Should residents of Manchester be allowed to trade in their old smartphones for council-subsidised repair vouchers rather than buying new devices, and what should the scheme cost per household by 2027?

Hello, I'm Wilson, and this one is yours alone today. You're asking whether people in Manchester should be able to hand in an old smartphone and get a council-subsidised voucher to repair a phone instead of buying a new one, and what that should cost each household by 2027. Strip it back and the real question is not whether repair is good. Most people already agree it is. The real question is whether a council voucher actually changes behaviour enough to justify public money, and whether a cash-strapped city can design it so the subsidy goes to repairs that would not have happened anyway. So the cost question and the design question are the same question. A scheme that pays people to do what they were already doing is just a gift. A scheme that tips a wavering household away from a new handset and keeps a working phone in use for another two or three years is buying something real: lower bills for families, less electronic waste, and steady local repair work.

My answer is yes, as a targeted pilot, not a universal entitlement. The strongest evidence that vouchers can shift behaviour comes from Austria. The federal …