About this event

This is a hybrid event, with an option to join the seminar in-person at the LSE, or virtually. One speaker will be presenting in-person and one online. Complexity in means tested benefits is a central theme in contemporary social security debates, with policy discussions often calling for greater simplification through benefit integration or the creation of universal minimum income schemes. This seminar examines these ideas through the case of France’s proposed Revenu Universel d’Activité (RUA), an attempt to integrate means tested benefits that was ultimately not implemented. The paper explores what the RUA was intended to achieve and why it failed to progress, drawing comparisons with the UK’s Universal Credit (UC), which influenced French policy debates. While the RUA shared many features with UC, the seminar argues that the political, institutional and policy conditions necessary for implementation were not in place in France. Paradoxically, difficulties observed in the rollout of UC also weakened the case for the RUA. The seminar offers new insights into benefit integration, comparative social security reform, and the conditions under which ambitious policy change becomes politically viable. Fran Bennett is an Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on social security policy, gender, and poverty and participation. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a member of the Women’s Budget Group policy advisory group, and was appointed to the Social Security Advisory Committee in September 2025. She has written extensively for government and NGOs, and was specialist adviser (with Prof Jane Millar) to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee inquiry into Universal Credit (2020). Her recent research includes an ESRC funded project on Universal Credit and couples, and she co edited A Research Agenda for Financial Resources within the Household (Edward Elgar, 2024). Ewan Robertson is a Research Fellow on the project Studying Parliaments and the Role of Knowledge, University of Edinburgh. His research includes a focus on the comparative politics of welfare and labour market policy, mainly in European contexts, with a special interest in the role of evidence and ideas. He is the author of the monograph Making Work Pay in Mature Welfare States: The Politics of In-Work Benefits in France and the United Kingdom (2026, Palgrave Macmillan).

This event will take place in SAL 3.05, 3rd Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

The building is labelled SAL on the map. Enter the building via Lincoln's Inn Fields.