Speaker(s): Professor John Kay, Professor Philippe Van Parijs, Dr Malcolm Torry, Polly Toynbee | Discussion of a Basic Income – an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income for every individual (and sometimes called a Citizen’s Income, a Citizen’s Basic Income, or a Universal Basic Income) – is now a mainstream global social policy debate. This event will bring together key figures on different sides of that debate – Professor Philippe Van Parijs from the University of Louvain, and Professor John Kay of the University of Oxford – to debate the motion: ‘This house believes that if the Beveridge Report were being written today then it would have recommended a Basic Income’. Before they speak, Dr Malcolm Torry, a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, and Director of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, will briefly define a Basic Income; and at the end of the debate the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee will offer her reflections on the event and on the wider debate about Basic Income. John Kay (@ProfJohnKay) is an economist whose career has spanned the academic world, business and finance, and public affairs. He has held chairs at the London Business School, the University of Oxford, and LSE, and is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, where he began his academic career in 1970. Philippe Van Parijs (@pvpbrussels) is a special guest professor at the Universities of Louvain and Leuven, a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute and an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford. Malcolm Torry (@Citizensincome) has been Director of the Citizen's Basic Income Trust since 2001 (and was Director before that between 1988 and 1992); he is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Social Policy Department at LSE; and he is General Manager of BIEN, The Basic Income Earth Network. Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) is a columnist for The Guardian. She was formerly BBC social affairs editor, columnist and associate editor of The Independent, co-editor of the Washington Monthly and a reporter and feature writer for The Observer. Enkeleida Tahiraj (@edatahiraj) is Senior Visiting Fellow at LSEE European Institute at LSE, researching rights based social policies and policy innovation. Her current research and teaching involves Universal Basic Income pilot projects. This event follows on from the Citizen's Basic Income Day at LSE, a day of discussions bringing together experts and speakers from pilot projects and experiements around the world.