This House Recogonizes

(1)That welfare spending has more than doubled since 2010.

(2)That an ideal welfare system should provide a social safety net, protecting people from condition beyond their control and uplifting people out of poverty.

This House Further notes

(3)That the government has stated that working class and unemployed families are still struggling to support themselves.

(4)That, if this is true, then there is a possibility that, despite doubling in size, the welfare system is not meeting these objectives.

(5)That gathering data on whether or not the hypothesis in section 4 is true is worthwhile to ensure that further investment is justified and that future governments can accomplish these objectives as effectively as possible.

(6)That any future welfare policy needs to be based on empirical data.

Therefore, the House calls on the government to

(7)Investigate the effectiveness of basic income, when compared to the NIT and to the system under place before any program of basic income was established at how they accomplished the objectives of point 2.

(8)Investigate how tax policy may also affect the objectives of point 2.

(9)Investigate other welfare programs and provide data on how they overlap with basic income, if basic income accomplishes these objectives on its own, if there are any diminishing returns, and how we can best accomplish the objectives in point 2 if we use them as programs in addition to BI, or on their own merit.

(10)Determine in the broadest stroke if the welfare system is meeting its objectives efficiently and provide data for future law making decisions.

(11)Create an independent commission, made of economics experts, to determine each of these points above.

This motion was submitted by the Hon /u/Phonexia2 on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.

Deputy Speaker

Let me preface this by saying that I am a supporter of the welfare state, and I am no Tory. In my time in government I opposed a return to Universal Credit and I am even skeptical of NIT. I support a form of basic income, personally a lot more than many of those within my own party. But I am also a woman that supports a little thing called evidence, and that is something I want to dig up. Evidence. I want people to go about and catalog the impact, in real terms, in NUMERIC terms, the impact of the current state of welfare in this country.

Because Deputy Speaker if you listen to some of those who are pushing to spend even more on welfare you will hear that people are struggling, people are barely making ends meet. May I remind the speaker that we were told if we do not pass the emergency budget that things were so dire people would die. This despite the fact that we have more than doubled welfare spending, let alone programs aimed at helping those in poverty. This points to something being wrong. Maybe, deputy speaker, the programs aren’t working.

But I do not want to jump face first into something else, Deputy Speaker. I think that is a mistake. Rather, I want the economic experts of this country to survey the years-long experiment in the expansion of the welfare state. I want us to see and know how effective it is at actually accomplishing its objectives, and if there could be better alternative welfare models than what Rose and its successive socialist governments have implemented.

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This reading will end on the 1st at 10PM