sadly, some people will still probably be in it.
The kind of job that doesn’t give you space for growth,
that doesn’t give you the opportunities to push yourself, to challenge yourself,
to go in new directions.
In many of those cases, we had those jobs because we had to:
we have to pay the bills, we have to survive.
Imagine access to a secure form of payment, every month,
that allowed you to make new decisions.
It doesn’t mean you won’t work in that job,
but you may choose to work less in it,
and do something else with your other time.
You may have the confidence and the security
to challenge some of the working processes.
It gives you the space to make decisions for yourself.
Think about ideas that you might have had,
or friends or family might have had for new businesses, products, charities.
How often are these ideas held back because of the risks attached to them?
We have responsibilities,
we have bills to pay, mortgages and rent to cover;
children, loved ones to look after.
And these can stop us
from having the opportunity to explore, to take a risk.
How many world-changing ideas potentially get lost through that,
which access to a secure form of payment would allow us to start to consider?
Think of how many people have caring responsibilities
for loved ones, elderly relatives, children,
who contribute to their communities through volunteering,
through working in different organizations.
We treat that as a luxury, or as an expectation,
as a freebie that comes to society,
despite the fact that caring alone is probably worth about 20% of our GDP.
Imagine actually valuing that,
giving people a payment that allowed them to choose
to have those opportunities in their lives.
They could choose to give back to their communities,
to care for people that needed it.
I don’t want to imagine that;
today is about leadership, it’s about changing the world,
and here, we have a chance to do that.
Scotland and Glasgow have a history of innovation, of enterprise,
of charity, and of caring for society.
And this is our time to do that again.
In Scotland, and here in Glasgow,
we’re exploring experiments about how we can test this out in practice,
how we can start to get the evidence
that will show the impact that this can genuinely have for people.
They can start to change that relationship,
take us away from the sanctions-based system we have now
to one that is fit for a purpose,
for the future that we face and the way that we can work within that.
We created our welfare state
in the ruins, and after the horrors of the Second World War.
If we could create that new society, in that kind of context,
we need to ask ourselves: what’s stopping us now?
(Applause)
On September, 23, 2013, in London,
a man named Michael O’Sullivan killed himself.
That would be a tragic event in any circumstances,
but what was most shocking about his death is that the coroner’s report
listed the DWP, the Department of Work and Pensions,
as a contributing factor to his death.
Michael had been summoned in to attend a fitness-for-work interview,
which, despite his many physical and mental problems
he had faced over many years,
deemed him fit to return to work,
regardless of the impact that it might have on him,
and left him in a position
where he felt that taking his own life was his only way out.
Last year, at a football tournament in England,
a group of kids who had reached the semi-final stage
had to drop out of the tournament
right at the stage where they had a chance of winning this entire thing.
The reason?
They couldn’t keep playing; they hadn’t eaten properly in days.
They literally did not have the energy
to finish something that was fun and exciting for them.
This was despite the fact
that for most of them, their parents were working,
and actually, their parents had been going without food
to try and keep them fed.
But the lack of access to food during school holidays
meant that these children were going hungry
in a country like ours, which is one of the biggest economies in the world.
Here in Glasgow, just earlier this year,
Matthew Bloomer was found dead in the center of Glasgow.
He’d been living homeless, and he died in a cold Glasgow night.
On average, four homeless people are dying in this city, a month,
despite everything we have access to.
This should be a source of national shame and national outrage;
and yet, it ends up looking like statistics.
These are only the tip of the iceberg,
only a few of many, many stories happening around us.
How have we got to this stage?
The problem is that we created our welfare state in the post-war period.
The country came together at a time when we’d experience
devastating loss of life, of property, of resources,
and made the decision
across party lines, across social boundaries
that actually, we had the responsibility to each other,
that people should be protected from the cradle to the grave,
when they were at their weakest.
Yet, we see now a system
where that right to protect you and get you a house
didn’t help Matthew and those others dying.
The right to work should count, should matter,
should be able to allow you to live,
but it doesn’t help those families going without food despite having jobs.
The idea of protecting people from cradle to grave,
when they’re at their weakest,
didn’t support Michael when he needed it most.
The welfare state, which is a source of pride and joy for us,
was created to try and deal with five giants,
five evils that we felt plagued society.
The problem is those giants still exist:
but they’ve changed, they’ve evolved,
they’ve adapted and taking on new characteristics and new impacts.
But our system hasn’t evolved with them.
We live in a world that is changing at an exponential pace:
previously, societal change that would have taken decades
is now taking years,
and as we move into the future, will be taking months.
We have to learn how to adapt with that, we have to start to have a space
where the challenges and opportunities we face
through globalization, climate change,
artificial intelligence, robotics, and so many other areas
can help us to grow,
to open up opportunities for creative lives for our citizens,
and not keep us trapped where we are.
The theme of today has been about “lead or follow,”
and that’s exactly what we’re faced with now.
We look at these looming changes,
and we can choose to wait, we can choose to hope
that maybe, enough of us can just about manage it,
can just about get through,
that we can cope with the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and resources
into a smaller and smaller focus of society as sustainable,
that we can cope with the environmental challenges,
and hopefully, not too many people will be lost during that process.
Or we can choose to lead,
we can choose to find a new social contract,
a new approach to society
that actually lets us take those opportunities
and flourish with them.
And I believe, here in Scotland,
we have that chance to take that leadership,
and I think it will be routed
through the introduction of a basic income.
Basic income –
the idea that every citizen receives a payment every month
from the state, directly into their account
isn’t a new idea; it’s been around for centuries.
But it’s an idea that fits
the world we’re in and that we’re moving into.
It has three core components:
it’s universal; it’s unconditional;
and it’s secure.
Security means
that you know every month that that money will be in your account
to cover your basic needs.
It allows you to start to plan for the future.
When so many people are living and working through jobs
where they are not sure
how long their employments are going to last for,
with zero-hour contracts or short-term employment,
this gives security to look to the future.
It’s universal.
This is a right for every citizen: man, woman, and child.
This isn’t on the basis
of whether we feel you have to have it at a certain point,
or in the basis of your economic activity, or the levels of money you make,
or the resources you own.
This is your right.
This reminds us that we have
a responsibility to each other and a relationship as a society.
And it’s unconditional.
We’ve got to a stage where we have a system
that is based on conditions, on sanctions, on punishments,
on presuming the worst of people.
Basic income is the idea that actually we believe in people.
We believe that by giving people
their access to this money, to this security,
they will choose and have the opportunity to live creative, fuller lives.
It’s a positive affirmation of where we can go.
And it’s not free money, it’s not money for nothing,
it’s not the idea of giving people nothing
for we all share or should share the benefits of society around us.
Because is true: no man, woman, or child is an island.
All of us rely upon the structures of the state,
of international relationships,
and of what has been done
for the generations that have led to where we are today.
Just stop for a minute and think about the worst job you’ve ever had.
Most of us probably can think of it pretty quickly;
sadly, some people will still probably be in it.
The kind of job that doesn’t give you space for growth,
that doesn’t give you the opportunities to push yourself, to challenge yourself,
to go in new directions.
In many of those cases, we had those jobs because we had to:
we have to pay the bills, we have to survive.
Imagine access to a secure form of payment, every month,
that allowed you to make new decisions.
It doesn’t mean you won’t work in that job,
but you may choose to work less in it,
and do something else with your other time.
You may have the confidence and the security
to challenge some of the working processes.
It gives you the space to make decisions for yourself.
Think about ideas that you might have had,
or friends or family might have had for new businesses, products, charities.
How often are these ideas held back because of the risks attached to them?
We have responsibilities,
we have bills to pay, mortgages and rent to cover;
children, loved ones to look after.
And these can stop us
from having the opportunity to explore, to take a risk.
How many world-changing ideas potentially get lost through that,
which access to a secure form of payment would allow us to start to consider?
Think of how many people have caring responsibilities
for loved ones, elderly relatives, children,
who contribute to their communities through volunteering,
through working in different organizations.
We treat that as a luxury, or as an expectation,
as a freebie that comes to society,
despite the fact that caring alone is probably worth about 20% of our GDP.
Imagine actually valuing that,
giving people a payment that allowed them to choose
to have those opportunities in their lives.
They could choose to give back to their communities,
to care for people that needed it.
I don’t want to imagine that;
today is about leadership, it’s about changing the world,
and here, we have a chance to do that.
Scotland and Glasgow have a history of innovation, of enterprise,
of charity, and of caring for society.
And this is our time to do that again.
In Scotland, and here in Glasgow,
we’re exploring experiments about how we can test this out in practice,
how we can start to get the evidence
that will show the impact that this can genuinely have for people.
They can start to change that relationship,
take us away from the sanctions-based system we have now
to one that is fit for a purpose,
for the future that we face and the way that we can work within that.
We created our welfare state
in the ruins, and after the horrors of the Second World War.
If we could create that new society, in that kind of context,
we need to ask ourselves: what’s stopping us now?
(Applause)
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