BASIC INCOME

That this House notes the growing crisis of low pay and precarity in a labour market increasingly characterised by casualised forms of employment, such as zero-hours contracts that offer little in the way of pay, predictable hours or long-term security; further notes the evident inability of our bureaucratic and costly social security system, with its dependence on means-testing and often arbitrary sanctions, to provide an adequate income floor; believes that a universal basic income, an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid to everyone has the potential to offer genuine social security to all while boosting entrepreneurialism and the creation of small businesses; welcomes the ongoing exploration of the concept of such a basic income by the think tank Compass, the Royal Society of the Arts, the Citizen's Income Trust and others; further welcomes the planned practical experiments in Finland, the Netherlands and Canada; and calls on the Government to fund and commission further research into the possibilities offered by the various basic income models, their feasibility, their potential to guarantee additional help for those who need it most and how the complex economic and social challenges of introducing a basic income might be met.