Build bridges to the future
The way in which we respond to crises depends on our desire and capacity to change, the nature of the threat and the alliances we build
by Matthew Taylor @RSAMatthew
I am writing this in the first days of April. With our awareness of the scale, nature and impact of the virus changing daily, I am acutely aware that the world may look very different by the time this edition of RSA Journal lands on the doormats of Fellows. As RSA Chair Tim Eyles explains in his introduction, this is one aspect of the challenge the virus poses to the Society. Somehow, we have to respond to the crisis and the immediate pressures it creates; at the same time, we must think imaginatively and hopefully about the future beyond the pandemic. History tells us that only some crises lead to long.term, positive change. An obvious contrast is between the responses to the First and Second World Wars. After the former, the treatment of the defeated nations hampered reconstruction and fostered resentment, while the conditions were laid for economic boom and subsequent depression. By contrast, the post-Second World War period saw the vanquished nations supported to rebuild, while the west enjoyed three decades of rising living standards, falling inequality,greater freedom and expanding welfare provision; a period the French refer to as les trente glorieuses.
In the case of the 1940s, the capacity of leaders to learn from themistakes of their predecessors was clearly a significant factor. More generally, whether a crisis leads to change seems to depend on three key areas. First, latent potential: is there an underlying desire and capacity for things to be different? Second, precipitating factors: aspects of the crisis that reinforce the case for change, but also practices and attitudes that prefigure a changed world. Third, alliances and solutions: the political will and the policies, innovations and institutions brought to bear to turn potential into reality.
Take two more recent examples: the AIDS epidemic of the late 1980s and the financial crisis of 2007–08. In the former case, an existing gay rights movement plus wider social liberalism provided the background potential. The scale of the crisis forced the most affected communities and public health authorities to make a choice: they could hide away, cover up and stigmatise, or come out, demand action and fight stigma. Eventually, they firmly chose the latter. Finally, the crisis pointed to clear and achievable reforms, whether investment in treatment and cure, behaviour change, or action to counter homophobia and discrimination.
The financial crisis was very different. First, the momentum for change in either the way markets operated or their outcomes was weaker. Second, people derived different messages from the crisis itself. For some, it was all about the behaviour of rogue bankers; for others it showed the negligence and irresponsibility of governments; and for yet others, it revealed the inherent failings of globalised finance.
While these arguments are not totally incompatible, they tend to lead to different policy prescriptions. The prospects of turning the crisis into an agenda for lasting change was hamstrung not only by a lack
of consensus, and the tensions between short-term imperatives and long-term shifts, but by the failure of reformers to create alliances or develop popular reform programmes. Most fatefully for progressive change, reformers split between the radicalism of the Occupy movement and the unsuccessful attempts of incumbent liberal and social democrat leaders to adapt and renew. The beneficiaries of the crisis were not progressives, but nationalist populists.
The Covid-19 pandemic is a global tragedy; the RSA also sees it as an obligation to try to create a better world. We need to think clearly about where the three conditions above could apply and respond both with urgency and long-term ambition.
Resolving inequality
Let’s start with inequality and insecurity. Overall, there has for some time been a strong public feeling that current levels of inequality are excessive. Even politicians on the right have accepted that there is a problem of real and perceived unfairness. The pandemic doubly amplifies the inequality story, both nationally and globally. On the one hand, it reminds us of our common humanity and vulnerability. On the other, it brings into sharper relief how much more vulnerable some citizens are: casual workers, children in poorer families, isolated older people and prisoners.
The first two change conditions apply but the hardest and most contested is the third. The right and left might agree that inequality is a problem, but they have very different ways of responding. This is why the time for exploring Universal Basic Income (UBI) may have come. Remember that UBI (or its close relation, ‘negative income tax’) has historically had as many supporters on the right (including Milton Freidman) as the left.
Recent developments are creating the conditions for change. We now effectively have a minimum income guarantee. Even before the crisis, the government, through Jobcentre Plus, had started to scale down punitive conditionality in the benefit system; Universal Credit has already moved away from a sole focus on getting into work.
Of course, there remain lots of disagreements between people who support UBI. There are different views on how to make the case for and implement it. If we are to progress the argument, we need to make the right case. This is what the RSA has been doing for some time: arguing for a modest UBI that is not about the fantasy that everyone can have a comfortable life without working. It is a practical argument that everyone except the very well off could have a baseline that offers them greater security, strengthens work incentives and gives them the chance to change their lives, for example through retraining or pursuing self-employment.
Opponents of UBI may argue that, on its own, it does little to address inequality. In part, this depends on how it is funded, with wealth taxes being the obvious source. Some critiques also fail to appreciate that people feel society is unequal based not just on their bank balances, but on how secure they feel. Security — and dignity — would be significantly enhanced if every citizen had the means to basic subsistence as a right. In case this sounds unrealistic, as I sit at my desk writing, the Spanish Government is announcing a basic income scheme, and not just for the crisis, but as a commitment beyond.
Reassessing working lives?
A second, related, opportunity for change concerns working lives. Ever since I published my report on modern employment for then Prime Minister Theresa May in July 2017, I have been struck by how almost everyone signs up to the goal I laid out on the first page of the report: that every job should be “fair and decent with scope for development and fulfillment”.
The crisis has led us to recognise the vital importance of jobs that might previously have been seen as low status as well as low paid: social carers, supermarket workers, delivery drivers. We have seen the wide variation in how employers have responded to the crisis, from those who have engaged staff and gone out of their way to be fair, to those who have acted unilaterally and ruthlessly. And we have been made aware of the profound insecurity of those who are on low incomes and self-employed or in casual work. If the crisis deepens an existing commitment to the principle of good work, what are the means to embed change?
The government could recommit to the objectives of my Good Work plan. For example, it could get behind and strengthen changes implemented on 1 April, which make it much easier for employees to demand independent representation and rights to information and consultation at work. Ministers could also be bold in their forthcoming Employment Bill in areas such as employment status and enhancing the protections for casual workers. They could commit to adequate funding and enhanced powers for the proposed single enforcement body and could take forward the idea of a single employability framework to boost transferability of skills and the ideal of every job being a learning job.
The government is finding it difficult to respond to the plight of casual workers and the self-employed. I am told that in developing the package to help the self-employed, the Chancellor was surprised and concerned by the scale of this problem and how the growth of non-standard work has embedded insecurity. So perhaps the door may be open to an idea that seemed too bold to be more than hinted at in my 2017 plan.
For almost entirely historical reasons, we continue to tax labour very differently depending on whether it is provided by employees (in which case we pay for employers’ National Insurance) or the self-employed. Labour provided by a self-employed person is taxed less, which creates incentives for bogus self-employment and a loss of tax revenues. Meanwhile, the self-employed (and to a lesser extent casual workers) lack the entitlements that come with conventional employment.
The simple solution is to move (over time) towards all labour being taxed at the same level, with the additional revenue raised being used to provide the self-employed with sickness insurance as well as incentives to save for retirement or to train. This could be part of the new social contract that we are exploring through our Future of Work programme.
Rethinking public services
A third broad area of possibility is health and social care. Public support for the NHS is unwavering. There has for some time been widespread recognition that the crisis in social care is not only a scandal in itself but a source of pressure on the health service. Beyond this, experts, professionals and concerned citizens recognise the need and scope for a deeper rethink of our systems. This should reflect the importance of public behaviour and expectations, on the one hand, and technological innovation on the other.
The Covid-19 crisis has amplified all these sentiments but also provoked other responses. There is the willingness of both individuals and communities to do the right thing in supporting the system, whether that is self-isolating, coming out of retirement to work in the NHS or establishing community support networks for vulnerable local people. The weekly community applause for the NHS and health workers is merely the symbolic expression of this deeper commitment. What could we do to turn this energy into lasting change?
First, vivid evidence of the frailty of our social care system should, at long last, provide the impetus for a fair and sustainable funding solution; one that will almost certainly involve better-off people insuring themselves. Second, could the crisis enable a more profound rethink of our model of public services? Can we start to see them not as goods to be delivered but as relationships to be nurtured? This model puts the empowerment of individuals and the building of community capacity at the forefront of service design and delivery. It changes how we think about productivity and speaks to the shining light that has been cast on the importance of ‘high-touch’ as well as high-tech work.
Third, given the surprise many people trying to support the NHS have expressed about its fragmented structure of decision-making, can we be more ambitious in developing and enacting system-wide solutions that exploit the transformative potential of big data and technology?
A fourth broad area of concern refers to both the climate emergency and the way government leads us. The pandemic is likely to eventually result in a greater emphasis on foresight and planning in government. These are already important functions, but they have rarely been seen as politically salient or a priority for spending. As the public is poignantly reminded of the many people and institutions that predicted a pandemic of this sort and argued — largely in vain — for adequate precautionary investment, the role of government in preparing for possible futures will be strongly reinforced. In prime ministerial adviser Dominic Cummings, there is someone at the centre of power who apparently needs little convincing. He has, for example, described Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner’s book on ‘superforecasting’ as essential reading for the kind of “weirdos” he wants to recruit to the Downing Street staff.
Thinking long term
Perhaps the crisis will better enable politicians and officials to achieve something they have been frequently admonished to do by a variety of experts: focus policy on the longer term. If so, an important concept may be that of resilience. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation has already set up a major funding programme that has developed and tested resilience projects in cities across the world, in its 100 Resilient Cities work. Many commentators have already pointed out that the largely ignored warnings of pandemic experts have an eerie similarity to those of climatologists.
But long-term planning in areas like carbon reduction and climate change mitigation means making difficult, and sometimes unpopular, choices, a challenge that will be exacerbated by the bleak fiscal position the UK is likely to face after the crisis. The adversarial, sound-bite-oriented bear-pit of conventional politics is not the place to win complex arguments. Perhaps, then, we should reinforce the already strong case for the greater use of deliberative democratic methods of engagement and policymaking.
Unlike representative democracy, dominated by our profoundly unrepresentative and deeply dysfunctional political parties, deliberative processes can strengthen trust between governing politicians and the public. And this points to a final post-pandemic imperative. As Professor Geoff Mulgan (the former Chief Executive of Nesta) explained to me in the first of the RSA’s Bridges to the Future podcast series, a noticeable characteristic of the countries that seem to be handling the pandemic best without reverting to authoritarianism — for example, South Korea and Taiwan — is relatively high trust between rulers and citizens. This has meant the public have been willing to accept quite intrusive approaches to personal data, on-the-spot testing and behaviour modification as a price worth paying to rulers they trust to act effectively.
To enhance its limited reserves of trust and to try to mobilise a divided nation, the UK government has relied strongly on public health experts as messengers. As Michael Gove gratefully redirected difficult media questions to NHS managers at Downing Street press conferences, the idea that we have had enough of experts was exposed as a tendentious myth. Yet, in many areas — such as testing and equipment — the government was seen to have overclaimed and tragically underperformed.
The crisis will eventually pass. But whether it is preparing for the long term or exploiting the incredible potential for public good of data and technology, restoring trust in our governmental institutions is vital, not just to the health of our democracy but to our livelihoods, wellbeing and, perhaps, survival.
There are many other changes that could be hastened by the crisis: from greater home working to confronting the terrible state of social care and our prisons. But those hoping for progressive outcomes from the crisis need to learn from 2008 that these are only possibilities. People may come through the pandemic more determined to repair society and avoid the risks of climate change, but they could equally feel exhausted with talk of existential risk. Facing financial pressures, they may focus on the short term, even perhaps preferring austerity to tax increases. And, of course, there will be those seeking to use the crisis and its aftermath to drive even greater polarisation.
To make change real and positive, we need new and broader alliances, to co-design practical solutions and realistic models of implementation, and to aim to mould but not go against, or too far beyond, the tide of public sentiment.
This time the RSA will be doing all it can to avoid this terrible crisis going to waste.
