Support for Basic Income pilot ‘a disgrace’

Sir, – The decision taken at Thursday’s Policy and Coordination Committee of Fife Council, to recommend support for a Scottish Citizen’s Basic Income (CBI) pilot scheme, is a disgrace.

The pilot scheme plans to spend £186 million over three years by giving 17,000 people up to three times the level of support they currently receive through benefits.

CBI would be an unconditional right with no requirement to be available for work and would replace all current benefits and pensions.

But despite repeated demands from the Scottish Conservative councillors on the committee, no source of funding was identified to deliver the pilot.

In fact, the paper presented by officers admitted that the pilot wouldn’t progress until the Scottish or UK Government came up with the £186 million – and that figure would become billions of pounds if implemented across Scotland.

This can only be achieved by massive tax hikes for middle and high earning taxpayers and is utterly unrealistic, which is why no other country has pursued a CBI, and why the Conservative Party doesn’t support it.

So, what was going on at the Policy and Coordination Committee? Political grandstanding.

By trumpeting the theoretical benefits of a CBI, the unholy alliance of Labour, SNP and Lib Dem politicians hope to bask in the reflected glory of a CBI policy, all the time knowing that they have no way of paying for it. It grossly misleads the public and raises expectations amongst the least well off. Expectations will be dashed in due course.

Any party can propose a wonderful new policy that solves social injustice but it takes a serious government to show that they can and will fund it.

Cllr Tony Miklinski, Cupar Ward. Whitehill Farmhouse, Ceres, Fife.