Gweithio, wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs. I'm Faisa Shaheen. I'm the director of a think tank called Class, the Centre for Labor and Social Studies. Really glad to be here today to be talking about how we escaped growth dependency. It's a question that's been there for a long time. And it doesn't matter how many times we point out that GDP, or growth domestic product, is not a great measure of society for various different reasons. We seem to only become more and more wedded to it. And so today I'm really interested in hearing about Positive Money's new report. I know that there's copies around the room and I thank Fran and her team for putting it together. I think it offers sort of a new angle. I think we've spoken quite a bit about how GDP and the connections to the environment in particular, somewhere where that measure is particularly damaging. But I know that in this report there's talk of the links to debt and how our reliance on debt makes us growth dependent. So I'll just kick off with Fran, who's going to explain the report, and then we'll move on to Kate, and then we'll have some response from the three politicians on the panel. Great, thanks Fraser, I'll stand up. First of all, just thank you all for coming. I think when we started this research project a couple of years ago, we were pretty pessimistic about when we launched the report whether we'd be able to get policy makers interested. And we definitely didn't think we'd be able to host a report launch in Parliament. And I think one of the reasons that we've been able to do that is because we've seen over the last two years the economy becoming ever more uncertain, even going into decline. And we're seeing the deep structural issues, the problems with our economy becoming ever more obvious. And so more and more people are willing to kind of be more open minded about what isn't working in terms of an economy that serves society. So ever since the economics discipline existed, people have asked the question like what's the best measure of economic progress? So if we think about the UK economy today, don't worry, come in, I think there's a couple more seats in the back. Let's consider some options. So wage growth, that is the lowest since Victorian times. Debt to GDP, that is at record highs. Asset prices, they're at record highs too. And whilst that might be good for some, it is definitely not for the growing number of people who are left off the property ladder or out of the stock market. And by the metrics which show real people's experiences of the economy, the evidence is pretty bleak. While the number of UK millionaires has shot up to 41% by 41% in the last five years, not least because of the asset price rises, we're seeing one in eight workers in the UK economy that can't afford three meals a day. Low-paid jobs are proliferating and food bank use is soaring. And it's not much better globally. 1% of the global population own 45% of the world's wealth. And scientists say we have approximately three years left before catastrophic climate changes are leashed. So our economic system is dysfunctional at its core, and we do need a new model and new ways to measure its success. And since we were founded, positive money has always believed that it's possible to move beyond the reductionist conversations around GDP growth. And to do that, we've focused as an organisation on a key driver of the dysfunctional economy which is high levels of private and public debt. But first I just want to talk about what the problem is with GDP growth. So GDP is the sum total of goods and services being produced in the economy and for almost every pound, dollar and euro makes up that statistics. GDP also then measures some usage, input or energy of natural resources and also the release, some output of pollution and waste. And it is all of this activity that does have a real tangible impact on our environment and ecosystems. And if I was going to show you a slide if I'm not going to be able to do what you would see is that as GDP, the trajectory of GDP has increased over the last 100 years, so has the resource use of things that will bookside the metals that we kind of need to do a lot of the production and consumption in our modern economy. And so infinite growth on a finite planet essentially ensures that we, as a species, will actually extinct ourselves in the coming decades or millennia. Now some economists have looked at the possibility of decutling GDP growth from resource consumption or carbon dioxide emissions and that was the second slide I was going to show you. And this would involve basically trying to decouple the trajectory of GDP growth going up from resource use which would need to fall and also carbon dioxide emissions. So the idea is that you can increase GDP activity with ever more kind of weightless economic activity such as software or computer apps, etc. However the evidence shows that this isn't happening fast enough. So I think that a very appealing argument which a lot of people are attracted to is technology will come and save us all and we don't need to worry too much because we can put all of our hopes in technological innovation to get us out of this pickle. Well that's just not going to happen fast enough and so the graph I was going to show you was showing that really if we're going to decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon dioxide emissions we need significant decoupling. We don't just need relative decoupling we need absolute decoupling and if that is going to be on a trajectory that will keep us within planetary boundaries it is incredibly far away from the trajectory we are on in terms of carbon dioxide emissions So why are governments obsessed with growth if we know that their growth is kind of taking us down a path of no return? Well one reason which I'm sure you all agree is they're continually judged by analysts and commentators on this one figure whether it's going up or down and by how much and it will also have an impact on the amount of interest we pay on government debt. As an example of the focus on this figure back in November when the budget was announced actually quite a lot of the media buzz around the Chancellor's budget was quite mundane. It was the office of budget responsibility downgrading its growth forecast. So we're pretty focused on this one measure at the moment but we must remember that GDP growth only really became a central concern in the second half of the 20th century when policy makers adopted it as a kind of way of measuring living standards since then what's happened is we've evolved to mean that governments has kind of this is kind of circular reasoning where now increasing growth itself is seen as a means of maintaining living standards reducing poverty and other things so we see GDP growth as the means to increase living standards rather than simply a kind of blunt measure of the economic activity in the economy and there's also this idea that growth is a way of avoiding difficult questions so why is there such vast amounts of inequality or why is the wage share of GDP falling can kind of be masked if everything's growing there's this idea that a rising tide lifts all boats but many commentators and economists have joked that actually in the current situation a rising tide lifts luxury yachts but sinks everybody else so we know that these things that growth isn't actually tackling some of these very serious concerns in our economy and these drivers tend to be the result of out of date an incomplete understanding of the economy which is kind of seeped into all levels of our political and economic debate and despite being debunked by many economists they still persist in our everyday conversation about how our economy is doing but there's another overlooked source of growth dependency which the report focuses in on in the second half and that's this high levels of private and public debt which our current economy produces and the key driver of which is our money and banking system which in its current form burden society with an endless supply of debt while some debt is obviously useful too much will cripple an economy and lay the foundations for a crash and the money was founded to talk about how the money system works its impact on society and the environment and we propose in this report two reforms to the current money system looking at the way money is created and the code system over 97% of the money that we use exists as deposits in banks banks create new money when they make loans and through this process money is created as an IOU or a debt so the vast majority of these new loans that banks create when they make money goes into property and financial markets resulting in high levels of household debt high asset prices and quite unstable economic system and that coupled with the fact that we've seen wage decline has resulted in households having ever taking on ever more debt just to get by and it means that in the UK we've got a private debt level which stands at 170% of GDP not only do these high levels of debt pose quite a serious threat to our financial stability indeed Andy Halden the chief economist of the bank of England has talked quite a lot about that in the last year but they also fuel the government's kind of single track focus on pursuing growth at all costs in order to make these debts manageable policy makers see increase the income as the easiest way to pay off debts they believe the best way to do so is by increasing your productive output i.e. working harder and harder and longer to produce more of the goods and services which GDP measures and despite the fact that productivity is faltering under employment is the new normal and we've seen sustained profit wage share split it's this idea along with fears of mounting debt levels that blocks GDP as the overriding policy objective to economic policy so it's to our peril that government's preoccupation with growth leads to other very important concerns socioeconomic ones and environmental ones being put on the back burner as they pursue growth at all costs and it's clear that the challenge of climate change and inequality are just too urgent to ignore these challenges do require world rethinking of society's priorities and we think a good place to start is our dysfunctional money and banking system which underpins it so it means a discussion about how we create our money and whether it should be solely privately created as debt by commercial banks in a way which demands unsustainable growth there are alternatives which could allow us to create money sustainably and a way which works for people and doesn't leave us beholden to financial markets and credit rating agencies so I just want to talk briefly about the two options that we lay out in the paper so one is utilising this idea of monetary financing which various economists have started talking about over the last few years it's also known as sovereign money creation or QE for people it would involve the banking and creating money in a similar way as it did with QE but rather than creating £475 billion and pumping it into financial markets as that happened through quantitative easing the bank could create a smaller amount and ensure that it gets into the real economy where it can play a role in paying down private debt levels and this could be done in a few ways a couple of which which economists have put forward are such as putting it specifically into government spending even on green infrastructure so that it actually can contribute to the green transition we need or even a citizen's dividend to go directly into paying down private sector debt but there is also scope to go even further to what we call a fully fledged sovereign money system which would essentially be stripping banks of their power to create money as debt and it would decouple two really important functions of money as a means of payment and a means of credit in the system and in the process would enable us to end too big to fail banking positive money estimates that these policies would allow us to add additional 50 billion a year over about 20 years which could obviously be used for government sector spending allow us to pay for society pay for the things society needs but without increasing private sector debt and in shrinking the levels of debt across the economy then we would see these policies freeing governments from the race for endless economic growth and instead of sleepwalking into a debt fuelled dystopia it's not too late to switch our money in banking systems to one that paves the way to a more sustainable future Thanks Fran, I just might take cheers privilege and just ask a quick question it just struck me when you were talking about debt there obviously we've had a lot of conversations about government debt in recent years and many of us see some of the arguments around the need for those cuts to be more ideological and what does this analysis tell us about should we be aiming to cut debt in order to lower growth dependencies is that in a sense a good thing? We've always said the focus on public debt is ridiculous and what is really worrying in the economy is private debt and obviously if you cut public spending at a time of recession that will deepen a recession and that's what we've seen we've seen the growth that we've had since the crash being completely dependent on increasing consumer borrowing and more and more private debt so I think most economists agree austerity is a mistake and the focus of it is ridiculous especially at a time that government that interest rates at an all time low but I think our analysis takes it on a step and says well also we don't want to be as a nation state we don't want to be beholden to financial markets who are fixated on this growth number and will give us interest rate on our government borrowing dependent on how we're doing on growth we need to free ourselves from that and one way is to bring in this new source of money creation through monetary financing Kate so Kate Raworth who you all know probably she wrote the book Donate Economics that came out last year was a bit of Christmas reading for me visiting research associate at the Oxford University's Environmental Climate Change Institute and you're going to give us a bit more insight into this growth dependency that we have and potentially what we can do about it OK let's try Thank you I'm very delighted to be here and I think the very fact that we're having a discussion meeting here in this building on a report that's called Escaping Growth Dependency is an impressive and important thing it's important that these conversations happen because they're difficult conversations so congratulations to Positive Money for bringing it here and opening up this space and I deeply respect MPs as well who are willing to come and sit at this table because it's uncomfortable and it's moving away from the easy place it's much easier to go with the mainstream and I really respect anyone who's willing to step out and go into this more uncertain place of the future we're trying to create so the question is why do we still talk all the time about GDP growth and is it coming or not is it downgraded or not everybody knows it's not a good measure David Cameron many years ago said let's talk about gross national happiness instead the Guardian agrees the Financial Times the World Bank the Economist you can find articles in all of these papers saying of course GDP is not a good measure of our progress so why on earth is it still so central to political and economic debate I think it's because it's not the measure that matters it's because our economies are structurally dependent upon our ending growth our society too accepts this quite easily because deep within a western culture there's a metaphor that growth is good I want my children to grow I like to see my garden grow we think forward and up is good why are you looking so down that's bad you're moving onwards and upwards so there's a deep culture in the west of forwards and up of growth is a good thing which is I think why it's so easily accepted that a book that was written in 1960 has defined the metaphor by which we construct and run our economies and it's such a wonderful powerful book by W.Dory Rosto I got myself a first edition copy it's called the stages of economic growth a non-communist manifesto you can smell the politics already and Rosto said that every economy goes through five stages of growth on its journey to progress and I'm going to just show you right now it's a little aeroplane right so I'm going to hold my little aeroplane here unless you don't want to feel that hold me will you feel that plane of brilliant so here we go I knew you began so here we go you have to go the other direction for them the growth curve going up so the first stage is traditional society in which nothing very much is really happening you've got traditional agriculture traditional textiles then you get the preconditions for take off we're on the runway now preconditions for take off in which Rosto says the idea spreads not merely that economic progress is possible but that economic progress is a necessary condition for some other purpose judged to be good be it national dignity private profit, general welfare life for the children you get the beginnings of a banking industry you get education set for work you get mechanisation and then therefore we get through to the third stage which is take off itself here we go, take off where growth becomes the normal condition and compound interest becomes built as it were into its habits and institutional structure both the basic structure of the economy and the social and political structure of the society are transformed in such a way that a steady rate of growth can thereafter regularly be sustained from there we go through to the fourth phase where go to the drive to maturity that's it, we're going up now drive to maturity where you can have any industry you want no matter what your natural resource base and then we go to the fifth and final stage way up there we go, thank you Jonathan where we have the era of high mass consumption where people can buy any goods and services Rosto said like bicycles and sewing machines this was 1960 ok, no no no no that's the whole point because this airplane ride unlike any other airplane cannot be allowed to land is he in 1960 Rosto left us flying off into the sunset of mass consumerism and actually he knew it I won't give you on mate you can't bring it down on it, just not yet he said and then the question beyond where history offers us only fragments what to do when the increase in real income itself loses its charm you see, he asked that question but he never answered it and here's why Rosto was about to be an advisor to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and Kennedy was standing for election in 1960 on the promise of a 5% growth rate so Rosto's job was to keep that plane flying not to ask if, how and when it could ever be allowed to land so he left us flying off into the sunset of mass consumerism and while we're there we could probably realise that actually we have another relationship to the metaphor of growth because it's not just that we want our children to grow and our gardens to grow, if I tell you that my friend went to the doctor and he told her she had a growth now that feels very very different because we instinctively know that when something is trying to grow within a healthy, living, dynamic delicately balanced system that doesn't bode well and if it's unchecked it can damage and destroy the very system on which it depends so here we are flying 60 years later after Rosto off into the sunset of mass consumerism Rosto wrote his book before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring realising the damage of pesticides to wildlife in the fields he wrote it long before climate change was really widely understood he wrote it long before we had an international agreement to tackle climate change ours is a completely different era and we need to move into a different phase of understanding our relationship to growth so the obvious question is, well if we're not for growth is the first thing, what are we for I'd say we're for thriving for an economy that allows us to thrive because the economy we have driven by this need friendless growth I believe in the UK and many other countries has become deeply divisive as Fran said, the rise of the millionaire the rise of the 1% and the rise of food banks it's also become deeply degenerative we know that the structures of our economy are among those countries that are running down the systems of the living world on which we depend so we want to get away from a divisive economy towards one that's distributive of value that's created, shared far more equitably with everybody we want to see a closing down of tax havens and opening up of children's centres we want to see an economy in which everybody is benefiting from the way that economic value is created we also want to move from a degenerative economy to a regenerative one where we stop fracking underground for all sources of oil and energy and gas and we start looking up for our energy from the sun, from the wind because that's the future of renewable energy now what's going to happen as we move this incredible transition towards an economy far more distributive and is regenerative of the living world some things need to grow and some things need to die and we need to have the ability for GDP which is merely the value of goods and services sold in the economy to be able to respond to that transition but we can't do it if we're locked structurally into having ever rising GDP because we do as Fran said have structural lock ins to this growth financially through the system where we create money through commercial banks bearing debt through the finance system that drives that highway to return forcing companies if they want to keep their shareholders to have ever growing profits we're politically locked in every government wants higher tax revenue without higher tax rates where the way to get that is have a growing GDP but also no government wants to lose their place in the G20 family photo but if you don't have a growing economy you're going to be booted out by the next emerging powerhouse and we're socially locked in because after a century of consumerist propaganda telling us that we improve ourselves by buying something more we now seem to have in the UK no celebration at all of Thanksgiving but we have the day after called Black Friday where everybody goes out and spends money like crazy and these are cultural lock ins to the idea that we need ever rising income for better life I believe we are like the pilots in that plane that have been left flying forever into the sunset and we as a generation knowing what we now know we have to write the chapters that are missing in the flight manual we have to write the chapters that allow us to get out of a plane that has to rise and fly forever and that's what meetings like this are for that's what reports like this are for beginning to take on the tricky questions how on earth do we get out of this growing dependency it's not going to be easy and these aren't comfortable questions but if we don't start dressing them now and recognizing the unresolved challenges that are at the heart of the economic structures we have we stand very little chance of thriving to see how urgent it is even the bells are in it so I'm delighted to be part of this discussion I'm delighted that our politicians brave enough and open minded enough to take on these questions because we need the entire House of Commons and the House of Lords to be stepping up to this if we are indeed going to thrive together in the 21st century law thank you very much great thank you Kate well we're all awake now I mean we are very lucky today to have three politicians from across the political spectrum to talk about this and that is very important like you say everyone needs to be taking this issue very seriously and it's not big P political necessarily I'm going to start with Kevin Hollingrake who is the Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton since 2015 and also sits on the communities and local government committee do you want to kick us off? thank you very much and wonderful to follow that wonderful presentation from Kate talks about brave politicians brave isn't a word politicians are too comfortable with it usually means you're in the wrong place saying the wrong things I was quite interested in the narrative leading up to this event which he said I think this would bring together leading thinkers and also politicians so if you'll forgive me I'm a business person more than an economist but in terms of 25 years in business before starting in politics in 2015 quite an interesting time to start you might say but I'm also a chair of the old party parliamentary group of poverty and I absolutely believe despite the fact you might say I'm a Conservative politician I absolutely believe we should be looking for a fairer society so a lot of the things we're talking about today I absolutely resonate with me if I talk to my children my four children I don't talk to them about going out and making lots of money I talk to them about having a happy life that's by far the most important thing for all of us and I too remember David Cameron's happiness index and I was absolutely a big fan of that so yes I agree we've got a problem in terms of debt and whether it's GDP we should be using as a measure or something else but debt no doubt about it I mean Governments of all persuasions by the time we get to a position where we're breaking even in the UK in terms of government and public spending if we get to that point of time in the early 2020s I think that's 35 years five years we will have broken even and by that time two trillion pounds in debt and also of course household debt is on the rise too 1.63 billion I think by 2016 so it's a household debt 80% of that is mortgage debt rising debt also for students and for consumer debt so we absolutely haven't got some problems I don't believe debt is good whether it's public sector or private sector personally it's going to get worse if you think where we are today in terms of our public spending versus 60 years ago we were spending 100 it was really urgent all this 100 billion a year in terms of public spending 60 years ago we were now spending 780 billion pounds a year in public spending but the dynamics and the demographics are going to have some real time bonds in there particularly around the fact there's more of us it's really good news but that's putting huge pressure on the system in terms of back 60 years ago 11% of our spending went on social spending, social security spending that includes welfare and pensions today it's 28% 45% of which is pensions back 60 years ago 7% of our spending was on healthcare today it's 18% and we absolutely know that there are much greater challenges in those areas so our public spending is going to grow and grow and grow and we need to find a way to manage that public spending whilst not getting the government and effectively the taxpayer into the debt so I guess the question is is there a single solution to those problems I think Fran was saying there is in terms of this new approach to the economy I say I'm not an economist but I have reservations about that printing money effectively hasn't worked in the past you can look at many examples around the world of where that has gone horribly wrong and so to me that is very risky for me to do that and I may have this wrong but it's misunderstands what money is money is simply as I understand it an aggregation of all the goods and services on the planet so to me to print more and the basis that we are going to increase those goods and services isn't sound economics in my view and I think there was that old Native American proverb as well it's only when the last tree is cut down the last fish has been eaten and the last stream has been polluted that we realise we can't eat money and we need to be able to find ways of sustainable growth and I absolutely believe that should be the case I don't also believe that governments are driving GDP they may use that as a measure but for me people drive GDP people's ambition whether it's their personal gain or whether it's in terms of where they see the opportunities in their lives on that path but people naturally do want to get on people naturally optimistic and want to have purpose in their lives and that might include growing their personal economy which grows a wider economy so certainly you may say GDP is actually a measure of government interference that you see in the USA I'm not recommending this as a strategy but the way they're trying to increase GDP is deregulating the economy so businesses and individuals can get on and take those opportunities to grow that economy so I'm not sure it's the government that's driving all this like naturally people are and one thing I think we should realise about where we are today more than ever is that people are in charge if anything Brexit people can tell you when I'm probably not a lot of people in this room that voted for Brexit I didn't but people are in charge so governments respond to what people desire or what people want it may take more time than we might naturally that we'd like that to happen more quickly but I think people are at the driving seat in this particular argument I think the other thing I would say I'm a little bit more positive in terms of where we are today if you compare where we are today on the planet versus 100 years ago this means some enormous successes many of which are a result of economic growth 100 years ago 94% of people on this planet were in extreme poverty now they are 10% not percent of people got a vaccination now 86% a child mortality that must be one of the measures we should look at in terms of our society was 43% that's children dying under 5 years old now only 4% so there are some positives we've seen so how we try and deal with these problems I think there are three different areas we've got to try and develop a system where the government does balance his books despite the pressures coming down the line in terms of household debt certainly in terms of higher wages lower direct taxes more truly affordable homes if you look at that figure in terms of personal debt 80% of the personal debt is mortgage debt certainly in terms of making sure we've more fairly shared the value of land between individuals who own the land and the wider community we have definitely got that wrong at the moment no question in terms of the other points environmental degradation that comes back to regulation and I absolutely believe we should be regulating further you see with the direction of travel to this government in terms of more investment in renewables 13 renewal energy records were up in this year there are some significant progress on the lines of Cambridge talk in terms of using the wind so we've got to live with the plan and also the PPS to Michael Goll the Environment Secretary and I think he's absolutely committed to make sure our future growth is sustainable and I don't think those two things are incompatible growth and sustainability so yes we've got challenges we probably disagree slightly with the solutions but we've got to work to the same end of finding those solutions thank you Kevin I'll let Fran and Kate come back on some of those points towards the end and I want to make sure I give time for people in the audience to ask questions as well Alex Sobel is the Labour MP for Leeds North West he was elected last year congratulations he was previously the Deputy Executive Member for the Climate Change on Leeds City Council I think there's a real point there about what we do about debt obviously in the Labour manifesto there was discussion about debt in order to invest in infrastructure it'd be great if you could pick that up thank you Okay thank you I'm not sure that I'm going to because the person that probably wrote that section of the manifesto is here so I'm not going to cut across him I was going to really try and relate some of the macroeconomic points that Fran made and Kate made to an extent to the real world scenario we're in and where we are at this point in history and I think we are a real turning point in history for a number of reasons one of which is the challenge around climate change is the challenge around the heating of the planet and the depletion of resources and I'm sure Jonathan might touch on that after me, I hope not to steal all his lines and the other one is actually around technology and both the empowering nature of technology but also the disempowering nature of technology if used for the wrong reasons and the wrong wrong hands and we have this probably quite short period in the history of humanity and the planet to change the models and to change the metrics and if we don't do that then future generations won't thank us because it'll be unclear what sort of planet we're going to leave in what sort of lives that they're going to be able to lead with the planet and we're going to bequeath them so it's quite important that we actually change the conversation and change the game I mean this is an important point as we were particularly in this country when we left feudalism went into the Reformation and then moved through that to the Industrial Revolution this is just as important a time as that more important I'd say than the post war settlement the formation of Bretton Woods and actually the economic model that we've been working on the last 70 or so years I think the last few years since 2010 two things have arisen which are helpful to try and create the new model one of which is the sharing economy and they say necessity is the murder of invention I think that is where the sharing economy has come from so people are empowered through the use of technology to be able to share rather than to buy new to throw away so people can use that technology to find others who want the things that they have but this does not contribute to GDP or to economic growth and actually we need to be thinking much more about share and maybe now I'm going to sound a little bit like a conservative but make do and mend and the use that people can make of those rather than have the throw away culture of just buying new or working to down the throw away and buying new one and the other point which is a bit more complex around the circular economy I met with the chair the resource association yesterday the biggest problem we face in this country less so in other European countries is the quality and value I'm not going to use the word cost value of recyclable materials and actually this is a big barrier for us to move away from things being made from virgin materials which are a great cost of the planet to recycling and those materials our economy isn't set up to create good quality recyclable materials and then to process them and then to create new products from those and we need to have much more investment much more quickly in recycling plants and also we need to particularly around plastics to reduce the number of different types of polymers that are allowed to be created in this country and sold and then we quickly move into circular economy model this would have a break on traditional GDP growth because you don't get the same amount of growth from those recyclable materials than you do from virgin materials but without that movement we are going to you know everybody's I haven't actually seen Blue Planet I keep going everybody's seen Blue Planet I've never actually seen it I've just heard about it and read about it but everybody else seems to have seen it the story there around plastics in the ocean I will at some point get around to watching it when I recess and time to do things like that and you know we're seeing the big corporations profit margins are continually growing and you know what does that contribute so we see GDP growth go up we see private debt go up because it's being fuelled people are buying more products those corporations profit margins are increasing and what are they doing with it is it going to increase wage as well yes it is for a few but not for the majority of their workforce support their supply chain in new technology or increasing their wage forces pay packets no is it going to R&D not really not in any significant way only to move to the next model so the top 50 US companies have currently 1.4 trillion dollars or about billion trillion pounds reserves offshore in tax havens so this is money that can't be touched by the US government I don't know what it is for UK but it will be smaller amount but a similar issue here and we've seen all the evidence in some of the evidence in the paradise papers the largest single companies cash reserves are apples and so although I have an iPhone I'm an apple user I'm a foal so it's Parliament that gives us all iPads their cash reserve offshore currently is just short of 200 billion dollars their total cash reserves about 125 billion dollars they won't bring their cash reserves on shore they're not spending their cash reserves and improving their supply chain they're not spending it on for instance data centres a huge energy a huge amount of energy to spend on data centres and the data centres they use and the data they hold use in terms of renewable energy no they're not we're seeing a huge growth I'm not going to get into this but in cryptocurrencies and the biggest problem with cryptocurrencies is the currency mining and the huge amount of energy use the energy use of cryptocurrency the UK is currently about the same as the city of Coventry uses and that's cryptocurrency mining so we're seeing a huge alternative use of of energy and resources not shoring at the expense of our economy so we need different metrics, we need a different model and I'm really glad that although I haven't talked about Positive Money's report Positive Money are bringing forward different macroeconomic solutions to those challenges thank you last but not least, Jonathan Bartley Jonathan Bartley I'd like to think that maybe I am a bit of a bold politician but maybe that's because I'm not elected I just discovered that I was I just found out that I was dragged away by police the other day at a fracking site in Kevin's constituency so that's my name I don't want to repeat a lot of what's been said I very much in Kate's camp we met a few weeks ago and we were travelling through and looking at how we need to create new metaphors, new ideas new images for how we make this transition when I was a child I remember being told that in 30, 40 years time there will be all this technological advance there will be all this wealth creation we'll be able to work fewer hours we'll all have that safety and security we'll get a modern state welfare state will go on developing that there will be the health breakthroughs in the NHS and we'll get the basic healthcare that we needed and of course that wealth has been created that technological advance has happened but what we see instead is growing inequality with wealth flowing to the owners of capital wages stagnating a whole decade a last decade now following the financial catastrophe that collapsed that we saw and we're still recovering from passed a little bit to my A-levels and I started to study A-level economics and I was shown the circular flow of income with the injectors and the withdrawals from the circular flow and we were told this is how it is we were taught this is fact a lot of value and then went to the London School of Economics and I started to study and actually I would realise suddenly actually you know what there are alternative perspectives on this this isn't just fact but we have nevertheless an economy that's based on that A-level economic model which is increasingly tested and increasingly found wanting and then went to work in the House of Commons in the early 1990s and I remember about 1994 I got a letter across my desk from a guy called George Dent at Keel University said I've got this great idea how about we cancel debt in the developing world in the year 2000 let's have a jubilee I nearly fell off my chair laughing I thought this is never going to happen no one's talking about this none of the parties were referencing this was a new idea that no one was talking about six years later the G8 was sitting around saying not can we cancel debt in the open world but which country's debt are we going to cancel such was a huge paradigm shift we can cancel debt we can liberate ourselves from this economic system and we can think in new ways and I'm very excited because we can get that change very very swiftly and very very quickly and that's kind of what I want to talk about what we need to do to liberate ourselves to move towards the kind of ideas that positive money can talk about the group I've been banging on about these things for decades but now I think there are seeing something change people are waking up to the fact it's common sense that we've held this wealth created but we aren't seeing the benefits and meanwhile we are ravaging the planet we are destroying the planet and we cannot go on like this it isn't sustainable I think it's particularly timely seeing what's going on with Carillion at the moment the home is meeting right now Carillion and what's going on there is the product of this economic system this neoliberal system to which we are just this morning the national ordered office came out pointing out that it's going to be something like £200 billion more we're going to pay because of the private finance initiative a few days before we had the assessment of the government's clean growth plan which we now know will not hit the fourth and fifth carbon budgets to which we are signed up to under the Paris agreement we are not on course to do those things we need a complete paradigm shift so the question that we have to ask ourselves how do you do this and positive money in their report are starting to hint at some of the ways we can do it with their proposals around the money but I want to suggest some other ways as well perhaps talk about metaphors I know Kate works with the idea of a garden and I think that's a wonderful metaphor to work with, another one is perhaps to look at the economic pie we don't just need to divide up the economic pie more fairly the pie was frankly passed it's still by day having to stay on we need to bake a new pie with new ingredients and a paradigm shift that we need to be talking about so what are the ideas we need to be thinking about a basic income we need to think about that that promise of the safety net that we were all told we have to stop this pursuit of sanctions and trying to divide society against deserving and undeserving but move beyond that with the growth of technology and use that G word growth the fact that we don't have growth doesn't mean that we don't have technological advance and I want to nail that because we don't have any technological advance without being wedded to that blind images growth so let's use that technological advance share out the world more evenly and let's have that basic income how do we live our lives look at the four-day week for working week Henry Ford made the shift in the six-day week to the five-day week a hundred years ago everyone told him he was crazy now that's common practice I was at Olmsdon Wire which is a company out in the east end a few months ago four-day week through three recessions and it's stood them in one wonderful step because they are investing in their employees they have a great morale within the company the company works together on a cooperative basis and it works so let's think about how we can look at how we can work and why we work let's ask those fundamental questions about who the economy is for that is the most powerful question that we can ask for who is the economy at the certain yet economy let's look at the taxation VAT by Relevio virtually a flat rate of VAT why are we not giving subsidies to those things which are good, which are renewable, which are recyclable recyclable and then disincentivising through increased taxation those that aren't it makes financial sense it could be the revenue neutral it doesn't even have to cost money if you incentivise those things if you really incentivise those things the bad practically speaking those are the big ideas I think we need to challenge very seriously HS2 what a monumental waste of money that is going to put us more work into debt it's going to shave off a few minutes from a line from Birmingham down to London in travel why are we not investing in local transport infrastructure getting southern rail where I live wouldn't it be great to get southern rail working well southern rail let's invest in the local transport infrastructure which will help to develop those local circular economies the national is in the news this morning again they are going to fill a car pile of 40,000 cars under Heathrow let's instead look at how we reduce flying demand with a frequent flight lepid we know that the overwhelming majority of flights are taken by about 15% of the people let's impose that frequent flight lepid let's use that technology so we don't have to be travelling all over the world all the time and reduce demand we can think too about fossil fuels and tracking it is inconceivable that we should be opening up another fossil fuel industry which actually isn't particularly financially viable that will be subsidized more by the tax pay that will pollute our air that will damage the natural world and will further undermine our efforts to meet our climate change commitments under the first agreement and why are we sinking 35 billion pounds into Hinkley a white elephant that will lock us into a deal in 20-30 years to come which is already more expensive than offshore wind it is absolutely absurd it makes us vulnerable to foreign interest it makes us vulnerable in terms of our own national security it is a bad deal we do not need it to grow the consensus but why are we investing all that money into creating so few jobs we should have a decentralized energy system which would hand power back to the communities and give them control over the energy supply again creating those as a resilient local economies so there is so much that we can do both in very tangible specific projects and measures and alternatives making the right choices and there are the big macroeconomic issues about how we transition the economy something that is more sustainable which we also need to do and underpinning all that I think we need to boldly start to talk in a new language and explore the way that we can use new metaphors you know that I remember a question in time just after the financial crisis Conservative this is another part of the political figures that came on and said you know what this is all about, it's not really about the bankers it's about the fact that the last Labour Government overspent and the whole audience cracked up laughing and mocked about Tory MP the next week another Tory MP came on and said the same thing the week after another Tory MP came on and said the same thing and within a year, two years it somehow became the received wisdom that the whole mess that we were in was because the Labour Government had overspent rather than there had been a financial catastrophe and a banking crisis and then we had the metaphor of the credit card which probably falls apart the household debt that we can't afford to maintain any longer and that became common parlance we need to develop alternative metaphors alternative ways of looking at the economy in the world and actually take hold of that discourse and I hope that this report is a very bold step and a bold step towards doing that, thank you very much great, thank you to our five speakers for really giving us the scale of the challenge here I want to open up to questions now I would ask for questions and not long comments I'm going to be reading Cain if I get long comments and I want to ensure a gender balance and we start here thank you so much everyone there hasn't actually been that much discussion of the policy proposals in the reports I don't want to bring the discussion back to that I think that the analysis that the current monetary system is creating excess credit but the wrong things have in financial intermediation is right and we're getting as a prosign for the disability as a result of high levels of debt which I agree do create a growth of dependency but I'm a bit puzzled why there's there's so much time and energy going in for campaigning or taking the power money creation entirely away from banks given that banks had that power money creation and we didn't see the boom bust patterns for several decades before the take off of the capitalism and I'm puzzled why there isn't more discussion of credit with the credit controls or risk weighting capital adequacy ratios which disperse banks from high levels of all trending and so on our control yeah I'm really interested in more unpacking of how we can rather have a revolution to coil the clock without it being a two-plus in small steps and listening to Fran talking about your sovereign money system I'm not sure whether that was 50 billion a year or 50 billion over 50 years either way I wonder whether that is enough obviously there's a whole issue of whether sustainable economic growth is an oxymoron or not arguably you can say we're interested in great growth in efficiency we all know that with Moore's law computers over a period of four years are worth half as much for twice the power and that is a natural negative on GDP and Moore's law or something similar to it is operating in a whole raft of other technologies so again if you stop talking about ending growth in efficiency but offering the metrics what can we do along those lines I'll agree with you maybe we should show more concern for the welfare of the want of the stems women's and picket show that they live longer when there's more equality and FG was saying that one of the hedge fund managers was saying that the other way so I'm not there yes this lady here Hi I'm Paul Jacobson from Biscay County Pay thank you Jonathan for mentioning this because one of the things that's really bothered me over the last 30 years I used to be involved in a campaign to get women's work counted unpaid work counted in the GDP so this issue of GDP and what it means has been quite a slightly myriad of processional for a long time I guess what I'm most concerned about are what we call externalities I've been very much involved with one of the reasons I support this income is because we need to I feel society really needs to support what's known as a net externality which is looking after each other and that's having more than automation I'm actually much more worried about the fact that the growth in jobs has largely been in activities which protect either property or keep other people from getting access to money and it just seems very clear to me that GDP looks at the planet as a kind of infinite growth mechanism and whereas money which is something that humans have invented sorry what's the question I'll get there just to know that money is something that we get that we've invented it so therefore we could have limitless we don't have to constantly keep each other from it so yeah I was just wondering with report I really welcome it I mean how does how do people think about these externalities whether that's in terms of the unpaid work that goes into the economy or whether it's also these items and stuff are using huge amounts of material which we don't really recognise okay I will come back for another round I know there's people with hands up but let me just come back for the panel and we'll do another round Fran do you want to pick up some of those points about the policy proposals I just want to say I don't think it's a surprise that we've just had three long very interesting comments from an audience talking about this topic you're here because you're interested in the hard questions and on a 9am in January on a great day talking about some of the hardest questions I think we face in society right now so I think they for me just speak that it's complex and I think a positive money the way I try to leave the organisation is that we don't claim to have all of the answers but we have some of the questions and that's always a good place to start I think somebody said that once and I thought it was quite good so just to pick up on a few things first I do want to come back to Kevin's point I think that the focus on public debt and balancing books is wrong and I agree with the conversation that basically says that it was the failure to reform the financial crisis which allowed the conversation to morph into that of public spending and government debt and actually we're still there now we still have a financial system which is threatens us to go into another catastrophic crash we've seen Carillion and what's happening there it's an unstable system with huge mountains of debt and just to pick up on a few points that Beth made is an organisation we've shifted away from campaigning for a silver money system because we see it as a complex system change and we've looked at campaigning on some of its component parts so for example criticising current monetary policy saying that 70 billion that was created is a response to Brexit through QE 10 billion of which was buying corporate bonds which actually was quite a lot in fossil fuel companies actually is ridiculous with seven years since the crash economic thinking has moved on and we don't need to be using the same policies we know just boost stock market increase liquidity but do nothing for the actual economic system we've had but I would actually come back to you and say that there are things to look at like risk weighting etc but actually if you look at the instability in the system it is a systemic issue the shadow banking system the repo market all of this can't be fixed by regulation in its current form it actually does need to have a kind of system approach to it which understands with each piece of regulation you're putting forward you might be adding complexity into a system that is inherently unstable and unfair so I just think that there's no straightforward answers and we have to start somewhere and I think understanding that we can have a new conversation around how we measure success in the economy and actually what is money which is more of a philosophical question than anything else then we might start to get somewhere and at least be quite open minded about how we kind of take thinking forward and I think it's important to kind of keep the conversation at its highest level because we don't have the answers yet and we need to kind of bring people in whether their specific focus is basic income or technological innovation rather than think there's some kind of one simple solution so positive money in the rest of the report has tried to focus on bringing back onto the table the conversation that we really do have a problem with GDP growth and like we need to talk about that and it's uncomfortable and we've obviously focused in on the way that the system relies on high levels of debt just to keep itself going and try and open that up so maybe I'll stop there Can I ask Kate if you can pick up some of those questions raised which are a lot about what we do now given that you've been looking at this issue for a long time what are the first steps that Jonathan mentioned some of the policies that we might push for where do you think we should be starting on this? I agree with some of the policies that Jonathan mentioned especially shifting for example in business taxing businesses for hiring people hiring people is a great thing why do we penalise companies for hiring people and yet they get subsidised for using materials like capital depreciation it's completely the wrong way around so we should shift taxes from labour to virgin material use which would as Alex said start building the logic and infrastructure of a circular economy but I want to pick up on that point I think Barbara Jacobson made about the humans invented money in fact we designed money and it was a real revelation for me to think about design of money design of so many of these institutions of the economy I do think of the economy as like a garden it's an organic ever-evolving system we don't control it as Kevin said people are making the economy evolve it's evolving but we can shape it and the institutions we create design it and that's why I think it's great positive money's written as a report design money and when I studied economics for four years at university I was never invited to think about the fact that money was designed and that had consequences but I've got in my pocket six kinds of currency that can be used in this country and they're all designed in different ways see every currency has three design features you want to ask yourself who has the power to create it what character does it have and what can it be used for so here we go gold star if you pee in your potty do your homework practice a piano, eat your greens get a gold star at the end of the week if you get five gold stars you might go to the shop so most kids meet this currency first whether it's a good thing or not any parent in the room knows that can go bad or wrong I offered my daughter a gold star for peeing on the potty she just did six little weeds and said six stars so that was out immediately but then there's the one we all know the Fiverr issued by the state if I put it under my pillow it just remains five pounds but it gets eroded by inflation so the state issues it if it's used to buy goods and services in any retail shop in the UK then there's the one a credit card money that's created by the commercial bank at debt bearing interest and that can drive growth because I need to then earn more money to repay that interest and what can it be used for often issued for mortgages which is creating a bubble then we've got my boots card this is like a frequent flyer card spend more money with us and you can spend even more money with us which changes you and makes you spend more likely in boots and then you buy more things in boots and any company can issue this kind of card now I'm getting down to real stuff Bristol, so here's a Bristol pound anyone from Bristol with a Bristol pound here there we go, they're looking very pleased now Bristol pound you can use this in Bristol in shops that agree to take part the mayor of Bristol agreed to take much of his salary in these you can buy train tickets you can pay your local taxes this is helping distribute in the Bristol economy and then lastly a babysitting circle that I'm part of, we created this it's worth for four hours of babysitting so any kind of currency who creates it, the character it's given and what it can be used for these things shape our behaviour I'm more likely to go out when I can go out for four hours on a card than it cost me 30 quid millies a step out of my door and leave my kids I'm more likely to buy things at boots I'm more likely to overspend if I have a credit card it shapes our behaviour it also shapes our relationships I bet the people in Bristol have stronger relationships with small local shopkeepers because of the Bristol pound it shapes distribution who benefits because the credit card has very different distributional impacts than the Bristol pound but it also shapes growth because when we write into a currency that is bearing interest it drives that growth now I'm not trying to say here which is the right design I love it the positive money of putting out a report advocating a particular design but importantly behind that what it does is make us realise that money is designed and how it's designed shapes so much and if it's designed it means it can be redesigned and this is one of the most exciting economic design questions we face this century we have to take it on economics is incredibly exciting when you realise and not many people can get their heads around monetary design but it's very very complicated and I certainly I'm coming at it from the outside but I think it's a really important story that gets opened up so more of us understand where money comes from how it's designed and that it can be redesigned thank you I'm going to open up again and then I'll come back to you when you raised about Bristol's first phase of traditional society and you said where not that to happen I don't know if they're your words it's sort of his words but it kind of challenged me idea that not much happens in that so there's not a question but how do we subtly change our value system the question is this how do you get the change down so that it's not just the pioneers like us that are moving in this direction the progressives and the young how do we create a movement that persuades the third about the efforts we've made and this group thing that we have to make this change thank you I'll take all of the questions that are remaining I, as a member of general public had the impression that the city of London has an order of influence on public policy and how it's shaped certainly far greater than my views and that's my first question it is the case what can we do about it what's the money did a survey about three years ago asking MPs whether they knew a question about money system and they knew all that got it wrong that was repeated just very recently and the same proportion got it wrong so they've done nothing to improve the knowledge of MPs how can we help great yes primary to France so so to what extent do you think this is achievable in the unilateral unilateral way so I'm just thinking in terms of the fact that as far as climate change is concerned the time isn't on our side the change in the heritage around it but to do that in a really short space of time is very difficult so in terms of capital flight it's going to be difficult to convince people that a steady state economy is one that will provide the greatest possibility that they may desire so does it depend on the first thing about values I'd take it on to say generally by and large across the piece the people who are maybe boomers have the same set of values as millennials all of the recent events where people voted and you look at the age demographic breakdown suggests that they don't so if you look at the he referendum you know people around 70 very high numbers voted to leave and people around 20 very high numbers voted to remain if you look at the last general election the same thing around how people vote conservative voted Labour the same thing you know older people generally voted conservative and younger people generally voted Labour and I'm only here because of that demographic split that values are changing which is a positive thing and I think that the environment people are operating in through their lives shapes that what we struggle with is how those people can then aggregate that to change the environment and that comes to movement and movement politics and I think that I mean you know in the Labour party we're trying to build that sort of movement politics we're trying to become as well as a political party operating here and on local authorities and in structures a social movement on the ground operating in communities which obviously when you're in opposition it's much easier to do than in government so that would be a challenge when we move into government but I think we're driven by a different set of values we're not part of you know I certainly don't feel personally as a member of Labour I'm part of the neoliberal consensus I'm proud to be a Labour co-operative member of parliament that I believe in there's co-operative collective values and how we implement them and how that creates different economic system the Rothschild pioneers didn't start the co-op because they believed in the you know the rights of the industrial owners actually quite the opposite they wanted to create an alternative to them and actually to own the means of production themselves and those are the values that we need to do we need to reset that obviously in the context we're operating in and we need to involve people in that and we need to grow that out but we're I'm just thinking about what happened last year in terms of the election do you think that shifts in terms of where the Labour party stands being very critical of the neoliberal model economic model has actually attracted a lot of people because that's helped the movement it's certainly a big push I think it has I mean what we need to do is move from there to make it less about I did a talk this weekend about not wanting to create a meme based socialism that was about how people use social media changing social media because only old people use Facebook you know and can use Snapchat and Instagram so but there is there is that about we need to move beyond just you know sort of sloganeering and simplistic being because we can all go on about on and on about neoliberals and you know the access to capitalism without explaining what we mean or the alternatives are and we need to move on from that and I think that we're beginning to do that I'm going to address the other question here about the money system in MPs problem being an MP I don't think peers have got the same problem is that every day you're bombarded with hundreds of people's problems they have to try and resolve there and then and you're constantly with obviously the help of your staff firefighting all these issues you know like I said I didn't watch Blue Planet the reason I didn't watch Blue Planet is that I didn't want to watch Blue Planet if I wasn't an MP I'd have watched it so I haven't got time to watch it because I'm glued to all these issues that people have that I'm trying to resolve all the time or you know write something or think about you know what's the next thing I've got to do next week what I'm going to speak on the House Commons or whatever so people haven't you know I can't tell you the last time I read a book at the beginning to the end because you just haven't got time to do that sort of thing MPs that do I'd like to know how they do it so how do you know I've got a basic understanding of how the monetary system works and macroeconomics and there are MPs that clearly do and there are lots of MPs that don't and that's not the background they came from and that's fair enough to be a wide set of people here in Parliament but how do we do it through engaging with organisations like Positive Money when I came in actually I suggested and there's a person I mean with is here that we try and have a basic macroeconomic course for MPs and there was a bit of email correspondence about trying to do that, trying to get for new MPs trying to get that going and then obviously with the day to day that dropped and maybe you know when we get to recess I'll try and pick that up again because I think MPs would go and do it but it's about finding the time and the way that you can comprehend it Thank you Kevin, do you want to pick up some of those points? Yes, I'd love to The Gentleman from Norway I love her to by the way if you could put a good word in your government about her story and that would be wonderful but in terms of the whole value system to me it's a choice some people want to be part of the rat race some people don't and I don't make a judgement either way I think you decide not to be in the process to an affordable home and a decent wage one thing that did resonate with me back in my teens particularly badly I think with my fellow classmates about in a physics a mock GCSE or all of all this was then our physics teacher came into the room and he wiped the blackboard down and he went very quiet and he just wrote across it the world does not owe you a living that is part of my philosophy that we need to provide for ourselves maybe in a future world of automation before we start talking about maybe that may be different for me given that I think you should just live what life you choose and certainly affordability comes back to what I was saying earlier about land value capture making sure that housing at least is affordable which is a big issue certainly in the UK to the Paul's point how we can make this movement we've got to somehow democratise it if we can just use banks as an analogy we've got a debate this afternoon on RBS, GRG which is a massive scandal and ensures the power of the banks I am no fan of the banks at all but this lady asked the question in the previous round about banks if banks didn't exist people would borrow money off each other that's how it worked they were an enabler now banks are too big that's how we do that is a good question which is legislation allowing effectively trying to release that stranglehold that banks have and insurance companies have over people's finances to try and democratise it I would say iPhone, cryptocurrency, Facebook all those things were not invented by governments they would never exist if governments tried to invent them I would try and I would argue but we've got to democratise those things so they're working to benefit of all people rather than just a few people that's where regulation comes in in terms of the City of London point I agree, I think as politicians we spend too much time talking to big business very powerful financial institutions we should be talking to small business offices background I think they've got just as much voice in how we structure our economy and the decisions we make in terms of knowledge of MPs maybe we picked the wrong MPs I don't know, I can't speak for Alex but there are a lot of clever people in here with a lot of experience with finances or legal or medicine or military or whatever so there are some people in here that do understand money how can we help other things like this are important to clearly but back to Alex's point I've been in business for 25 years before this in business as anyone knows is in business in this room you are extremely hard it's 24-7 occupation I've never worked so hard in my life since I became an MP it is extremely, extremely busy although I didn't manage to catch Blue Planet to attend I'd like to know part of my role but that's about the people pressure I've got to say that really is a massive work of course for a lot of people not just in terms of my boss of trying to help in Parliament but also in terms of politicians know that if people are exercising about something they will change so whether it's the board room table or the cabinet table if people are annoyed about something or concerned about something politicians do react so I think politicians recharging people aren't it's totally wrong sustainable growth I don't think growth and sustainability are incompatible or mutually exclusive not at all I think what business does business if I can paraphrase Churchill's quote about the Americans business will always do the right thing but only after it tries all the alternatives it's like what we find a way to everything so what you're going to do regulate very carefully to make it watertight so business does the right things I'm a business person I'm not criticising business people not at all they do a wonderful job but if you set the conditions properly that the outcomes you want to see I do believe business will respond to it and I don't think it's GDP growth or economic growth or sustainability I think the two things are compatible Thank you When I was working in the House of Commons in the early 90s one of my heroes was Tony Bennett and when he retired he said I'm leaving the House of Commons to concentrate on politics and it was his conviction after 50 years at the Cold Base many years of playing the Shutties that it is movements that change things and you know in Do What Yes that old series you see that the civil service could afford three or four options but there's only one viable option and movements do set the agenda and do respond but where I would disagree with Kevin on this point is that idea that the world does not owe you a living friends we owe each other a living we all owe each other a living and I cannot go to that 12 year old child that I met in Calais a refugee fleeing from Afghanistan on a company of mine and tell him that I don't owe him a living we have a collective responsibility to him and actually this is absolutely the fundamental issue because as long as we have a system that is against one another that tells us that we do not owe each other a living that makes us compete we blame the migrant or the refugee for what are fundamental failings in the economic system that has a policy of dividing rule we will not get that movement and so I think we need to take on that very very hard though it's a really good life and that's why it's not for me it's not for you it's for absolutely every one of us together and we are in this together we should never look after the people that have acted themselves would never say that it's not a personal prison case so how do we bring about that change I think the change is happening in communities up and down the country you can look at to my own area of land you can look at Brixton Energy and the local project there which puts solar panels on the top of housing in an area of low interest rates you crowd fund it from the local community you get a return of about 5% on your investment it creates clean energy the profits go back into insulating and protecting your property and the community gets a dividend I can point to the library of things which is a wonderful sharing project where a lot of businesses are giving products to this library of things mohas, camping equipment whatever it might be imagine a library of things on every street in this country it would be absolutely revolutionary and as we've seen with the opposition to Donald Trump in America and the renewable energy revolution it is happening often in spite of governments certainly in this country it's having spite of the government a lot of offshore wind not because the government has invested massively in offshore wind but because it makes financial sense and the price is coming up so it will be movement to change things and that's what gives me the hope at the same time we need to identify the barriers to stopping that change happening if you've got a final couple of sentences to sum up to give us a sense of quite like the positive tone that Jonathan's saying about where we are and the things that are happening we're obviously much further down the road in terms of growth dependency we need to be further down the road in terms of growth dependency than we are right now but what is it that's giving you hope right now where should we be focusing and Fran if you want to come in on that as well for the last minute okay, just to go back to Jen, Arctic University is that way? very cool and you were talking about can we have a thriving economy that isn't growing and I want to connect it to Kevin's statistics which were really important that growth globally has massively reduced poverty child mortality, hunger yes, I absolutely agree it's why I've spent a decade of my career working with Oxfam and the UN because I'm passionate about seeing growing economies in the world's lowest income economies growth is a wonderful healthy phase of life but I would say at standing back and asking where are we in the global story Ethiopia, Cambodia they're growing 7-10% a year and if that money is channeled wisely it can massively improve quality of life but in nature, nothing tries to grow forever if any biologist, epidemiologist, ecologist will know that nature's growth curve growth is a wonderful healthy phase but then things grow up and they mature and they come to thrive not on a low level of wellbeing but at a high level of wellbeing that's our question of how do we transfer from saying thinking progress is growth to progress is thriving whether or not the value of goods and services is being sold is rising or not and I'll end with a quote from Danella Meadows who if she was still alive she'd be really tickled to know that she was being quoted here in the British Parliament so she said in the 1970s this is not a new debate she said growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented by any culture we've got to have and enough and when there are calls for more growth she said you should always ask and we should all ask this growth of what and why and for whom and who pays the cost and how long can it last and what's the cost of the planet and how much is enough and so I think every question about every debate in this house about growth should be enriched by those questions because when we start to ask those questions we start to see whether indeed the growth that we are advocating is for people who need it for the investments that we need towards the thriving world we want I'm very quickly going to pick up on those questions but first I just want to disagree with Kevin I tried to make out in my speech that growth and sustainability are incompatible and if we carry on down this road we will extinct ourselves as a species in the coming decades or millennia I think secondly the city of London question I think absolutely that's true it has a much bigger power over Westminster than we might realise and that's why we try and scrutinise the Bank of England because it's a public institution that sits in the city of London and it is it was founded and its mission is to serve society but as we know it's continually playing the balance between the financial markets and the city of London and the UK as a whole and I think that's really important thirdly your point about can a country or the UK do this unilaterally I think the UK would be very difficult to do it any country that wanted to do a sovereign money system would also need to there's quite a lot of other things that would need to happen such as capital controls you know we've got one of the biggest financial centres in the world so could we shift there first it's unlikely and you know Mark Carney is a pretty conservative thinker when it comes to monetary things in the economy but we think that's why it's important to have a radical conversation here in London and it actually does boost countries like Iceland, Denmark where it would be possible I think to do it unilaterally to push forward the debate and finally I just want to end on the conversation around values shifting and movement building because it is all connected and I don't believe that we'll be able to shift our economy into one that works for society without shifting our value system and without building a social movement that is connected to politics and two things that happen in this building and I think this is also linked to picking up on what Kate said the fact that we have for so long been in this scarcity narrative nothing's enough, we're not enough we don't have enough money and actually what we need to do in terms of our value shift and movement building I think is realise that there are an infinite amount of the things that we really need there's actually an infinite amount of leadership we could have in this country I think there's a real lack of leadership currently and we need more there's also an infinite amount of compassion that we could have for each other and other people I think there's a in the western society there is a lack of compassion and we can have an infinite amount if we want to and there's an infinite amount of democracy and empowering people to step forward and to join in debates such as these whether it's taking official positions of power or simply meaning that you ensure all your family go out to vote or whatever there is an infinite amount of democracy that we can have if we empower each other and we empower people