Professor Bronwen Cohen, University of Edinburgh

Professor Bronwen Cohen asks what future for childcare beyond the referendum.

One of the questions not asked in the Referendum debate on the 5th of August was what the result might mean for childcare. A key issue for many families, survey evidence suggests that this is an area where people think independence could help (McAngus 2014). And it might well have formed part of the discussion on how public spending can be maintained as the working age population decreases. So what questions should be asked of the two campaigns?

 All of the political parties in Scotland broadly recognise the importance of what is referred to across the UK as Early Learning and Childcare, and internationally as Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC).  The terminology recognises the many benefits to young children as well as their importance to parents. And there can be little doubt of its importance in reducing levels of child poverty and inequalities in access to services. Families with pre-school children are the largest single group living in poverty and these families are the least likely to be making use of formal services (Cohen 2011).

All parties are signed up to improving access to services. But this is an issue which not only demonstrates their different approaches to public welfare but also illustrates the problems posed for the Unionist parties by the split responsibilities for ECEC at Scottish and UK levels of government. Although the Scottish parliament legislates on the supply of early education and family services, the Westminster parliament is responsible for the tax credits and benefits which have been used to boost ‘demand’ for services, and has also led on a variety of other programmes including  the Treasury initiated  Sure Start programme.

On offer from the SNP, post –independence, is a universal high quality ECEC system for all children from the age of one to when they enter school, through a progressive extension of the entitlement to free early learning and childcare. (Scottish Government 2014)  By the end of the second Parliament this would give three and four year olds and ‘vulnerable’ two year olds access to the same number of hours as primary school children. It is argued that this is only possible through independence, because it requires investing directly in services rather than subsidising demand, with funding ‘following the child’, through the tax and social security system. Its sustainability is linked to its simplified structure and, crucially, tax revenues resulting from increased labour market participation and job creation, as well as benefit savings from an associated reduction in poverty. Following independence, these would accrue to the Scottish and not the UK government.

The argument for these proposals is well supported by international evidence on the advantages of universal integrated ECEC systems and the use of supply–side funding, both in terms of cost effectiveness and ensuring more equal access to services.   (Gambaro et al. 2014; EC 2011; Penn 2009; OECD 2006). And whilst some questions have been raised over detail around the initial costings (SPICe 2014) there can be little doubt that it is a cost effective model able to meet, in an integrated form, the variety of functions expected of ECEC services.  When fully implemented, it would almost certainly considerably diminish current inequalities in access to services.

The questions that might be asked relate to what the White Paper does not contain. Perhaps the most obvious gap is the absence of any mention of school-age childcare and, more generally, the role of schools. Providing pre-school children with access to hours equivalent to primary school highlights one of the problems confronting parents at present – the mismatch between their hours and those of schools.  So it would be good to hear how more effective use can be made of schools in contributing to the care as well as education of both pre-school and school age children. High maternal employment rates in Norway (83-86% of preschool mothers, predominantly fulltime compared with 63% of Scottish mothers over half of whom work part-time) reflect the more extensive hours of their kindergartens and statutory entitlements to school –age as well as pre-school childcare  – usually provided in schools (Cohen and Rønning forthcoming). In other words, the more ambitious the plan, the more likely it is to deliver the economic as well as the social and educational benefits.

To those urging us to vote NO, we need to ask what lessons have been learned from the UK/Scottish split in ECEC responsibilities and whether the proposed additional tax and social security powers would include childcare tax credits and benefits and, over time, enable the transfer of this resource to direct funding of services and for recouping the tax revenues. Without this, the current expensive mixture of demand and supply funding and associated inequalities in access is likely to continue.

Would the adoption of a federal structure by the UK, proposed by the Scottish Liberal Democrats (SLD) (2012) and now adopted nationally, make a difference? Its decentralised approach has much to commend it and Canada’s federal structure has not prevented Quebec from developing a distinctive ECEC system, particularly notable for having reduced inequalities of access through its $5 a day cap on childcare fees, introduced in 1997.  But the SLD proposal  – now adopted nationally – reserves welfare to the UK as a whole. Moreover, the experience of Quebec suggests that federal governments still like to reach out to the people directly through programmes and tax benefits of their own, seeing this as a way of maintaining national identity. (Allen 2012)

This would matter less if the UK system did not involve the current mixture of demand and supply funding, and if there were shared aspirations across the UK for delivering ECEC.  Ironically, the best hope of achieving this might well be through working at EU level – as the Scottish Government is currently doing –in using the 2011 Communication on Early Childhood Education and Care as a basis for addressing key issues such as integration and quality.  The EU played an important role in legislating for maternity and parental leave provisions. The UK has been one of the member states that has discouraged a similar legislative approach to developing entitlements to ECEC services.

So the final question to both campaigns might be: will they support a stronger ECEC framework at EU level?  Where does a more substantial role for EU social policy feature in the discussion over Scotland – and the UK’s – EU membership?

For further reading on the subject, please visit: http://www.futureukandscotland.ac.uk/further-reading-childcare

Bronwen Cohen is Honorary Professor in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. This piece is a follow-up on work published by Professor Cohen in August 2003.

Principal Prondzynski, Robert Gordon University

Professor Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, Principal of Robert Gordon University, looks to Ireland when examining the implications of independence for higher education.

In 2011 I was appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. As my name maybe doesn’t suggest, I am an Irish citizen. Born in what was then West Germany, I moved with my family to Ireland when I was 7 years old, and have spent the greater part of my life since then in that country. For ten years, between 2000 and 2010, I was President (i.e. Principal) of Dublin City University, and I worked closely with the Irish university sector and with the Irish Government during those years in order to help build up higher education and generate innovation and R&D. Despite the awful financial shock and recession that overtook us towards the end of that time, working in this role in Dublin was exciting and rewarding.

So what have I brought with me from Ireland to Scotland, as it were? There are a few insights I might offer. First, small countries can do very well. Ireland may have been brought low by its property bubble and the mistake (as it turned out to be) of socializing bank debts, but it has also emerged relatively quickly and smartly from the recession, exited the EU/IMF bail-out and returned to growth.

Secondly, small countries, like larger ones, can successfully attract high value, knowledge-intensive investment. Even during the worst periods of the recent recession, and under the burden of the bail-out, Ireland was able to attract more investment in R&D by international companies than any other European country. This has been particularly true in the life science and pharma sector, where product innovation coming out of Ireland is now a notable feature of the industry.

Thirdly, recent years have demonstrated the wisdom of Ireland’s policy from the 1990s onwards of making targeted investments in high value skills and specific research areas. The phenomenal growth of Ireland’s software industry would not have been possible without the specific decision to target university-level funding of computing programmes. Without this the huge investments by Intel, Microsoft, Apple, HP and others could not have happened. The same has more recently been true of the pharma sector.

Fourthly, and related to that, the funding by the government of the so-called Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) and the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland created the basis for moving up the value chain in industry terms by targeting joint academic-industry research in priority areas. These were expensive but hugely intelligent decisions.

Finally, Ireland’s ability to manage its own fiscal policy reinforced all of the above, creating an attractive climate for investment and also, for much of this period, buoyant revenues. You cannot maintain a successful economy without fiscal autonomy. Attempts by the EU to encroach on that have been resisted.

What does all this mean for a Scotland contemplating independence? There are of course, as ever, arguments for and against embarking on this national journey. But the suggestion that Scotland would not easily be able to flourish outside the United Kingdom is not borne out by the Irish experience. Scotland right now has a much lower level of local innovation, and far less entrepreneurship, than Ireland has. It has in many ways developed a national dependency culture, in which a (perhaps generous) contribution from London is seen as safer than an indigenous innovation culture. It could be argued that the most hopeful future scenario is one of autonomous decision-making (with some shared sovereignty) in which local initiative and enterprise can be unlocked. It is, at any rate, one worth contemplating.

In a recent editorial in the BMJ, Kat Smith and Jeff Collin of the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh assess the prospects of Scottish independence leading to greater innovation in public health policy.

When the Scottish government published its white paper setting out the case for independence, Scotland’s Future, public health policy was central to its account of the Scottish parliament’s achievements. An emphasis on tackling long standing health problems through legislation for smoke-free public places and minimum unit pricing for alcohol was unsurprising given the status of these policies as landmark achievements of devolution and the praise lavished on the commitment of successive governments to deal with health inequalities.

The white paper depicts independence as conferring the ability “to use the full range of levers to promote good health,” yet it is noticeably lacking in specific public health policy commitments. More broadly, the future of public health has received limited attention in the unfolding debates preceding the forthcoming referendum. Discussion of health issues on the pro-independence websites of the “vote yes” campaign and the Scottish National Party focuses on the future of the NHS, while BMA Scotland restricts its guidance on the implications of independence to medical education, training, and professional matters. An analysis of how the existing constitutional settlement has shaped developments in public health is needed to inform consideration of alternative futures.

When political devolution took effect in Scotland and Wales in 1999, it was expected to stimulate health policy experimentation across the United Kingdom. Although the extent to which this has resulted in substantively divergent policies is contested, the record of tobacco and alcohol control in Scotland illustrates the scope afforded for innovation. As well as being the first place in the UK to implement legislation for smoke-free public places, Scotland has taken exploratory steps towards shaping the supply of tobacco and alcohol products. It has done this through the introduction of a register of all retailers selling tobacco products, a public health supplement (or levy) on larger retailers that sell both tobacco and alcohol, and a law to make proxy sales of tobacco products to those under 18 years old illegal. The Scottish government’s endorsement of standardised tobacco product packaging, and its persistence on minimum pricing, contrast starkly with the UK government’s equivocations. The ambition to make Scotland “smoke free” by 2034 reinforces its claims to public health leadership within the UK.

Such policies suggest that Scottish policy makers are more comfortable than their English counterparts with pursuing state level interventions for public health. It therefore seems plausible that an independent Scotland, with wider powers, could bring further opportunities for a progressive public health agenda. Prospects for further public health innovation can be assessed by reflecting on the “policy window” created by devolution. According to John Kingdon, such windows occur when three streams coalesce: problems (such as a crisis drawing attention to a problem), policies (specific proposals), and politics (including political institutions, public opinion and party interests).

In Scotland, poor performances in international comparisons of population health and health inequalities have undoubtedly highlighted public health as a policy problem. Health professions and advocacy groups arguably have a stronger influence in Edinburgh (and Cardiff) than in Westminster, reflecting smaller policy communities and a more accessible policymaking system. The exposure of policy makers to policies proposed by health researchers and advocates may therefore have been greater than in Westminster, whereas exposure to opposing business interests may have been lower, given the small number of think tanks, consultancy groups, and commercial headquarters in Scotland. Finally, survey data showing greater public acceptance of state interventions, combined with the interest of the dominant Scottish National Party in demonstrating strong leadership, suggest a favourable political stream.

Some of these factors would probably persist in an independent Scotland, including a policy concern with Scotland’s poor public health and public support for state-led health interventions. More speculatively, the political momentum behind innovation in public health could be partially self-fulfilling, and could offer a small new state a rare opportunity for global leadership. Yet there are also reasons to question any assumption that an independent Scotland would offer increased opportunities for public health innovation. Currently, health is one of the most high profile policy areas controlled by the Scottish government, promoting its position on the policy agenda. If Scotland were independent, the government’s expanded remit would cover fiscal policy, foreign affairs, and defence, potentially reducing the focus on public health. Moreover, the accessible and consensual Scottish policymaking system that seems to have favoured public health to date could work against it if commercial interests increase investment in political activities north of the border. Such changes could, for example, empower attempts by the whisky industry to hold alcohol policies hostage to national interests in expanding whisky exports.

The white paper itself cannot clearly guide an appraisal of such prospects. It does suggest that the “greater scope and clearer powers” afforded by independence would lead to further strengthening of alcohol and tobacco regulation. It similarly implies that powers over taxation and advertising regulation would facilitate “a coherent and concerted approach to issues of obesity and poor diet.” Yet, the core commitment to undercut the UK government on corporation tax highlights the strategic priority of creating a business friendly Scotland, and in this context maintaining political will to prioritise the interests of public health over those of the food and drinks industry may prove difficult.

Infatuation with policy innovation can lead to an exaggeration of the real dividends of devolution for the health of people in Scotland, and the scope for any government to tackle the social determinants of health without control over economic policy, trade, or international relations is clearly restricted. Yet, devolution does seem to have provided public health with an important window of opportunity. It should not be assumed that this window will remain open for long, or that it would open more widely in an independent Scotland.

Katherine is a Reader in the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Jeff Collin is the director of the Global Public Health Unit.

Professor James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh

James Mitchell reflects on what might happen following a yes vote, arguing that governments are likely to find ‘pragmatic solutions to difficult problems’.

Whatever happens next September, Scotland will continue to share this island with the rest of the rest of the UK (rUK).  Geographic separatism cannot be brought about by constitutional change.

Ironically, unionists insist that Scotland’s relationship with rUK will be troublesome and fractious while nationalists paint a picture of harmony.  We might ask why we would want to remain in a union with such bad neighbours or why we need independence if we have common interests.

Campaign rhetoric apart, what can we realistically expect after a Yes vote.  The experience of relations between devolved and UK Governments suggests that relations will be complex and changeable.  There will be occasions when harmonious and deeply discordant relations will operate simultaneously.  Never underestimate the capacity of governments to operate in silos.  But never underestimate the capacity of governments to find pragmatic solutions to difficult problems.  The institutions of inter-governmental relations already exist and would not have to be invented but some new arrangements will be required.  Emphasis is placed in the white paper on a ‘substantial diplomatic presence in both London and Dublin’ suggesting continuity in the deep relations with rUK but developing into a new set of relations incorporating the Irish Republic.  The white paper outlines these pragmatically but its opponents suggest that UK Governments will behave dogmatically.  Much of this is campaign rhetoric.

Under what circumstances would a UK Government (or Scottish for that matter) incline towards cooperation or conflict in its relations with its neighbour?

The key is motivations.  Nobody should expect either Government to be motivated by good will.  London will owe Scotland nothing and Edinburgh will owe London nothing.  Self-interest will dictate behaviour.  Neither Government will act against its own self-interest but neither will act spitefully unless it wants to inflict harm on itself long-term.  It is in the UK’s self-interest to portray relations with an independent Scotland on this side of the referendum as highly contentious and difficult but its interests will immediately change on the other side of a referendum if Scotland votes Yes.

Scotland may be small in comparison to rUK but losing Scotland will be a blow to the UK’s prestige.  Drawing attention to what is now described as a major rupture in UK politics will no more be in the UK’s than Scotland’s interests.  Both Governments will need to convey continuity and stability.

While politicians regard themselves as powerful, none is as powerful as the financial markets.  The lesson of the last few years should be obvious to one and all.  No state, no matter how mighty, is capable of taking on such powerful economic forces that brought the world economy to its knees.  Both Governments will seek to convince the money markets that all will be well, stability is maintained and relations will be good.  That pressure may be ignored during the campaign but it will concentrate minds in Edinburgh and London powerfully after a Yes vote.

James Mitchell is a Professor of Public Policy and the co-editor of After Independence, published in October 2013 by Luath Press. This article was originally published in the Scotsman. 

Professor Bronwen Cohen, Honorary Professor in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, suggests that transferring powers to the Scottish Parliament over tax and benefits could help bring Scotland’s Early Childhood Education and Care into the 21st century.

Would independence help Scotland deliver better Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services? The Scottish Government certainly thinks so. In its consultation paper on the Children and Young People Bill, now wending its way through the Scottish Parliament, it announced its commitment to develop high quality flexible and integrated early learning and childcare “matching the best in Europe”, but added that Scotland does not at present have “all the levers” to achieve this goal. The consultation document pointed out that “the tax and benefits system plays a crucial role in shaping how services are funded, organised and delivered and the powers for this remain with the UK”.

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) (as it is now known in many countries) forms only a small part of the current bill. There is little dispute that this is an area in need of radical improvement, despite some real achievements of successive administrations. But few would dispute the Scottish Government’s own critique of the absence of “a universal coherent system of early learning and childcare“ and a division between early learning and childcare which “does not give our children the best start in lives”.

It means parents having to juggle their arrangements between the pre-school entitlement and additional childcare they require, with some 60 per cent of families using two or more forms of childcare a week. Until the new legislation is enacted, Scotland’s children have access to fewer hours of pre-school education than their English counterparts. Their parents are paying amongst the highest costs for some services and there has been no legislative requirement on Scottish local authorities to secure adequate childcare for working parents.

However, little attention has been paid to the argument that ECEC is one of the areas where the current split in responsibilities between the Scottish and Westminster parliaments causes problems. So is the Scottish Government right to suggest this is an area of people’s lives where independence would make a real difference? And what light does the post-devolution period throw on this issue?

When the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999 there were high expectations for early years’ services. Scotland was well on the way to becoming the first UK nation to implement a new Labour Government commitment to free part-time early education for 3 and 4 year olds. But a decade and a half – and many policy reviews – later, it all looks rather different. In contrast to high profile policy changes in personal care for the elderly or funding for higher education students, bold initiatives that could bring Scottish ECEC into the 21st century have been largely absent.

So what went wrong? Looking back we can see that Scotland could have benefited from either different UK-wide policies – which took more account of divergent approaches to welfare policy in the devolved nations – and/or ensuring that Scotland had more of the financial and policy levers.

Whilst education remained a matter for separate legislation, childcare, supported through tax credits, became largely a Westminster responsibility. In Scotland, which had experience of pioneering holistic approaches to education and care, and where unlike England, schools are still the biggest providers of the pre-school entitlement, a greater focus on integrating education and care within schools as well as other settings, might have yielded swifter and better results.

Some largely lost opportunities to do this, including the location of ECEC within the New Community Schools initiative and school building programmes, were down to successive Scottish administrations. However, it was unhelpful that a number of key decisions were taken prior to the setting up of the Parliament and it was also the case, particularly in the early days, that devolution was not well understood by civil servants in Westminster.

And whilst the greater involvement of the Treasury in early years policy meant increased resources, it reinforced confusion over policy responsibility, tied Scotland into programmes such as Sure Start which were not necessarily of choice, and meant that the increased resources subsequently won for this and other UK programmes would in some measure continue to have an impact on Scottish policy.

So the evidence suggests that the Scottish Government is right to point to the problems caused in part by the split in responsibilities between the two parliaments. Greater attention does need to be given to levels of decision making which can address the peculiarly asymmetric form of current UK devolution arrangements.

Bronwen Cohen is Honorary Professor in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh.

Her article “Developing ECEC Services in Regionalised Administrations: Scotland’s Post-devolution Experience is in the August 2013 issue of International Journal of Early Childhood: http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1007/s13158-013-0089-y

So Say Scotland

The University of Edinburgh’s Oliver Escobar shares the So Say Scotland initiative, an effort to insert principles of deliberative democracy in the debate over Scotland’s constitutional future and ‘reclaim politics as the business of the people’.

A few weeks ago the Scottish Government published an outline of the route plan from the referendum to independence and the creation of a written constitution. Most notably, it acknowledged that a central dimension in that process is to “learn from the innovative and participative approaches of other countries” (p. 2) in order to  “engage all the people of Scotland” (p. 6) in shaping their constitutional future. Similarly, the Better Together camp is also arguing that civic engagement is a fundamental dimension in the run up to the referendum.

So here we have a critical landslide of invaluable common ground between the Yes Scotland and the Better Together campaigns: the future belongs to citizens, and it should be citizens who work it out through public dialogue and deliberation. The question is: How can we materialise those ideals into meaningful practices? In this blog post, I would like to share with you how such participative process has already begun (independently from either of those campaigns) thanks to the ingenuity and hard work of a network of democratic innovators. Notwithstanding the results of the referendum, we believe that we need new ways of doing politics, and new pathways for democracy.

On February 28^th 2013, the first ever ‘Thinking Together’ Citizens Assembly will take place in Scotland. Its aim is to assemble a cross-section of the Scottish population to engage in facilitated dialogue to create a collective vision for the future of the country. The process is organised by So Say Scotland, a non-partisan, non-profit, unincorporated association, powered by a network of social entrepreneurs, researchers and volunteers from all walks of life. The project is supported by a wide range of organisations and individuals who are contributing in cash or in kind, including platforms such as SCVO and the Public Policy Network (part of Edinburgh University’s Academy of Government).

The mind-boggling preparations have brought together a team of over 70 volunteers masterfully coordinated by Susan Pettie and Zara Kitson, including 25 dialogic facilitators recruited and trained for the occasion by Wendy Faulkner in collaboration with Oliver Escobar. All this work is being carried out on a minimal budget, and very much depending on the goodwill of volunteers and ongoing calls for public support through micro-funding. To support our efforts, donate here. All donations go towards basic needs for the event (i.e. catering, facilitation materials) as well as to ensure that citizens with low incomes or those living at a distance are able to participate.

The ‘Thinking Together’ Assembly takes its inspiration from the Icelandic Visioning Forum that formed the basis for the innovative democratic process leading to the recent creation of Iceland’s new constitution –after the country’s financial and political collapse. This was the world’s first ‘crowd-sourced’ constitution, that is, a constitution made directly by citizens through public dialogue and deliberation.

In Scotland, the ‘Thinking Together’ Assembly seeks to create a vision to inform the future of the country, notwithstanding the result of the 2014 referendum. The premise is simple, this first Assembly will gather 192 citizens (selected to represent as much as possible the demographic diversity of the Scottish population) to engage in a full day of facilitated dialogue. The process involves seven creative stages, designed to share and agree upon key values and ideas, and then build on them to articulate specific pathways towards a collective vision that captures a diversity of views and priorities. This dialogue process is carefully facilitated to be inclusive and highly sensitive to differences and minority views.

All the creative work done by the participants will be processed live by the tech-team, and a small army of volunteers will carry on doing data entry after the event. The results will be made public in the Thinking Together Report to be launched at noon on the day after the Assembly. We will distribute it far and wide, so that networks and organisations around the country may use it to inform their current and future work.

Other outputs will include future publications and talks (the first one in March at Changing Scotland) given by the many volunteers working to make the Assembly the best it can be. This includes Ailsa Henderson and Oliver Escobar (University of Edinburgh) and Stephen Elstub (University of the West of Scotland), who lead the research team for the Assembly.

So Say Scotland aims to become a hub for democratic innovation, harnessing the capacity, creativity and passion of citizens around the country to find new ways of tackling the pressing issues of our time. The ‘Thinking Together’ Citizens Assembly is, therefore, the first milestone in that change-making journey. The idea is to recast democracy as a domain of citizen participation, dialogue and deliberation, and thus reclaim politics as the business of the people.

Find out more and join us: www.sosayscotland.org

For an introduction to public dialogue and deliberation: http://bit.ly/125D0U7

Professor Ailsa McKay, Glasgow Caledonian University

In the second of our series on welfare and the independence referendum, Professor Ailsa McKay of Glasgow Caledonian University argues that the constitutional debate provides a valuable opportunity to redesign our welfare system and redefine the values of the ‘good society’, and proposes a Scottish Citizens Basic Income to promote opportunities for all.

The debate over Scotland’s constitutional future has opened up opportunities for creative thinking on welfare. A universal and unconditional minimum income guarantee, a Citizens Basic Income (CBI), would provide the opportunity for all of Scotland’s people to flourish. A CBI would replace all existing income maintenance benefits, including all reliefs set against income tax liability, and the amount paid would be tax-free. The proposal would involve full-scale integration of the tax and benefit system thereby reducing administration costs and eroding any disincentives to work that can arise from the interaction of separate tax and benefit structures. A CBI would ensure that the financial gains from paid work were always positive and would provide a more secure base for individuals to opt in and out of the labour market, thus promoting greater flexibility with respect to individual life choices. Furthermore, the universal aspect of the proposal prevents against discrimination, providing the foundations for a more equitable system of state welfare provision.

A significant stumbling block in considering a CBI proposal is the perceived prohibitive cost of a system for social security that involves granting everyone a minimum income guarantee and although a significant issue, a focus on cost at this stage prematurely stifles debate.  Actual costs will depend upon a range of factors including perhaps most crucially the level of grant. However, questions of affordability are primarily issues related to implementation and will be influenced by how we define and treat social security benefits v’s tax reliefs within our national accounting frameworks. Tax reliefs are in effect a benefit but presentationally are not regarded as such and, in a system that prioritises labour market participation, they will be favoured over more traditional forms of social security benefits. Engaging in debates on cost thus involves closer examination of practical process issues relating to how we view tax reliefs in the context of income maintenance policy and how we need to transform our dominant fiscal institutions to better reflect transparency in what we actually want our system to do.

A CBI promotes individual autonomy and allows for the development of social and economic relationships, negotiated outwith the confines of traditional market oriented transactions. Therefore in a broad philosophical context a CBI provides the basis for creating space to rethink our notions of work, income and citizenship rights within modern capitalist economies. Furthermore, in the narrower context of thinking about social security policy, a CBI presents as a new and fresh way of approaching state supported income maintenance policy in terms of justifying principles, design, and delivery mechanisms.

Adopting a CBI would not simply imply tinkering with existing systems in response to identified inadequacies or inefficiencies. The concept itself involves the acceptance of a whole new way of thinking about social security policy in terms of the functions it can, should and does perform. If understood in these terms, a CBI is more representative of a radical idea than a welfare reform proposal. However, the tendency is to view a CBI within the confines of rather narrow and limiting debates on the future of social security policy. That is, policy should be designed and delivered in ways that support, indeed prioritise active labour market participation.

In trying to move the debate beyond such confining parameters it seems appropriate to try and locate a CBI within the context of a focus on crisis, cuts and citizenship. That is, perhaps we need to consider the CBI proposal in the context of the great recession as an opportunity to reshape our thinking on what makes a good society and who do we value in that society. Crucially, in doing so we need to develop a better understanding of how the structures and processes associated with our economic systems can better serve the needs of all citizens across all of our communities.

New Ideas or More of the same?

With respect to state welfare arrangements, the current economic environment has served to refocus attention on the affordability and effectiveness of income maintenance policy. At a UK level this has been particularly apparent with wide ranging reforms to the benefit system aimed at cutting costs to the public purse, restricting eligibility and promoting active labour market participation. Across the political spectrum the ‘something for nothing’ mantra is dominating debates on the future of welfare with a resulting focus on reform strategies that protect against ‘benefit scroungers’ or free-riders. Reductions in overall spending are an added bonus associated with measures that act in pushing people back in to the labour market and out of welfare dependency. However, questions remain as to how effective the labour market is, and will continue to be, in providing sustainable and meaningful employment opportunities for all. Furthermore, given the contemporary character of poverty and social exclusion is it reasonable to assume that the labour market will continue to function as the main source of economic and social welfare? Individual income, either in terms of amount or source, is not necessarily an accurate indication of an individual’s welfare status or standard of living. Thus, any anti poverty strategy that has as a primary focus the promotion of labour market participation may only be addressing part of the problem. Perhaps more importantly is it desirable to expect it to do so? Some individuals may indeed derive great pleasure from paid work, but any policy that has at its core an assumed notion that work is a ‘good thing’ does not allow for freedom of expression for all in terms of individual preferences, particularly women.

A CBI has potential to address gender-based inequalities at a number of levels, but particularly to highlight the gender bias inherent within current state welfare arrangements and modern labour market structures. A CBI explicitly incorporates the notion that income should be derived from rights of citizenship. This would provide the basis for evaluating and accounting for the very different social experiences of men and women in a market based economy and promote real freedom for all. However, this potential will never be fully realised as long as reform debates remain constrained by traditional notions regarding the relationship between work and pay, and an implied notion that paid work remains the main source of economic welfare.

Arguing along these lines should not be considered indicative of an opposition to paid work per se. However, for many individuals, the experience of formal employment is not necessarily liberating nor welfare enhancing. Individual preferences are better served by a policy that allows for freedom of choice as opposed to one that limits choice in favour of a particular form of labour market participation.

A CBI for Scotland?

Would a CBI work in Scotland – providing the basis for state welfare provision in accordance with an overarching purpose to provide ‘opportunities for all to flourish through sustainable economic growth’? In considering that question a number of further questions immediately come to mind: what makes a good society, what do we value and what could a CBI do? For instance, how do we go about reconceptualising what we consider to be ‘work’; how do we deal with the free–rider problem when we consider the third party effects resulting from the energy and effort some individuals expend in building local communities and/or staying at home to care for others; how do we deal with the vulnerability of certain groups and the institutions they rely on as a source of economic and social welfare and how do we manage the social costs associated with increasingly unequal societies?

Considering the relationship between social and economic policy in the new Scotland those questions should and could come to the forefront of debate. Perhaps its time to consider a different set of values as the defining feature of our ‘good society’ and maybe a CBI provides us at this moment in time in Scotland with just the platform for doing so.

Ailsa McKay is Professor of Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University. This article was also published in the Scotsman on 20 February and is derived from a paper presented to the David Hume Institute/Academy of Government seminar ‘Delivering Social Security: Options in Scotland’s Constitutional Debate.’ A full version of the paper is available at: http://www.davidhumeinstitute.com/research.html

Sheila Riddell, Moray House School of Education

Professor Sheila Riddell outlines her ESRC funded research on the future of education in the context of devolution and in light of the forthcoming referendum on independence.

In the run-up to the referendum in autumn 2014, it is important to think about what sort of society we want to create in Scotland and how we want to relate to our neighbours in the rest of the UK and Europe. Higher education is at the centre of this debate, since it has a strong bearing on individual life chances and social mobility. Higher levels of educational qualification are becoming increasingly important in the labour market, since EU and OECD projections suggest that the majority of jobs created over the next ten years will require higher levels of skills and qualifications. If opportunities for social mobility are increasingly restricted, as appears to be the case in Scotland, the UK and much of Europe, then societies are likely to become more unequal and less cohesive. Scottish Government policy on the funding of higher education, which may be delivered in universities or colleges, is of central importance in widening participation, and the impact of fees regimes on different social groups across the UK will be examined as part of this project. We will also be looking at the impact of a range of widening access initiatives adopted by universities and colleges including outreach activity in schools, admissions processes and criteria, support through student services and access to bursaries.

Higher education also impinges on many other important areas of public policy which are highly relevant to the debate on devolution and independence. For example, we will be discussing the possibility of Scotland developing a different approach to immigration compared with the rest of the UK, and the implications of Scottish immigration policy for overseas students. The future of shared services, such as UCAS and the Research Councils will also be discussed, as will the future of UK organisations with Scottish branches such as the NUS and the UCU.

During the course of the project, we will be undertaking primary research and public engagement activities. We will be using UCAS data to explore the cross-border flow of students between Scotland, the rest of the UK and Europe to investigate the impact of different fees regimes. We will also be conducting key informant interviews with key players in government, funding councils and trades unions to examine different visions of the future of Scottish higher education. Public engagement activities will include a series of think tanks involving a cross-section of the Scottish public, with a particular focus on hearing the views of young people. We also plan to produce a short film and teaching materials to be used in schools.

Sheila Riddell is a Professor of Inclusion and Diversity in the Moray House School of Education, has been awarded a Scotland Senior Fellowship by the ESRC to study the future of higher education in the context of devolution and the forthcoming referendum on independence.

The project is due to start in March 2013 and information is available on our website. If you are interested in attending any of our events, then please contact Fannie Kong, project administrator: