Petition · past parliament

Introduce an unconditional, Universal Basic Income

Closed 2,894 signatures

What the petition asks

Working people face unemployment or reduced hours/wages as their jobs are increasingly taken by machines, yet political austerity focusses on reducing welfare.
Pay a Basic Income to every citizen to reduce welfare bureaucracy, increase quality of life, and maintain consumer spending in the economy.
Checkout staff, bank tellers, hospital porters, factory workers, receptionists and warehouse workers are already being displaced by technology. They are soon to be followed by lorry drivers, backroom legal teams, financial analysts, call centre staff, pharmacists, etc. All this is happening far faster than workers can retrain.

(Read 'The Rise of The Robots' by Martin Ford for more.)

A Universal Basic Income eliminates almost all bureaucratic costs of social welfare yet achieves the same aim.

Timeline

23 Mar 2017 Petition opened for signatures
2 May 2017 Closed to new signatures

Key facts

Signatures 2,894
Status Closed
Opened 23 Mar 2017
Closed 2 May 2017

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Source: the official petition page. Last checked 15 Jul 2026.