- Universal basic income in the UK is politically controversial.
- The prime minister has previously said he "isn't attracted" to UBI and prefers retraining workers.
- Wales launched a small basic-income pilot in 2022 that ends this year.
Governments around the world are testing programs that give people money with no strings attached.
That includes the Welsh government in the UK, which in 2022 launched the first guaranteed-basic-income pilot in the country. The program, called Basic Income for Care Leavers, gave 638 young adults leaving the foster-care or local authority-care system a monthly payment of about £1,280, or $1,580, after taxes that they could spend on whatever they wanted.
The pilot is set to wrap up this year, and its results could inform a controversial debate in the UK over basic income. Guaranteed basic income offers recurring cash payments for a set period of time to a specific group of people, like mothers or artists. Universal basic income provides recurring cash payments to all people in a population, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Countries testing basic income include the US, Canada, and Kenya. Supporters of basic income argue that it can address growing inequality and insulate workers from economic recessions and technological advances like artificial intelligence, while opponents are concerned that basic income disincentives work and that programs are too expensive to implement.
"There is experimentation going on, and there is a familiarity within policy circles, but it's still quite a controversial idea," said Jack Kellam, a spokesperson for the Autonomy Institute, a UK think tank that studies how to reshape work to address modern crises. "That's why people are cautious about touching it within mainstream politics."
Nearly half the 2,233 Britons in a July YouGov survey said they supported the idea of introducing UBI in the UK, while one-third opposed it.
Hurdles for basic income in the UK
One of the arguments against basic income is the price tag. Estimates of the cost in the UK are wide-ranging. A Georgetown University study published in 2023 found that implementing UBI in the country would cost about £45 billion a year, or 2% of its GDP. A working paper by the Institute for Policy Research in 2017 estimated it would cost more than £427 billion annually.
Smaller guaranteed-basic-income programs can be easier to implement. For example, the Welsh government allocated about £20 million over three years for its pilot.
The pilot hasn't been without controversy. The UK government, which in 2022 was controlled by the Conservative Party, opposed the Wales pilot and said UBI would discourage work and require significant tax increases to fund. Britain's Labour Party swept to power in July, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously said he "isn't attracted" to UBIin response to advances in AI. He said the focus should be on retraining workers.
The Labour Party also controls the Welsh Parliament, but Kellam said that in Wales the party tends to be more progressive than its national counterpart.
The Autonomy Institute in 2023 proposed its own basic-income micropilot in the UK for 15 people, but Kellam said it hadn't attracted a funder yet. He hopes the results of the pilot in Wales, as well as emerging research in the US indicating the success of similar pilots, will create some momentum.
An analysis of 30 basic-income pilots in the USby the Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard — a research group that visualizes data from the programs — involving nearly 8,500 participants found more than half the cash grants went toward food and groceries, transportation, housing, utilities, healthcare, and education. Smaller basic-income studies and experiments found that cash payments helped participants earn higher wages, boosted job satisfaction, and improved productivity.
Kellam said anotherobstacle to implementing basic income in the UK is the government's centralized structure, which thwarts local leaders' ability to launch their own basic income pilots, like in the US.
"In the US, a lot of these trials are taking place at the town and city level," Kellam said. "We lack a lot of that infrastructure in the UK. We're involved in some of the discussions at local councils. But it's seen as less politically contagious."