Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Baroness Brady Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 13th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on his Bill and the important sentiments behind it. As stated in the very helpful briefing note he produced,

“there must be more widespread accountability to prepare for the long-term impact of current policy decisions”.

No one can argue that the consequences of not taking proper account of future generations are profound. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, called it the “tragedy of the horizon”. If the impacts of our actions will be felt only by future generations and not by us, we do not take responsibility for their consequences. We can already see the consequences of this mentality, particularly in climate change. Extreme weather events, an irreversible decline in biodiversity and rising global temperatures are here, now.

However, this is not about just climate. More commonly, successive Governments have borrowed heavily, running high deficits and passing the cost on to future generations through higher taxes. Take housing and planning. The housing market once rewarded responsible saving and investment as we all had a desire, and were encouraged, to own our own home. But with the lack of new homes being built, prices have increased to a point that makes it impossible for some young people ever to get on the property ladder. The Local Government Association found that just 11% of people born in 1996 are on the property ladder, compared with 21% of those born in 1976 who owned their own home by the age of 22.

The merits of the Bill are clear, but it is important that the approach it adopts delivers the outcomes that future generations deserve. I will say then that establishing a UK future generations commissioner is just as important as incentivising businesses to act in the interests of future generations. How can we best do that? The Bill mandates that medium-sized and large businesses must produce a report setting out how their activities contribute to or detract from the well-being goals set out in the Bill. I am concerned about whether this will prove effective. Companies are very well versed in producing reports on corporate social responsibility and let us just say that some are better than others. The danger here is that we add to a growing compliance burden without creating any real change in behaviour.

Instead, can we not look at more market-led solutions? For example, with respect to climate change, it is not corporations’ mandated annual reports that are driving behaviour change but the pressure that investors are applying to corporates to disclose climate data. Where improvement is not being delivered, they are divesting from those companies. Behind many investors are the individual contributions of pension scheme members and savers. I commend Richard Curtis on his Make My Money Matter campaign. Its mission statement reads:

“If you have a pension, you have power. If you want it spent on a peaceful, prosperous, safe world ask the people who run your pension if it’s invested sustainably. If it’s not, demand they do better. Together we’ve got trillions at work. So together we can change the world.”


The key for the well-being of future generations, then, is that as soon as young people enter the job market, they too have a pension, so they too can change the way businesses behave. By all means, we should do more to embed principles of sustainability in our public sector bodies as the Bill calls for. But when it comes to business, action talks.