'What we owe each other: A new social contract'. A discussion with the author of an important new book, 'Minouche' Shafik

The CSFI Round-table

Nemat Shafik (or Baroness Shafik, as she is now) follows in the footsteps of another distinguished Director of the LSE, William Beveridge, in putting forward a comprehensive programme for a new 'social contract', covering everything from childcare to health to work to the environment to taxation and to care of the elderly and inter-generational conflicts. Based on the opportunities for radical change opened up by the GFC, the Covid pandemic and the widespread feeling that politics are ripe for change, she offers an astonishingly broad-ranging set of ideas pulled from best practise around the world. Can it happen? Well, maybe - note Biden's American Families Plan and the lifetime learning credit in the latest Queen's Speech. The direction of travel is clear.

Moderators: Andrew Hilton (Director, CSFI) & Jane Fuller (Co-director, CSFI)

Nemat ('Minouche') Shafik had had an astonishing journey. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, she emigrated with her family to America, was educated in the US (at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), in Egypt (at AUC) and in the UK (at the LSE and at St Antony's, Oxford, where she got her DPhil). She was the youngest-ever VP at the World Bank, a Permanent Secretary at DFID, Deputy MD at the IMF and a Deputy Governor at the BofE, before being appointed to run the London School of Economics in 2017. She was made a Dame in 2015, and a Life Peer in 2020. She has British, American and Egyptian nationality.