A UBS is not cheaper than a Basic Income – counterplan authors compare gross savings with net costs.

The latest report on UBS cites an estimate of £33 billion (1.8 per cent of GDP) for the gross cost of providing free childcare, with workers providing it paid the minimum wage. The cost is then finessed down to a lowly £1.7 billion by assuming employment gains, higher tax receipts and reduced income support payments. But in a sleight of hand, in asserting that UBS would cost much less than basic income, UBS proponents cite only what they claim would be the gross cost of a basic income, not a net cost. Yet the difference between gross and net costs could be expected to be even larger in the case of basic income since, apart from savings in benefit expenditure, the basic income would effectively be clawed back from those on higher incomes through the tax system. As for elder care, the report omits to put a figure on its cost. However, a report on funding adult social care jointly issued by two House of Commons committees cites an estimate of £14 billion annually to make personal care services in England free of charge to all; they are already free in Scotland. An additional £15 billion would be needed just to restore services to their pre-austerity levels. A more recent estimate by the Institute for Public Policy Research has put the cost of free personal care in England at £8 billion over and above the £28 billion needed by 2030 for the present inadequate system to keep pace with demand, against about £19 billion today. While there would be some offsetting savings to the NHS, the IPPR envisages a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax to finance the proposal. None of this is to argue against better quality provision and affordable access to child and elderly care, both of which are sorely needed. But they are not cheap options and may even be regressive, benefiting the well-off most, depending on how they are funded. Meanwhile, the paternalist emphasis by proponents of ‘universal basic services’ on free state provision risks neglecting those who provide informal care for their own relations and those who try to stay independent of care for as long as possible. According to the House of Commons report, unpaid carers provide an estimated £132 billion worth of care each year. It is unclear how the UBS proponents would deal with such unpaid care.