Speech delivered at Sands Films Studio event for THE MAN WITH THE PLAN on 12th and 13th April 2025
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00:00So would you please welcome up here, author and academic, epidemiologist, Kate Pickett.
00:14Hi everybody.
00:16Hi.
00:17Yesterday, I went to look at some art.
00:21In York, in people's studios.
00:23So far, so middle class, right?
00:25But in one room, there were glowing canvases of political protest.
00:33Jewel colours, strong faces, all of those old leaders.
00:38And some of those old protest quotes.
00:41And there was one that I'd forgotten.
00:44It was from Marcel Proust.
00:45He's just usually remembered for his little cake.
00:48And his tea.
00:49But he said, we are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.
01:00Oh, that rang true to me.
01:03And it's hard at the moment, isn't it?
01:06It's hard to keep going and keep campaigning.
01:10When you thought through all those 15 years of austerity, if we get a Labour government, it will turn around and things will be better.
01:18And this is hard.
01:20This is hard when they can't even show up wearing their own clothes to talk to us.
01:26This is hard when they won't do the most simple and straightforward things that the evidence suggests that they should do.
01:35Ending the two-child limit.
01:37I'm writing a book at the moment.
01:43I was a little bit worried when I started that the Labour government would come in and it wouldn't be needed anymore.
01:50That all of my statistics with which I campaign and all of the stories with which I hope to compel wouldn't be relevant anymore.
02:00Not true.
02:04We are needed.
02:05Our visions are needed.
02:07Our statistics are needed.
02:08Our stories are needed.
02:11Our NHS, which we just heard from the good doctor, is in crisis, is £37 billion in need of resuscitation.
02:21That's a lot we've got to find to restore our national health service to the best that it can be.
02:30We have four and a half million poor children.
02:35That's a third of our children in the sixth largest economy in the world.
02:43And now we have those cuts to disability.
02:46How cruel, how cruel to attack the most vulnerable, to weigh them down with a weight of expectation of participating in a society in ways that are not possible for them without support.
03:06Material support, material support, but also the support from a government that believes they are worthwhile and worth investing in.
03:18So where are we going to find that money that our NHS needs?
03:23We had a minister tell us that you cannot tax and borrow your way out of the need to reform the state.
03:31Well, yes, you can.
03:34Yes, you can.
03:39There is a magic money tree.
03:44Has anybody got a fiver on them?
03:48Or a tenner?
03:49Or a hundred pound note?
03:51We don't have pound coins anymore, do we?
03:54Do you know how thick it is?
03:55It's a hundredth of a centimetre thick.
04:04If you had ten million of those, they would be as high as a 40-storey building.
04:14There are 20,000 people in this country who have a pile of banknotes as high as a 40-storey building.
04:2420,000 on them.
04:25That's less than 0.04% of the population.
04:30I think we'll have a bit of that.
04:32Yeah!
04:33Yeah?
04:34Yeah?
04:38Even if we just have a little bit of that, 1% of it, or 2% of it,
04:45we'll have 10 to 24 billion pounds every single year.
04:52If we did a few more of those ways in which we could tax wealth,
04:59we could have about 60 billion pounds a year.
05:03Every year.
05:05Year on year.
05:06What would you do with that?
05:08I know what I would do with it.
05:10There's lots of things we could choose to do with it, collectively, sensibly, for good.
05:19But even if we did nothing with it, even if we just threw it away, we would all be better off.
05:28Because we would reduce the inequality that damages health, damages education, damages the environment,
05:38damages our social cohesion.
05:40We would start to pull apart the enemy between us, which is the inequality.
05:48So let's take that wealth, but let's also do something good with it.
05:54Okay?
05:58Some of you shouted out NHS.
06:01Sure, let's fix the NHS.
06:04Lots of us know that we need social care.
06:07Cradle to grave, properly funded.
06:12For children, for the elderly, for those with disabilities, for those in temporary need.
06:21Maybe we'd choose to do something like a universal basic income.
06:26To give everybody a floor, a secure floor to stand on.
06:31You can choose.
06:34I'd do child poverty first, and then I'd do the other things after.
06:40So, we could reduce inequality by taxing wealth.
06:44We could do some good with it.
06:46And we could invest for what economists call the multiplier effect.
06:53Ooh, yeah.
06:55There are some good economists out there, if you look hard.
06:58If you look hard.
06:59If we invest in children as early as possible, we get seven pounds back for every pound we spend.
07:09I said 60 billion a year.
07:12Times that by seven, then, over the long term.
07:16This isn't rocket science.
07:19It's not even really epidemiology, which is my thing.
07:23This is really simple maths.
07:26But it damages greed.
07:28Sure.
07:31Sure.
07:31It damages greed.
07:33And we've been told that greed is good.
07:35But we know that's wrong.
07:37We know that's wrong.
07:39When we reduce inequality, we are all stronger.
07:43When we destroy poverty and raise people, we are all stronger.
07:48When we fund our national health service properly, we are all healthier.
07:54When we care for one another, we are all cared for.
07:58Beveridge was a visionary.
08:01What a shame that his vision came to nothing.
08:05All of you in this room are visionaries.
08:08I'm a visionary too.
08:11So together, let's do it.
08:13I loved that idea of Beveridge 2.0.
08:17Yeah?
08:17Let's take that tech language and make it our own.
08:22Thanks so much for listening.
08:24Go look at some protest art.
08:26Listen to some protest music.
08:29Thanks.
08:29I appreciate it.