Episode 18 The Big Questions

Today on The Big Questions, globalisation -

will it make the world a better place for all of us?

APPLAUSE

Good morning! I'm Nicky Campbell, welcome to The Big Questions.

Today we're back at Oasis Academy, MediaCityUK in Salford

to debate one very big question - will globalisation make the world

a better place?

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

Right. In the days of empire, Britain ran a global economy.

Now we are increasingly at the mercy of one that is outside

the control of any nation state or international body.

Globalisation has put the world's biggest multinational corporations

into the driving seat of international trade,

technological progress and worldwide prosperity.

The companies and the people who own shares in them or work

for them may be doing very nicely,

but it's harder to share their huge wealth through tax across

the wider societies where they operate,

or to get them to pay for the costs

they impose on the environment or the benefits they take

from spending by governments

on education, health and infrastructure.

Well, to debate whether globalisation is good for all of us,

we have assembled an array - what an array -

of distinguished economists, pioneering environmentalists,

seasoned writers and commentators

and campaigners for workers' rights,

and against exploiting global poverty.

And you can join in too on Twitter or online by logging onto...

And follow the links to the online discussion.

Lots of encouragement, contributions from our excellent audience

here in Salford, which was once the hub of global trade

in the days of empire.

Will globalisation make the world a better place?

I wonder if we're at a transitional point in human history,

Guy Standing, because of course in the 19th century

the industrial proletariat - oppressed, exploited -

Marxism was a response to that cry of rage, do you think there

are any comparisons, are we at a similar transitional point?

There are comparisons.

I think today we are in the middle point of a global transformation.

The early phase of globalisation,

what you have described as globalisation, began in the 1980s

with what we economics professors call "neoliberalism".

It wasn't called that then.

But it was dominated by an ideology of believing in free markets,

privatisation, commodification and the dismantling of institutions

that stood against the market,

what we call social solidarity institutions.

And that period,

where Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were the instruments

of putting that into force,

gradually gave way to a domination by the big financial corporations,

the Goldman Sachses and the JP Morgan

and so on in Wall Street, and at the same time,

it's not quite correct to say that this

has been out of control by international institutions.

What happened is, the architecture of globalisation changed.

I've worked in Geneva for many years, and

it moved from a point where the World Trade Organisation was

one of the midwives of globalisation to the point where Wipo -

the World Intellectual Property Organization - has gradually

been used to entrench intellectual property rights.

So we've actually moved from that neoliberalism

into a period of what I call rentier capitalism,

where the returns to property ownership are triumphant

over free markets, and in particular,

intellectual property rights have multiplied hugely since 1995,

giving billions and billions of dollars,

euros or pounds to the plutocratic corporations that own

the patents and the copyrights and so on,

and taking things out of the market, so at the moment,

it's a lie to say we have a free-market economy,

but to conclude the point, I think globally...

globalisation has benefited millions and millions of people,

raising their incomes,

but in Western Europe and in Britain in particular,

we have actually seen declining real wages, stagnant real wages...

-OK.

-..and declining living standards.

I want to take it to the last point.

It's so fascinating what you said, and we've got so much to get into,

and there are so many profound implications to all of this.

Linda Yueh, just on that last point of Guy's,

take it to the streets, take it out to our viewers, globalisation,

in what ways have they won - or will win -

and in what ways are they the losers?

I think for people in Britain

there have been benefits from globalisation,

but there are also those who have been left behind by this process.

So globalisation, if you think of it as opening up

to the transmission of ideas, of people,

of resources across national borders, I think there are reasons

to think we have benefited from, say, technology from America.

Well, for instance, take the iPhone, or any smartphone. 20 years ago...

-It's revolutionised the world.

-Exactly.

20 years ago, Nicky, only a fifth of the Western world had access

to a mobile phone, 1% of the developing world.

Today, I would venture a guess everyone here

has some type of mobile phone and device,

so I think in that way, an American product made in China,

or a Finnish product that's been made in Eastern Europe,

I think we have benefited from that,

but that's not to say that everyone has benefited equally,

because globalisation is tied up

with structural change in the economy.

So we've had deindustrialisation,

we've had issues around those who have benefited more

from this process, owners of capital, I would agree with that,

and those who have felt their incomes squeezed and are

working in sectors in which Britain no longer produces as much,

and I think for globalisation and for us to reap the benefits

of globalisation, I think we have to address

those who are left behind.

But not to forget that we in Britain,

especially after Brexit, talk a lot about being global,

being open, because being the world's fifth biggest economy

requires being a stakeholder in this global system

and actually working to improve it.

And just very quickly, in the rest of the world,

thinking about audiences beyond Britain,

a billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990.

We are actually at a historic point,

where one in ten of the people in the world live in extreme poverty,

on less than 1.90 a day,

adjusted for what a dollar buys in that country.

We have actually not been at this point before,

and that has to do with the opening up of the emerging markets,

like China, India, Eastern Europe.

So I think, overall,

we are living through a tremendous period of change,

and I think for all of us in this country,

it is about how we can put in institutions to manage that change

so it can be shared more equitably and have more buy-in in the future.

And Katy Wright from Oxfam, it's lifted people out of poverty

in a way we could not have imagined, more than anything

ever has or will, and that's a tremendous positive of it,

but if I go back to our friend Karl Marx,

who we mentioned earlier on,

he did talk about the spread of capitalism across the globe

in search of new markets, that has absolutely happened,

what he didn't predict was what I've just said,

that so many people would be lifted out of poverty.

How do you see it?

I think that absolutely has to be accepted and recognised

that you need drivers of economic growth if people are going to

lift themselves out of poverty, and as Linda said,

we have seen people being lifted out of poverty.

But there are several things to say.

The first is, you're talking about lifting someone up from

1.90 a day to just over that, and then you say,

"Right, they're out of poverty, job done."

APPLAUSE

A colleague of mine is just back from working with

an Oxfam programme in Myanmar,

so he's talking to four sisters and a cousin

who work in one of Myanmar's export processing zones,

so making garments in the garment industry.

They live in a room,

you can't ignore the smell of sewage outside their tiny room in the city.

They're earning 2.80 a day,

which isn't enough to live on, especially if they get sick.

But they don't get sick leave,

they've nothing to pay for medicines, they work six hours a day

11 days a week, so they give their whole lives for this 2.80 a day,

which is called an opportunity - which it is, in relative sense.

And this isn't an accident,

this is exactly how these industries are designed to work.

-And it's the garments we are happy to buy, isn't it?

-Exactly.

And also, they know how we are living more than ever before,

don't they? Because they see it in the way we communicate now.

Well, absolutely, there is this idea - go to the city,

-get this opportunity...

-And they want those opportunities.

Of course they do, because it's better than nothing,

but there's a fascinating excerpt from the Asian Development Bank -

so an organisation that is supposed to help people get out of poverty,

and it's talking about Cambodia's export processing zones,

and saying, "These jobs are absolutely fitted for women.

"They have the nimble fingers and patience for these kind

"of tasks and they don't strike and disrupt production."

You can imagine that being said about children here

in Manchester 200 years ago, working in the factories,

and this is the explicit policy, and it comes...

Globalisation and opening up, absolutely a good thing,

but when it's married to these kind of policies

that Guy was talking about,

wrapped up in the neoliberalism agenda,

that's when you get...

It's basically a really missed opportunity when it could

have taken a lot more people out of poverty.

I think we should be very, very careful about saying,

"Well, that's just a billion people."

A billion people who can send their children to a better school,

who can plan for the future, who can put money away in case they

get sick when they couldn't have done that before.

I think we have to be very careful about treating people

like statistics, because they're not, they're real people.

I really, really disagree with Guy's numbers, actually.

I think if you look at the data, the official data,

the UK has become much richer in the last 30 years.

We have become about twice as rich as we were, in real terms,

in inflation-adjusted terms,

and that doesn't even account for how much cheaper things are,

because wages and incomes and living standards are both about

how much you earn and what you can buy with that,

and we know that trade is best for people at the bottom.

Trade is profoundly good, it's most good,

for people at the bottom of society,

because it means that better food is available to them

for less money, better clothes are available to them for less money,

and the data is really, really striking.

Come back quickly on that, Guy.

Guy, if you would just let me finish.

People at the bottom are about 70% better off,

or 170% better off than they would be without trade.

People at the top are only about 30% better off

than they would be without trade.

Trade is for the poor, and it's lifting not just the poor

in the developing world up, but the poor in our country up as well.

SCATTERED APPLAUSE

-This could be an interesting discussion.

-Well, I hope so!

I think that most of us here would be in favour of globalisation

in terms of opening up markets,

which has certainly increased the growth rate

of China and India and so on.

I think if you look at the case of Britain,

and across the world, in fact, what's been happening is that

the share of income being created

going to capital has been shooting up,

the share going to labour has been shooting down.

And if you look at the United States, Germany, France,

I've just come from Spain,

average real wages have been stagnant for 30 years.

-That's not true.

-It's a fact.

-Look at the official data,

go onto the ONS website and they will tell you you're wrong.

I assure you. And what has been happening

is an extraordinary phenomenon, is that when

productivity goes up, it used to be the case that average wages went up.

But in numerous countries,

productivity has been going up and real wages have been stagnating.

So we have an income distribution problem...

Why is that happening, then?

We'll get Sam back in a minute, but in a nutshell?

In a nutshell, the returns to property - financial property,

intellectual property and physical property - have been going up,

the tax rates on profits have been going down,

whereas the returns to labour have been going down,

and it is partly to do with the technological revolution

that's taking place, partly to do with labour market flexibility,

which has weakened the bargaining position of people

relying on wages for their earnings.

OK, Sam, do you want to come back in a minute?

But, Rose, I see you were bouncing to come in there.

I'd like to pick up on the two examples of the goods that

are available to us, which is the clothing and the mobile phones.

For example, with the clothing, the downward pressure on wages

is really affecting people in many different countries.

In Myanmar, they're competing particularly with Cambodia

to lower wage costs in order to produce the clothing cheaply,

so you get this race to the bottom, which is a key factor

in globalisation, and as well as having lower labour costs,

you've got tremendous public expenditure on

the infrastructure to support these corporations,

like these special economic zones in Myanmar. I gather there's

a new one coming, even bigger, and it will be public expenditure,

with lucrative contracts to the corporations to build the ports,

the roads, the warehouses, etc.

So you've got the public sector supporting globalisation

but often getting very low wages in return,

and with the mobile phones you have got...

Tends to be scouring the globe for low-cost minerals,

where it can be the case now that the tax incentives

and the other subsidies to the corporations that are

extracting the minerals, they can be not...just not making

a revenue from the exports, but can actually be making a net loss.

And then you've got downward pressure on wages,

terribly, as well.

And huge environmental issues as well.

Linda, this is bad for a lot of people,

but what about the argument that it's better than it was before

and it's better than it otherwise would have been?

I think that's exactly probably the position that

a lot of economists would say -

that the opening up of the global economy...

Just think about the opposite scenario where you had

a world divided by the Iron Curtain,

you had a world where countries looked inward

rather than engaging externally, so I completely agree,

there are huge distributional impact,

especially on wages, in traded sectors,

and I think of course the job isn't done on poverty.

I think that line is quite arbitrary about extreme poverty,

but it is also worth stressing that this kind of progress

has been possible through globalisation and the combination

of many, many other things, including technology,

but that doesn't mean that we should say it's all good or bad.

For every good economic gain,

we have to think about the consequences, the left behind,

the downward wage pressure, the impact on the environment.

All of those things pose a policy challenge as to how

you address that, but we should never think the world today

is not as good as it was in the 1980s,

before the real opening up of many, many economies in the world -

with a couple of exceptions.

I'm not going to say everyone is there, North Korea, for instance,

has not opened up, and that might be an example of a country...

We probably shouldn't spend too much time on it!

LAUGHTER

There are countries that haven't opened up.

David, I will come to you in a second.

But, Tom, I suppose what some people are crying for here is -

what's the word? - compassionate capitalism?

Compassionate globalisation, or is that a contradiction in terms?

Well, I think it's just not really what we should be focused on.

One of the big problems, especially in relation to the Third World,

is this obsession with things like sustainability.

Sustainable development, and the form that often takes

is by various intergovernmental bodies trying to suppress

the things which generate wealth,

which generate new industrial revolutions,

and I think one of the big problems that happens in this debate

is that what gets grouped together as globalisation is seen as

this kind of deterministic, impersonal force,

-whereas a lot of the economic problems...

-Inexorable as well.

Exactly. And a lot of the economic problems we experience,

either in Britain or in countries around the world,

have a lot more to do with what's going on domestically,

and are a matter, whether it's in terms

of agitating for more wages or, in this country,

I think the big issue we need to confront is

reckoning with our flat-lining productivity and low pay.

It just treats all these things as if they are deterministic,

impersonal forces that we have no control over whatsoever.

Both sides of the debate sometimes assume that it's

entirely outside forces which shape this, whereas I think we need to,

particularly post-Brexit,

we've got an opportunity to bring that discussion back home.

So, David, have we taken back control here,

or are we kind of a cork bobbing on the sea?

-Well, a bit of both.

-NICKY LAUGHS

I think globalisation is not a force of nature,

it is a man-made process, lots of man-made processes that have

been going on, and of course, it creates great dilemmas.

The dilemma that we have already talked about,

the fact that it's made everybody richer,

it's made the poor particularly a lot richer in recent years,

with extreme poverty falling to below 10% of the global population.

These are enormous achievements, but it has also,

particularly in the rich world,

changed the atmosphere pretty dramatically.

And the group that has done least well out of globalisation

are people on middle and low incomes in rich countries,

and that is where European and American populism has risen from.

And what has been going on is,

we have moved into a much more intrusive form of globalisation.

We've had different forms of globalisation going back

hundreds of years, as you said right at the beginning,

the British Empire was a form of globalisation.

But if you look back at the 1970s,

we had something called the Gatt rules.

And this was mainly between rich countries,

it was mainly for manufacturing goods, there were lots of

national vetoes to the international rules

-that were laid down.

-General agreements on tariffs and trade.

We then moved to the WTO and it became much more intrusive

-on national sovereignty.

-Yes.

And at the same time, we have the same thing in Europe.

We echoed and reflected a similar process in the European Union.

It became much more intrusive, with the single market,

with enlargement in particular, which, I think, in retrospect,

it turns out to have been an enormous mistake

and is the reason why we are now leaving the European Union,

even though, ironically,

Britain was one of the great promoters of enlargement.

Let me just give you one example of how it has intruded on things

that people thought of as part of their national sacred control.

It's immigration and freedom of movement.

Going back to post-colonial immigration, in the post-war period,

it wasn't popular to begin with but people got used to it,

and in the '80s and '90s, there was a kind of settlement,

a kind of agreement that the political class

reduced the numbers and the population accepted it.

And that is what happened. Numbers came down quite sharply

in the '80s and '90s.

Now, we move to the European immigration,

starting in 2004, we were expecting 15,000 people a year to come,

in fact, about a million and a half people came

over a four or five year period. Many, many more than expected...

And Tony Blair acknowledges his own mistakes.

And people looked to Parliament to say, "We don't like this,

"we're not against immigration, we just don't want it on this scale."

And Parliament was unable to do anything about it,

and that is the dilemma, that we have a much more intrusive form

of globalisation and so much has been taken out of politics.

So much has been depoliticised and handed over to technocrats.

There is a huge elephant in the room here that people have

sort of hinted at, which is technological change.

We are living through the largest technological change

in history since the Industrial Revolution,

and almost nobody is aware of how much it's changing our lives.

One estimate says that nine out of the ten manufacturing jobs

that are destroyed are not destroyed by globalisation or trade,

they are destroyed by technology, by us being able to

roboticise manufacturing, and in fact,

the UK manufactures more than it ever has,

we just do it with far fewer workers.

But the reason that's so important is because in our history

we have misinterpreted change like this and we have tried to stop it

and thrown up tariffs, and exactly what that did was hurt the poor.

And at the end of the 19th century,

that's what drove the demand for communism,

for fascism and for all of the things that we are facing at

the moment that we really, really don't want to come back.

-We have...

-We have to recognise it's technology

driving this change and that is inexorable,

that's something we can't stop.

I want to hear from the audience,

then we're going to talk about the cultural challenges,

which you've led us onto nicely,

talking about the immigration over the years.

Does anybody want to say something? You wanted to say something about...

Brief comments about globalisation, what it means to you. Yes.

Well, I speak as a trade unionist,

and rather than the corporate argument, I am more concerned

about the wellbeing of the workforce internationally.

I'm pretty active within the TUC,

and the British TUC have been very effective in working with

the ILO and addressing the exploitation of labour,

even the exploitation of the environment

right throughout the world.

And you mentioned earlier, Nicky,

you quoted Marx, I think Marx is right in many ways,

stand up for all, all for one and all for all,

I think we should do that.

This argument is now an international argument.

We have seen even in our own country, zero-hour contracts,

the exploitation,

complete lack of health and safety and the very basics that we take...

I just want to move on, has globalisation made that worse?

Is it exacerbating all those problems?

I think globalisation, having exploited even

the indigenous peoples in the countries like South America...

Anyone else? Just a quick...

We'll go for you first, then I'll come to you later on. Quick point.

Yes, the downside of globalisation has to be

multinational corporations.

The downside of this, they are, as the gentleman said,

they are exploiting the labour, child labourers,

the people who are losing in globalisation.

In terms of multicultural companies,

those people who are actually making the nice leather Nike shoes,

pair of shoes.

And these people are really losing,

and if you see that Nike is the winner, the consumer also is

the winner of the globalisation, but those people in the very bottom...

Yeah, because of these corporations, and we will address this,

because they are incredibly...

I mean, they're more powerful than many countries.

-Can I...?

-I want to move it on if I may, Guy.

Because we want to talk about the cultural issues...

I just wanted to make a point about the technological revolution.

-We...

-We've past that one?

I tell you what, we might come back to it when we talk about

solutions in the future, which is going to be our last section.

-Keep that thought, if you would.

-I'll keep it.

So, yeah, Maya, we haven't heard from you yet.

Let's talk about those cultural challenges,

the globalisation of people, if you like.

People going around the world through history

has made the world go round, hasn't it?

But there are people in this country,

and David was speaking about it,

who have seen rapid change in front of their eyes,

and they have also been sneered at

by the liberal intelligentsia as racists.

I think that's a bit of a crude analysis

of what's actually happened.

I think the whole immigration debate needs to be put in

a broader context in which migrants have been consistently scapegoated.

We've seen migrants blamed for low pay,

crumbling public services, and what's actually going on,

all the evidence shows, from the LSE to the OECD,

that migrants aren't a significant factor in low pay and that

it's underinvestment in our public services

that's leading them to collapse.

So I think that there are a number of things going on with

people's cultural anxiety, I think that is a real thing,

I'm not denying that it is, and we need to look at

the other factors alongside immigration.

But just to talk about immigration first,

I think the whole immigration debate needs to be recognised.

Zubaida Haque from the Runnymede Trust has talked about this -

that anti-immigration sentiment is not always correlating with

the numbers of immigrants in the country.

So if you go back to 1978, you will see that when net immigration

was zero, 70% of people in Britain said that they felt their culture

was being swamped by migrants.

So what that tells us is,

we need to be recognising that anti-immigration sentiment

is very deeply entrenched in this country,

-and we need to be addressing...

-Well, is it?

Because we have had a lot of attitudinal change

on many social issues since 1978

which goes against that particular tide.

So, can you compare like with like?

Well, I think that what we can look at is the fact that there

has consistently been a hostile environment to migrants.

If you look at government policy from the 1960s, there was

a concerted effort to keep migrants of colour out of this country.

So what I'm saying is not that we should be ignoring

people's concerns, often deeply legitimate concerns,

but we should be recognising that instead of just

calling people racist, we should be addressing why there is prejudice.

That's not to say that everyone who is anti-immigration is racist,

but it is to recognise that there is an element of racism

and prejudice within that anti-migrant feeling,

and I think that we need to be addressing that,

trying to break down difference as opposed to reinforcing it,

because people all over the world have far more in common

than a lot of this discourse would have us believe.

Douglas, you've written about the cultural challenges,

what would you say to Maya?

I entirely disagree.

I think you would be hard pushed to find a single country in

the world that has been as tolerant

and as welcoming of migration as this one.

I cannot think of one anywhere in the world.

I've travelled widely, not just in our continent but across the world,

and I can assure you that if the numbers that came into

this country over the post-war period

up until now had gone into any other country in the world

that we would be seeing a very different response.

And I think this is a knee-jerk assault on the British people

which is continuing and should stop.

We were talking earlier about some of the economic implications.

The economic implications of globalisation include

the possibility that people born in this country, er, the same time

as somebody in this country has a child,

they are competing with dozens of other children around the world

to get to the lifestyle and benefits that people across the world

would dream of and which people in this country think

is their birthright, and that's changing.

And that's going to change across all sorts of parts

of the developed world, and one of the things that makes that change

far, far more painful is the idea that it will happen

simultaneously with an assault on their identity,

because people can potentially take the stagnation of wages,

they can potentially take living standards questions,

but if the same time you say, "Oh, and by the way,

"maybe we don't always say you're racists, but we sort of imply it,"

then I think you're going to build up a lot of problems for the future.

And by the way, very quickly, on your 1970s point, one of the things

about migration is, it takes a long time for that effect to happen.

If you look at the opinion polls on migration in this country

that followed the influx after the Blair government,

it took time for people's attitudes to harden on migration,

precisely because the impact of that migration takes time to happen.

So as well as misrepresenting the facts,

I think you just have to be extremely careful not to say

this country, which as I say is the most tolerant in the world,

is in fact the most bigoted,

because if you travel anywhere around the world

you will see a very different picture.

I would just like... I think Douglas makes a very important point there.

This point about tolerance, as far as I'm concerned,

is part of the problem.

For decades, people have been told to put up with people

and there's never been a concerted explanation to demystify difference.

So people have been told, "Put up with that person

"living down the street,

"they're different, they've come from a different country,

"maybe they cook a different cuisine..."

But can I ask you something,

because this comes to the heart of what

so many people are debating at the moment, and it's actually at

the heart of Douglas' book,

and we'll get his response to it in a moment.

What if they have a fundamentally different

set of values, social values? Because we have come through, well,

it's the 500th anniversary of the Reformation this year,

we've had that, we've had the Enlightenment,

the Age of Reason, it's been a long road to where we are today

for our, broadly speaking, liberal values.

What if people are inimical to those?

So firstly, we need to look at the fact that the history

of Britain is one of people coming in and out of the country.

So this idea that values exist in this kind of

hermetically sealed unit of the nation state

quite clearly isn't true.

If you look at David Olusoga's Black Britain,

you see that over 2,000 years

people have been coming in and out of

this country contributing ideas and to social change,

and what I would like to be answered on this question of social values -

what are the social values,

what are the social values we feel are at risk because of migration?

Let's pinpoint them, particularly because this is consistently

-talked about on the right and it's never quite clear.

-I can do.

Firstly, on your point about the constant movement, actually,

the movement into these islands in particular

has been really minimal over...

What was the biggest event of the last millennium,

the Norman Conquest?

About a 5% population shift as a cause of the Norman Conquest.

So this idea that the movement has been perennial...

Also, the movement that you're talking about most of

the time is movement from France, with the Huguenots, for instance,

Protestant French people,

or movement from Ireland into what we now call mainland Britain.

That is not the same as somebody from Eritrea or Ghana

or Myanmar moving in to live in Salford,

it's a totally different movement and you should admit that.

So what's so different about people from Eritrea and Myanmar?

-My God...

-Tell me specifically.

-You can't have gone anywhere.

-Specifically.

-You can't have gone anywhere if

you honestly have to ask that question.

-It is a simple statement...

-Well, answer it for our benefit.

It is a simple statement of the obvious that countries

-and cultures have differences, it doesn't mean...

-What cultures?

What are the cultural specificities?

OK, I'll give you like a history lesson.

-This country...

-I don't need to be patronised.

..has throughout most of its history

been a, for instance, Christian country,

it has been... I'm not a practising Christian myself,

but it's been historically a Christian country,

particularly a Protestant Christian country.

-I mean, there's Christians in...

-If I may just finish.

You see, you asked me to define something and then I try,

-and then you talk.

-You're being very rude, Douglas.

I feel like you're being very rude.

In this country,

the institutions that epitomised our country were

an established monarchy, for instance,

the establishment of Parliament,

the establishment of the judiciary and of the law courts,

the establishment of the great educational institutions,

I could go on and on.

Now, you see, one of the problems is, whenever people say,

"What is this thing that you call Britain?" We have an identity.

It's forever being put on a psychiatrist's couch now

and being deconstructed,

but we have an identity just as other people have an identity.

We don't have to war or hate each other,

but we should recognise it exists.

OK, Maya, I will come back to you, just hold fire just a second.

Let's all... OK, Guy.

I just want to put in a stylised fact.

We actually, in this country,

do not have a very high percentage of migrants.

It's actually slightly less than the European average.

I happen to be a migrant who lives in Europe

and works in Europe, and I don't share your values,

I don't share your identity, I share many of the identities and values

of people with whom I live in Europe.

And I think this is complete nonsense, if I may say so,

because I think we're no more tolerant or less tolerant.

Some people are tolerant in this country,

we've absorbed many groups over the years,

but so have many other countries, and it's great. It's great.

-DAVID:

-Well, no, it isn't great...

-David.

-We now have a populist reaction against...

"It isn't great", you said.

No, it isn't. But you're also wrong, we're close to the top

in terms of numbers over the last 20 years or so.

-We're not.

-We are.

-13%.

-No, it's more than that now.

-It's not.

But anyway, we have had a very big change,

the immigrant and minority population in Britain was about

four million in the '90s, it is now closer to 11 million.

And in many places, this has led to a great change.

But at the same time, people in all places, at all times,

are hostile to large-scale immigration,

we just have to be realistic.

People prefer similarity and familiarity and stability

in their lives, and that's just a fact of life.

But at the same time that the numbers have been going up

and the anxiety and the wariness about it has been going up,

racial hostility, racist attitudes have been going down.

I've just written a book about the value divides in British society.

You look at the British social attitude surveys, on all the...

That's what I hinted at earlier on, our social attitudes have changed.

Absolutely. A huge liberalisation, a great liberalisation

has gone on over sexuality, over gender, and over race too.

And I think there's something else we have to remember.

I mean, we have an absolutely in-your-face globalisation.

It's one thing if your factory closes and moves to China

or Myanmar, that's one thing,

but when that happens, and then a whole different population from you

is imported in your country to compete with you in your own place,

that's a very, very big difference.

If I may, let me pick you up on something, I just want to

wind it back to something you said that about the fact

that we've had a huge liberalisation process in this country.

Would you say in Europe we have the world gold standard of human rights?

-Would we say we are the leaders...

-Well, we started first.

I mean, our antidiscrimination rules, which we drew partly from

America in the mid-'60s,

they set the tone for much of what was happening.

Maya, how do we lead the rest of the world,

and bring them to our gold standard, our more...

provocative here, our more advanced human rights?

I don't agree with this idea that we're bringing the rest of the world

-and we were leading, if you look at the history...

-Are we leading?

No, if you look at the history of the British Empire,

-it's a very bloody history.

-I'm talking about now.

But now, I think that...

In terms of LGBT, in terms of women...

I think that racial attitudes actually, if you look at the British

social attitudes survey, there's increasing people who say

they are intolerant and don't like people of different races.

That's actually increasing.

There has been an upward blip in a long downward trend.

An upward blip because the change has been so radical around it.

We can't ignore that,

and to come back to Douglas's point originally,

we need to probe more, this idea that British society,

he listed the monarchy, Parliament,

that it's somehow under threat

from people from Eritrea, Ghana and Myanmar.

That's not clear to me how that's the case.

You've listed these institutions, but you haven't

explained exactly what it is that is under threat from these people.

Let's go back to Douglas, because he has to answer that.

APPLAUSE

He's had a direct challenge there.

Then, Sam, I'm going to come to you and Linda...

I'm going to go Linda first, then Sam,

but, Douglas, answer that direct challenge from Maya.

You can do it on all sorts of things - historic attitudes,

or you can do it on, for instance, current social attitudes,

which I'll throw out as one example.

I'll take an example that Nicky just cited of tolerance.

I think we agree in Britain that we're a tolerant country.

We're meant to be tolerant, we try to be a tolerant country and so on.

Polling recently showed that the more immigration you have,

the less tolerance you have on certain issues,

not because we the British people have become intolerant,

but because people come with views of their own.

Let me give you a quick example.

A poll carried out two years ago by YouGov,

asked people their opinions on homosexuality,

morally acceptable, or morally not acceptable?

Across the country as a whole, about 14% of the British people

said homosexuality was not morally acceptable.

In London, it was double that. Why would that be?

Is it because London, the capital city, is just

a particular home of homophobia, or might it be, as I would suggest,

because people come into the country with attitudes of their own.

You may deprecate that, and I deprecate that,

but we should at least acknowledge it - you're trying to cover it over.

No, I think that actually, this poll... There's another poll

which shows actually, it asks about attitudes towards homosexuality and

same sex marriage and you actually find, apart from Scotland,

in one of the questions, London has better attitudes towards

homosexuality than the rest of the country.

But you know, Maya, they could be evangelical Christians,

there could be certain Muslim communities,

you know that attitudes are harder on that, that's...

Yes, but the point is that Douglas is citing this poll,

but there's counter evidence to that.

I just want to make a broader point, that, yes, there are some

attitudes that I don't agree with, such as homophobia.

I think that we should be challenging those.

If you go back to the late 1980s,

even Margaret Thatcher was saying that children were being taught

traditional moral values, and were also being

taught that they had "an inalienable right to be gay",

and that led to Section 28.

-The point is, social attitudes do change.

-We've moved on.

Wait a minute, OK.

People will make up their own minds about what they're hearing in that

particular interesting exchange, and, Sam, I've got you in mind.

I'll move it over here as well. I'm trying my best.

Linda, what about the attitudes, human rights,

social attitudes across the world?

Are we heading... Is it linear?

Are we all heading in the same direction, do you think?

I think for a time

we thought we were heading towards a similar direction.

If you look at the UN Declaration of Human Rights,

I think there was quite a move, especially as emerging markets

integrated, to move into a greater tolerant set of attitudes and

values, to make sure human rights are respected around the world.

But, of course,

I think there are going to be issues around how people adjust to change.

I've seen it in America, I am both British and American.

And America has taken 200 year history very, very...

It is a country with a lot of immigrants that founded the nation.

But they all seem to tick the same box, don't they, in America?

Is it different? Because that's multiculturalism, people argue.

Everyone has their own culture,

but they have an overarching one which they all buy into.

But the downside, the negative of multiculturalism,

as some people would have it, is people coming here

and then building fortresses around their own culture.

There's a difference, isn't there?

There is, we hear "the melting pot of America" quite a lot,

so the question is, when you go into the melting pot,

do you melt into the collective, or do you retain...

-Multiple identity is possible.

-It is.

I think that's probably why I raised that because I think it

actually takes... Because America 200 years ago,

was founded through migration from Britain,

you have a long period of adjustment with a lot of ups and downs,

and I am not suggesting at all that America has this solved,

because we see the problems, but we can also see,

it has already been mentioned, the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

I think there have been steps forward, and steps back, into

how you can both be a tolerant society,

and have people believe in something called the American dream,

for lack of a better way of describing it.

We get this woolly thing here, "British values",

nobody quite knows what that is.

This debate is important because, like I said, it does take time.

I use America as an example because it is a nation which had to grapple

with this, from both integrating slaves,

and through then the early 20th century,

the migration of Chinese, the later migration of Vietnamese refugees,

it has had a lot of history in terms of trying to, as I say,

both assimilate, but allow people to retain their cultural identities.

There is no easy answer here,

but the most important thing is to have a dialogue and to make

sure that what the politicians are doing in terms of institutions

is bringing people along, and I see this in Europe as well.

It is a different movement at the moment,

but the European project is moving towards more political integration,

and the question we hear there a lot is the democratic deficit,

have they brought the people along into this new European identity?

I think, to me, that's why it is great we are having this debate.

Good. I promised to come to Sam, and I will be over there with Tom,

and we want to hear from the audience.

Any thoughts on migration from the audience very quickly?

-Sam, you have been giving me...

-The reason I am so wound up...

I'll come to you in a minute,

but I've got to go to Sam because Sam has been giving me daggers.

Don't worry, sir, I will be with you.

The thing that is so important to note here is that the debate we are

having is not one that reflects what migration actually looks like now.

The waves of migration Douglas was talking about are over.

We do not have large-scale immigration from any Muslim

country into the UK.

All migrants who come to Britain from outside the EU

are either on high-skilled visas, or they are students.

There is virtually no low-skilled immigration into the UK.

-Except from the European Union.

-So, when we talk about the EU,

which is where the unskilled labour comes from,

about half of that comes from Eastern Europe,

half of that comes from Western Europe,

most of the countries like Spain and Italy and Portugal and so on.

That's the debate that we should be having right now.

That's the kind of migration we can influence now.

The concerns Douglas is talking about, we should be talking about,

but that does not reflect what migration is about at the moment.

I think that's where David's discussion is much more relevant.

What's really important is to note that migrants from Europe

are extremely good in terms of paying money into the state

and not costing a lot to the state.

They subsidise the rest of us.

Borrowing is lower, taxes are lower...

Only the West European ones, Sam,

not the East and central European ones, that is more or less neutral.

The French and German bankers do subsidise, the others don't.

No, that's not the case.

Look at the famous Christian Dustmann paper...

Don't get me onto the famous Christian Dustmann paper!

Don't get me onto that! Carry on.

The reason that they do that is not because they are magic,

and the reason that you don't see this huge drag coming in

is because they're young.

They're not a burden on the pension system, or on the health system.

That's what is doing it.

Those people are like a blood transfusion to the economy,

-and they are keeping the rest of our taxes low.

-OK, sir, I am so sorry.

We will have Tom in a second.

Look at the... Let's return to the global impact of globalisation,

and I think what's happened is that it has polarised the world.

We have been divided into rich and poor,

and that is not just about money, but human resource.

For example, if you look at...

We were just listening to American experience.

America is the biggest culprit.

It actually sucks the talent from across the world.

In the process, it leaves the poorer nation poorer.

But if people want to go there...

Well, I mean, as individuals, you'll always like to go

to where there are opportunities, where individuals are better.

Yes.

I mean, I migrated from India.

In the process, India lost a doctor and Britain gained a doctor.

So the inequality is that we now have seven doctors

for 10,000 people in India,

and we have 27 or 23 doctors in the States for 10,000 people.

So this kind of inequality is the real problem.

You can't just look at globalisation as an issue for Britain,

and tolerance or intolerance, but really,

there are people out there, more than one billion,

-who are really destitute and are losing out.

-A very good point.

OK, Tom. Tom, if I may.

I want to move on and you will all get a chance on this,

I promise, but it is about how we deal with this challenge,

the continuing opportunities of globalisation.

It's capitalism in crisis.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that it is...

I think it is in crisis at the moment insofar as I think it's

a decaying capitalism which is propped up by the state,

effectively, whether it's through low interest rates,

things that Sam was talking about earlier,

dis-incentivise research and development.

I think one of the big problems is we have a zombie economy,

which effectively is incapable of generating the kind of

transformative change and the new technologies

that we have been talking about.

I think that, post-Brexit, the thing we have really got to look at

is the way in which we generate that at home.

So there's a lot of focus on trade deals,

and there's a lot of focus on whether it's with the EU,

or whether it's with other countries internationally,

and how we can make trade as easy as possible.

But if you haven't got anything to sell, if you haven't got

thriving viable industries, that doesn't get you very far.

The thing I disagree with Sam on is I don't think the private sector

is capable of generating the kind of research and development we need.

I think, not only is it hampered in so many ways, but I think it

has become incredibly risk averse as a consequence of that.

I think we need to take away the measures which are propping up

this zombie economy,

but we also need to put loads and loads of money,

I think we need to double and then double again the 0.5% of GDP that

goes into research and development to fund those new industries.

I think we have got a fantastic opportunity at the moment

insofar as there's so much that within the European Union actually

avoided these kinds of innovations,

the precautionary principle which is enshrined within EU regulations.

So we're not going to be in that previous phase, "a cork

bobbing on a rough sea", we're going to be able to navigate this?

I think so, and it's a case of looking at this, not as a question

of what are these outside forces that we are subject to?

There's a lot that we can tackle at home,

and I think that's what we really need to focus on.

On one side you have people saying,

whether it's Donald Trump talking about China as the reason

that manufacturing has hollowed out in the US is ridiculous, but

at the same time suggesting that our economic future is entirely reliant

on our agreement with the rest of the world,

misses the opportunity we have at home to really boost productivity

and get a new Industrial Revolution of the ground.

OK, in how to deal with this, then,

Katy, I knew it had to start somewhere.

The top 100 richest entities in the world,

69 are corporations.

You know, we are all working for them.

We are all the slaves of corporations. What do we do?

Yes, I mean it is the power balance.

-How do we get them to pay their taxes?

-Well, exactly.

They are all over the place.

Exactly, and they know it,

and they know they have got the bargaining chip.

We had a really interesting presentation from a guy

who used to be the finance minister of Rwanda, so Rwanda's

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he describes being, you know,

the finance minister of a country and a corporation -

they fly in, say, "We'd like to invest in your country.

"By the way, we don't want to pay any tax,

"and then we want to pay reduced tax for 10 years.

"You've got an hour to decide and then we're flying to your neighbour,

"and they'll say yes, so," you know, "you'd better take the deal."

It is like a game show!

You know, it is absolutely that brutal, so we do need...

It was something Guy said right at the beginning.

It's not just that we have these economic forces,

we also have countries being told this is how you do development,

you must be completely open,

and it is that kind of logic that we have got to change.

You have got to see countries willing to club together,

saying actually, "You know what?

"We're not going to trade off against each other on our tax rates.

"We're going to say that as a group of East African countries

"we can't be played off against each other, we will pay tax."

But also, the answer is not just with big government.

We have to tackle corruption, don't we?

But the answer is also with people,

with peoples' rights to enter trade unions.

Take a company like Burger King, all over the world, giving us Whoppers.

Because they have...

Politicians give us whoppers!

For free!

But, you know, a company like Burger King,

same business model everywhere, but in Denmark, because of a collective

bargaining agreement, you get 20 an hour making those burgers.

In the US it is 8.

The same company and the same forces can be interacted very differently

with the policy environment,

so we've just got to reject this idea it's a force of nature.

The same with technology.

I'm sorry, technology is not some force of nature either,

and governments have a duty to think, "How are we going to interact

"with this growth of technology and make it work for our people?"

How are we going to do that? The growth of technology.

Well, I think every technological revolution leads to people

saying, "We're going to have mass unemployment."

Technology today is more advanced than at any time in history,

and we have many, many more jobs today

than at any time in history.

But what I was going to complement this last set of remarks was...

-From Katy?

-..that in fact... By Katy.

..is that another elephant that's is in the room, if you like,

that's Sam's phrase, is that the intellectual property rights

regime that has been constructed in the last 20 years is that elephant.

What it's done is it's tripled the number of patents,

for example, that big corporations are taking out.

But if you've invented something...

No, but many of these are not inventions.

Many of these are the results of numerous people,

but the big corporations buy up thousands of patents

and they string them together - it's called hoovering.

They string them together and they can turn that

into billions and billions of dollars.

It is about control. Hoovering, David?

Wait, let me finish, please.

The hoovering of patents and copyright

is actually generating a phenomenal rentier economy,

where these patents give a monopoly income of 20 years.

So nobody else can produce that product once it's patented.

-OK...

-In pharmaceuticals...

-I will come to David.

Linda, what do you make of this? Hoovering.

I think the other term is "patent trolls" as well,

where you patent so that you prevent other people from doing that.

Moving ahead, what do you do, how do you control this?

I think every government has a responsibility to make sure

that what is happening in the economy benefits its people,

whether it is productivity, whether it is growth, whether it's wages.

-But no government can control that.

-No, but you can do two things.

You can take global leadership in making sure that the institutions

are not dictated to by one powerful country.

Can I stop you there? What is global leadership?

Are we expecting politicians to think beyond the electoral cycle?

Clearly I'm less cynical than you, Nicky!

What I mean is, so, for instance, on trade,

we have seen essentially more protectionism

and people are sort of rolling back, and you can actually, as a nation,

say we think that opening up markets has been very good

over the past few decades, but there are problems to deal with.

In a sense, you tackle the institution.

Any country. It could be Britain, it could be China,

it could be any country doing this.

But I want to probably focus a bit on what countries could do

within their own nation, which I think is absolutely possible.

So the debate around how you deal with the fact that trade

and globalisation tends to benefit the economy as a whole

and disproportionately some, including corporations.

But there are always distributional consequences.

So, with those who are left behind, do you redistribute,

or do you undertake pre-distribution policies?

Redistribution is giving somebody help if they lose their job

because of either technology, automation taking their job,

or, you know, the country doesn't...

Pre-distribution - is that the way ahead?

Pre-distribution is about investing in education and skills

so you are more flexible to adapt.

This was the great contract, you know, go back to the 1990s,

we had this contract, the new Democrats,

Clinton, new Labour, Blair

they said accept globalisation and you have no fear - your job may go

but we'll retrain you for another job.

The truth is, it really didn't happen,

and this is one of the reasons why populism has emerged in,

you know, the early part of the 21st century,

because people felt that deal was not fulfilled.

Just pull the camera back, we need a more moderated globalisation,

with many more national vetoes.

The nation state is absolutely key here, and we underestimate...

Is that easier inside or outside Brexit for us?

I mean, I think in some ways, outside.

I mean, I was a reluctant Remain.

I said "outside Brexit", that made no sense at all.

I meant "with Brexit".

I was a reluctant Remain, but I do think, I mean, in certain ways...

Look, we are going to be constrained by global markets,

whether we are inside the European Union, or outside the EU.

But we're constrained by the European Union.

We are one voice amongst 28 when we are inside the European Union,

so I think we do...

But just think of the bigger picture of rich countries.

We have very different kinds of regimes.

Think of how different Japan is from the United States, from Germany.

We have the European model, the Japanese model,

we have a much more laissez-faire, liberal model,

and yet corporations have to adapt to all of these,

but we are making corporations the new bogeyman. They are not perfect.

But we can produce...

equally wealthy countries with really different regimes.

The nation state has more power than we think.

Let Douglas comment, he hasn't spoken for a while.

The other thing, just quickly, is that corporations and things,

they are not entities that are impossible to affect.

I was speaking to somebody from Silicon Valley recently,

one of the big tech firms there, who was saying, you know,

the way in which they have developed politically, for instance,

these are corporations with more money than a lot of countries.

But the way they've developed and their idea of politics,

is sort of teenage.

They've grown so fast that their hands have gone

a bit faster than their legs have extended and so on.

These are entities which are profoundly available

to be influenced by politics, by public sentiment, by public mood.

They are far more vulnerable to all of these things than we think.

People power.

I would like to come back to... The whole point of effective leadership

that isn't authoritarian and autocratic is to bring people

along with you and to be seen to support their interests

and their advancement.

One of the issues is, I think governments worldwide

and all the international bodies are just too...

They're kowtowing to corporations, and, yes, they're very powerful,

but the fact is that most of the jobs, and a lot of the economic job,

is still with small businesses and small enterprises.

That's actually the backbone of the economy.

If you do want to attract jobs, it's an absolute myth...

I mean, tax is important, as you were saying,

but corporations and firms are often calling your bluff

when they say they'll leave you if you don't reduce tax to this level,

because what they really care about is an educated,

healthy workforce, infrastructure which is publicly provided for,

therefore tax needs to be paid to provide it,

and political stability,

and an educated workforce.

So it's not this ruthless supposed competition of corporations.

It's actually incredibly heavily subsidised.

Just to go back, I think if we are to have globalisation

that people support, I dread to think of a model of globalisation

where we have free movement of goods and capital,

without a relatively free movement of people

because then I think people are going to feel very vulnerable...

I'll come to you in a minute, Linda.

But, Guy, the minimum basic income,

and you must do it in a very short time. One answer.

We are running out of time.

A very complex issue we've been working on for 35 years...!

-I know, but you are a very skilful man.

-Very simple man.

I think our income distribution system has broken down.

I don't think our real wages will be rising much in the future

because of globalisation,

and I think the incomes going to the rentiers

and finance will go up and up.

The precariat, the group I write about, are growing in numbers

and experiencing growing insecurity, impoverishment and so on.

A basic income would be part of a new distribution.

You used the term pre-distribution. I don't feel comfortable with that.

But I actually believe in a basic income

for three philosophical reasons.

Make them quick.

I understand, I understand I'm under pressure.

-The first one...

-We're all under pressure, that's globalisation.

-You're taking up my time!

-You've only got two now!

-The first is social justice.

-Right.

I go back to Thomas Paine in that regard,

saying it's a return on the collective wealth of society.

Second, I think it would enhance freedom.

-We all claim we believe in freedom.

-And the third?

You can't have freedom if you're insecure.

The third one is that it would give basic security and

psychologists have shown that if you don't have basic security,

your mental IQ suffers and those are the philosophical reasons.

You've got 30 seconds to wrap it up for us, Linda.

Pre-distribution is a terrible term, but what it really means is

that the workforce today has to be properly skilled

with education and training and options, should the economy change.

In other words, instead of focusing on coming up with money

after the fact, redistribution, you have to make sure that this country,

not just the young people,

but people who have to move into new industries,

can get access to coding, programming, the internet,

has enabled them to do better, we must ensure that they can.

That's pre-distribution.

Give them all a round of applause. Brilliant.

As always, the debate continues on Twitter and online.

Join us next Sunday from London.

For now, goodbye from everyone in Salford. Thanks for watching.