Well-being

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on securing this debate, which has been universally excellent. I particularly commend the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for her contribution and I enjoyed her reflection on the importance of culture to our lives. That is even though she has pre-empted me with a quote from Simon Kuznets which bears repeating. We should remember that he was a Nobel laureate who helped to create the measure of GDP. He said that

“the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.”

It is interesting that we have heard from all sides of the House and people from many different political perspectives an acceptance that GDP is a very poor measure of well-being, yet this morning I opened a newsletter from a left-wing publication, which—as you might expect—was attacking the Government over the Budget. Its top line of attack was: “Growth is anaemic and down substantially on previous forecasts.” You might have expected this publication to be attacking on universal credit, regional disparities or child poverty—many of the things we have heard reflections on from noble Lords—but its top line was GDP.

The idea that what matters is the economy is deeply embedded into our national politics. Should an alien land on earth and look at our newspapers and television screens, it might well think that we all existed to be servants of the economy. We have this turned around the wrong way. The economy is and should be there to deliver a decent life for our societies and to deliver us a secure future.

The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, suggested that we have difficulty agreeing on what measures would be included in well-being. I respectfully disagree with him, because the whole world has agreed on measures of well-being: the sustainable development goals signed up to by the world’s nations. When we talk about them in your Lordships’ House and elsewhere in the UK, we tend to talk about this as something for DfID and the international development community to think about. But I refer your Lordships to a report from the UKSSD network, which considered whether the UK would meet any of those goals by the target date of 2030. The answer is no.

Many noble Lords have referred to potential difficulties and questions about how to measure well-being. It is worth taking a little time to consider this, something the APPG on Limits to Growth has done considerable work on. One option is multiple indicator sets, which the SDGs are. That is my preferred option, because it accepts that there are trade-offs here. You cannot have everything, so you have to look at how things affect each other. Alternatively, you can have aggregated non-monetary indices—essentially a single number that is a measure of well-being—but you will very quickly get bogged down into questions of the weighting in that figure. You can also have aggregated monetary indices such as the genuine progress indicator, but that involves putting a financial value on everything. That is a very dangerous path.

We can also look at subjective measures of well-being. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate is not in his place, because on graphs of salaries versus people’s judgment of personal well-being, the clergy is very high up—so are fitness instructors and play workers. Economists and financial managers do very poorly.

I point noble Lords to the European Economic and Social Committee’s own-initiative report The Sustainable Economy We Need. It calls for a “Green and Social Deal” to achieve

“a just transition to a wellbeing economy.”

This is being discussed around the world.

But these are very abstract terms. We need to be concrete when talking to people about the well-being economy. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, was very powerful when he said that you cannot put poverty and well-being together. People in poverty do not have a basic level of well-being. That is why I believe that security—freedom from the fear of not being able to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head—has to be a basic element of a well-being society. That is why I believe in a universal basic income. I also believe strongly in equality as an essential. The Spirit Level was an excellent book that explored how everybody does better in a more equal society.

We had a powerful lesson in our rather detailed discussion earlier today about cleaning and coronavirus. We are all now utterly dependent on the well-being of cleaners—people who in our society are on average very low paid and often on insecure employments.

We also need a healthy environment. That is not just a cuddly thing about it being nice to have trees and flowers. We have increasing evidence that a biodiverse, green environment makes us physically much healthier.

I conclude with a final thought: there are enough resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life, for the well-being of all, if we share them out fairly.