No transition instrument for AI-displaced workers: the UK has no TAA equivalent

Skills-side spending exists: the Growth and Skills Levy, the £2.5bn Youth Guarantee, £187m TechFirst, and a stated ten-million-worker upskilling target. No income-bridging or wage-insurance instrument exists for mid-career workers whose occupations contract, and the UK has no analogue of US Trade Adjustment Assistance or Danish flexicurity. IPPR's proposed worker support levy and portable benefits remain unadopted. The only UK income-floor evidence, the Welsh Basic Income for Care Leavers pilot of £1,600 a month for 635-plus participants, ended in 2025, targets a different population and reports finally in summer 2027.

Call-centre employment is already down 19 per cent, and DSIT puts a third of the workforce in the displacement-risk segment. Retraining without income security fails, and the record says so. Designing the instrument only once displacement is visible guarantees the response arrives years late.

A pilot AI transition fund combining time-limited wage insurance, a funded retraining entitlement and job-search support, aimed first at contact-centre and administrative occupations already contracting, with an RCT-grade evaluation built in. Government, a foundation consortium or a metro mayor could fund it.

// Build together: Counterparty: foundation consortium (JRF/Nuffield) or a metro mayor as funder-of-record for the pilot.

A third of the workforce sits in the displacement-risk zone with no income-bridging instrument, the fill is entirely unowned, and no dated trigger forces action this year.