Influential Tory former minister Nick Boles has condemned the idea of a universal basic income to cushion workers against the rise of robots as “dangerous nonsense”.
Universal basic income, or UBI, has sparked the attention of people ranging from Silicon Valley to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, as a way of guaranteeing workers a minimum income and ensuring they are not left behind by automation.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has promised to examine the idea, which would replace means-tested benefits with a single payment to every adult.
But in an extract from his forthcoming book, Square Deal, Boles – the MP for Grantham and a former skills minister – said Conservatives should have “moral” objections to UBI.
“The main objection to the idea of a universal basic income is not practical but moral,” he writes.
“Its enthusiasts suggest that when intelligent machines make most of us redundant, we will all dispense with the idea of earning a living and find true fulfilment in writing poetry, playing music and nurturing plants. That is dangerous nonsense.
“Mankind is hard-wired to work. We gain satisfaction from it. It gives us a sense of identity, purpose and belonging … we should not be trying to create a world in which most people do not feel the need to work.”
Boles also argues the idea would also be prohibitively expensive.
“Currently, the government is able to target help on those who need it most and can therefore afford to be modestly generous. If, in future, everyone were to receive the same basic income, the poorest would suffer a big drop in their income while average earners’ taxes would go up.”
Boles is widely viewed by his colleagues as one of the more thoughtful backbenchers in a party hungry for a convincing riposte to Corbyn’s radical socialism.
Rather than seeking to compensate workers for losing their roles in a more automated economy, he argues that the government should invest heavily in equipping them with the new skills they will need – including the creation of new two-year technical qualifications.
His intervention comes after the IPPR thinktank warned that up to 44% of jobs in the UK economy could potentially be open to automation in the coming decades, with lower-paid workers the most likely to be displaced.
Corbyn used his party conference speech in September to suggest a Labour government would use the tax system to ensure that the benefits of automation are widely shared across the economy: an idea quickly dubbed the “robot tax”.
But Boles warned that taxing firms that benefit from automation would simply discourage them from investing. “The only sure result of a robot tax would be lower investment, lower productivity and lower wages.”
