Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

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

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Bird, on this excellent and important Bill. I think we all want to support it. I share his experience of living in Notting Hill, but I did so when it was emerging from the conditions that he describes when he speaks to us.

I want to start by looking at a country which is an example because it has a Government who are determined to do something to improve the well-being of their people in that country. It is New Zealand. In May 2019, the New Zealand Minister of Finance said:

“For me, wellbeing is when people are able to lead fulfilling lives which have purpose and meaning to them. A Government does not determine a person’s wellbeing, but we can certainly play a part.”


A growing number of countries are taking initiatives to include health and well-being measures as part of policy-making. However, this budget was the first of its kind prioritising the health and well-being of the population as a whole. A specific priority in that well-being budget was reducing child poverty and addressing the related poor long-term health outcomes associated with it. In addition, the New Zealand Treasury has begun implementing the Government’s well-being approach through its living standards framework. This framework ensures that the advice the Treasury gives the Government must consider a broad range of well-being impacts that matter most for New Zealanders’ living standards now and in future. The Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, has amended the Public Finance Act 1989 to include requirements for the Treasury to report on well-being. This is in a way consistent with what is being proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bird. It is a good example of what can be done, and I hope the Government will look into it a bit further.

Nobody has mentioned one of the other trends in society which has to be taken into account when we are looking at well-being: the rapid ageing of our population. I declare my interest as chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK. A recent analysis it did showed that in 2017, 27.1 million years were spent living with largely preventable conditions. In better-off countries, such as the UK, among those aged 50 or over the number of years lived with disabilities as a result of, for example, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes or lung cancer rose by 9% between 1992 and 2017.

We have to do something about this to make sure that we are addressing the important situation we face with the ageing of our population. However, in OECD countries only 2.8% of total healthcare spending was on prevention, and prevention can really change the well-being of our population. After the 2008 financial crisis, prevention spending bore the brunt of healthcare cuts, and failure to invest in prevention risks substantial long-term social, health and economic costs. If we want to realise the social opportunities of ageing and of our wider society, we have to use prevention to ensure that people living longer are also living healthier lives.