Jane Dodds' inspiring speech

Once again, thanks to our Welsh party leader - and a contingent from Flintshire! - for coming to Caewern on a cold winter's evening and giving a boost to Sheila Kingston-Jones' by-election campaign in Bryncoch South. Many photos were taken and one has found its way on to the Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats Facebook page already.

Jane spoke feelingly about her dedication to Wales, regretting the failure to provide the infrastructure to enable the whole of the nation to fulfil its potential. She was passionate about the environment.  She criticised the Conservative government, with the support of the Labour opposition, for embarking on the Article 50 process on the basis of what was, at bottom, a protest vote. Something had to be done about those people stuck in poorly-paid dead end jobs - which, thanks to zero-hours contracts, may not be permanent anyway. There had been a failure to inform them about what the European Union had done and could do for them, and the party had a duty to fill that gap.

There was much to chew over, but one of her ideas stuck out for me. One way of restoring hope and dignity, she said, would be a Universal Basic Income. She believed that the Canadian Mincome experiment had been a success. The Finns had just embarked on a similar venture and, one year in, it looks promising and she had similar hopes for the Scottish government's investigation of the idea in an area of Glasgow. I see from the wikipedia article that the Manitoba initiative of Mincome had been supported by a Liberal government in Ottawa and closed down by a succeeding Conservative one. (Now with a Trudeau back as Canadian prime minister, Ontario is reviving the idea.)

Those of us with long memories will know that under the banner "citizen's income" the idea has been around in UK politics for some time. Indeed, I seem to recall that it was once part of  SDP policy, and the SDP was a co-founder of the Liberal Democrat party. When Universal Credit was first announced, merging a number of disparate state benefits, it seemed as if civil service policy-makers were preparing the way for a vehicle for delivering a citizen's income in the UK. It soon became clear that the Conservatives were instead using UC as a means of increasing the numbers of working poor. I believe that it can still be rescued, but it needs the Chancellor immediately to eliminate the injustices of UC's current parameters and for a patient re-examination of the system design, delaying the present hurried national roll-out.

In order to fund UBI, Jane Dodds said that we should not be afraid to advocate an increase in tax for those most able to bear it and I agree with her.