Even before Covid-19 there were calls for governments to write off some or all of mounting personal debt, on grounds of social justice and the impacts of debt on the poorest in society.

Some governments have now taken measures to guarantee existing or new corporate and/or personal borrowing to prevent defaults. There are two main drawbacks: firstly, the guaranteeing of loans transfers risk from private banks to the state without imposing costs on the former. Secondly, it can create moral hazard by failing to differentiate between more and less creditworthy borrowers. Guaranteeing borrowing may be a less effective measure than other approaches, such as converting corporate loans to equity. 

The flip side of reducing debt is to increase incomes. Many governments have already introduced such measures temporarily – for example, the UK’s coronavirus furlough scheme. More broadly, campaigns and proposals for a universal basic income or similar argue for a permanent floor on incomes. One key issue with income support is that unless high outgoings are reduced, much of it will accrue in practice to banks, landlords and other rentiers.

Social housebuilding has declined sharply in recent decades. The 'right to buy' policies of the 1980s and 1990s led to greatly reduced income for local authorities, whose ability to borrow in order to build homes was capped until 2018. Today there are widespread calls for a major new programme of council-led social housing. Housing charity Shelter proposes that 3.1 million homes should be build over the next 20 years.  While local authorities now have the power to borrow, the reality of their funding situation means they will need support from national government to deliver on that kind of ambition.

Around 20% of UK homes are privately rented, up from 10% in 1996-97. In 2018 it was estimated that 16% of millennials will end up privately renting 'from cradle to grave'. The booming private rental market includes some of the worst quality housing stock and many renters have insecure housing tenures.  

Proposals for tackling this include giving renters legal protection from sharp price increases, maintaining and regulating a central register of private landlords, and bringing in controls on the rents that can be charged. Giving renters indefinite leases – as is currently the norm in Scotland – would allow evictions to be banned except for specified reasons such as the sale of the property.

Climate talks are in practice matters of intense geopolitics and economics and are as influenced by discussions at G7 finance meetings as the climate talks themselves.

The UK’s position as COP host will be critical; it has pledged to double its international climate aid to £11.6 billion by 2026.

Women in full-time employment in the UK are paid 7% less on average per hour than their male counterparts. Among employees as a whole, women earn on average 15% less than men per hour. This is largely because women are over-represented in part-time employment, which is less well paid. 

One factor behind the gender pay gap is illegal pay discrimination - unequal pay for equal work. Another is the uneven burden of unpaid care work. A key issue is the 'maternity penalty', the economic cost to mothers of taking on more unpaid child-rearing than men, which slows their career progression and leads many women to take on more flexible, less senior and less well-paid roles. Encouraging men to take on more childcare, for example by increasing paternity leave, could help redress this imbalance.

The introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting in large employers has generally been recognised as incentivising pay equality.  But the pay gap is proportionately much greater among higher-paid jobs than lower-paid, a consequence of the fact that in many sectors senior positions are still dominated by men.

One of the most common arguments in the growth debate is about the value of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic progress. This was not what GDP, which measures national income and output, was originally designed for. But economic policy and analysis has generally used it as such: GDP growth is the primary (though not only) economic goal of most governments.

The argument against GDP is that it does not measure environmental degradation or the depletion of ‘natural capital’; it ignores productive activity (such as childcare and housework) that occurs outside market transactions; it cannot take into account intangible but important public goods such as social cohesion and trust; it does not reflect subjective happiness or life satisfaction; and does not measure the distribution of income or wealth.

Many attempts have therefore been made to construct alternative metrics of economic and social progress, with the aim of ‘dethroning’ GDP from its paramount position. Some seek to adjust GDP in various ways. Others have compiled an index of various measures.

The most common approach is to use a ‘dashboard’ of multiple economic, environmental and social indicators. These more complex datasets have the ability to track a breadth of concerns, but make it harder to track overall progress and tell a clear narrative story.

The Covid-19 pandemic was not an unexpected event, viral outbreaks of this kind have been predicted by medical and environmental scientists for many years. 

The risk of global contagion is increasing as the world becomes more densely populated and interconnected. These risks can be minimised if governments make better preparations for pandemics, both within and between nations.

Cooperation over the production and distribution of vaccines is essential. There are wider factors at play as pandemic risk is intertwined with wider social, environmental and economic challenges. 

In the decade before the pandemic, public services saw the longest sustained reduction in public spending on record. In 2019-20 day-to-day spending per person on public services was 7% lower in real terms than a decade before. Outside of health, real-terms public service spending was cut by 20% (25% per person).

Even without any change in policy, the UK's ageing population will require higher spending on health and social care and other services to maintain service quality. There are also widespread demands for better services and higher spending in areas such as schools and further education, childcare, public transport, policing, justice and legal aid and local services such as libraries and youth provision.

The UK spends less on public services (including social security and defence) than most other higher income (OECD) countries. The UK also raises less in tax as a proportion of national income than most others, though government plans are for this to rise in the next few years.

A higher level of spending on public services could be supported by an increase in borrowing (see our pages on 'Stimulating economic recovery'), but a sustained increase is likely to require a higher overall level of taxation. This could be achieved by raising the rates of existing taxes, or by tax reforms which sought to raise more revenue from other sources, such as from asset wealth or multinational companies. Our pages on taxation provide more information.  

A key part of the green finance equation is ending government support for fossil fuels. This has been described as one of most important measures to deter high carbon investment.

There are a number of ways in which government funding supports the continued use of fossil fuels. UK Export Finance has been criticised for giving loans and guarantees to companies who invest in fossil fuel projects overseas.

While many subsidies exist to encourage the production of fossil fuels – such as tax relief for North Sea oil producers – many exist ostensibly to keep energy prices low for consumers. The pandemic’s impact on oil prices may create a window to reduce subsidies.

With unemployment likely to rise when the furlough scheme is ended, many organisations have urged the government to introduce a further fiscal stimulus package to create jobs and meet pressing social needs.

Many of these argue for higher government spending on infrastructure, particularly on ‘green’ and low-carbon projects. Since physical infrastructure spending tends to lead to male employment, others have argued for an equal emphasis on ‘social infrastructure’: sectors such as health, education, social care and childcare which are also necessary for the economy to function and have high levels of female and black and minority ethnic employment.

Increasing the minimum wage, giving public sector workers (especially key workers) a pay rise, and raising benefit levels, would all mitigate the unequal impacts of the pandemic and give a boost to consumer demand.

The government’s youth employment scheme, Kickstart, supports 6-month job placements for those aged 16-24. With youth unemployment known to have a long-term scarring effect on life chances, some have argued that this should be much more ambitious, with a stronger emphasis on skills training.

A core principle of the UN framework is the transfer of money from richer to less wealthy nations, in recognition of the large injustices at the heart of the climate problem. Stopping the worst outcomes will cost a lot of money, however much of it will also lead to benefits. Wealthier nations have also disproportionately caused a problem that will fall hardest on those least responsible and more vulnerable.

Rich nations had pledged to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 from both public and private sources but are currently falling short and there is some ambiguity over what counts as legitimate financial support.