If you were a politician, what would be your preferred method of reducing inequality and poverty?  Would you look to plug the gap between wages and food prices by giving more money to charity?  Would you push for a considerable increase in the minimum wage and keep your fingers crossed that not too many jobs would be lost as a result?  Or would you go for something radical – a Citizen’s Income, perhaps, or a shorter working week for all?

This is one of the questions that was debated at A new economic model for Scotland, organised by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) as part of the Gathering, our annual conference for the third sector.

You may perhaps be wondering why charities, volunteering organisations and the like are interested in the economy.  But when the economy failed in 2008, the impact of fewer jobs and lower wages affected many people across Scotland.  As we all know, these are often the people who are found queuing up outside foodbanks, suffering from chronic illness, and falling into rent arrears.  And as welfare reforms hit across the UK, and ever increasing numbers are penalised for not having a job, we – along with other organisations in our sector – wanted to ask how can we make the economy work better?  How can we protect people from future downturns – or even prevent them from happening at all? 

With the economist and journalist Stewart Lansley, author of The Cost of Inequality, and prominent economist and Financial Times journalist John Kay, as well as Katherine Trebeck from Oxfam Scotland and Dr David Erdal from the University of St Andrews – we discussed how to create an economic system that works for the many, not the few.  The problems that rising inequality bring to the economy, the positive benefits of employee ownership, Oxfam’s ‘economic doughnut’ model, and various other issues and options were covered in the three hour session.  Participants then voted on a number of questions which the panel discussed.

Admittedly, with a self-selecting audience, our ‘findings’ (see below) are hardly representative of the sector.  However, what’s interesting is the desire by the sector to engage in these wider economic debates rather than just in more traditional ‘charity’ issues – something that SCVO also saw at our successful joint Alternative Economy event at the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science last November, and that we expect to continue as SCVO and others keep engaging in this area.  As we move towards the Referendum, it is heartening to see the sector take an interest in, and contribute to, the debate around how we can build our economy to make a better Scotland for all.

Dr Jenny Bloomfield is Policy Officer for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, focussing on the economy, the Referendum, and sector finance.  She can be followed on twitter @JennyBloomfield, or contacted by email:  jenny.bloomfield@scvo.org.uk.  To see more about SCVO, please go to www.scvo.org.uk.