This report sets out a transformative vision for Universal Basic Services (UBS) as a foundation for collective flourishing. At a time of deepening crises—economic, ecological, and social—it calls for a new settlement: one in which the state guarantees access to life’s essentials not as a minimum safety net, but as a shared infrastructure of public abundance.

• The UK is facing a crisis of unmet needs. Decades of privatisation and underinvestment have left core services—from food and housing to transport and care—fractured, inaccessible, and unequal.

• The report proposes a universal, publicly funded system of essential services—free at the point of use and organised around human need.

This includes:

• At the heart of the proposal is public luxury: the idea that universal services should be abundant, beautiful and life-enhancing—not minimal or merely functional.

• UBS provides a practical pathway to lower the cost of living, strengthen democratic participation, and make the green transition socially just—replacing artificial scarcity with collective abundance.

• This is more than policy—it is a political and cultural shift. UBS offers a new vision of freedom rooted in shared infrastructure, and a revitalised public realm in which every individual can thrive.