Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Shipley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bates. I agree entirely with what he has just said. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for the opportunity afforded by his Private Member’s Bill, which I warmly welcome for both its proposals and its timeliness. It offers a resetting of how we construct public policy, and, for that reason, it is to be strongly welcomed. I hope that the Minister will speed the Bill and give the principles behind it government support.

On the timeliness of the Bill, the Covid pandemic has brought a number of policy issues to the fore, meaning that the concept of well-being must now become more central to public policy-making. I am pleased that the Today for Tomorrow report is being launched next week, with the ambition of putting long-term planning in place for public policy decisions today. I venture to suggest that, had we been doing that, we would not have had the rise in poverty, particularly child poverty, now being experienced. We would not have the crisis over unaffordable housing for so many people on low incomes. We might not have had such a serious pensions crisis, which is now facing so many younger people, or the wide gap in access to broadband or catch-up funding for young people who have missed substantial parts of their education in recent months.

Well-being requires clear goals in relation to an individual: having good educational opportunities and the security of a decent home and job. But it also needs to reflect places, such as rural areas, where house prices are very high, where there is substantial fuel poverty and where the cost of transport is high for those who live there to reach further education or work. That is one example of the importance of place, and I hope that we explore it further in Committee.

We know that future forecasting can be difficult, but we should have known that a pandemic would be likely to reduce employment for those in temporary employment or the gig economy. We should note that three-quarters of job losses in the last year are among the under-35s—yet we seem to have been unprepared for that.

I see the Bill not as anti-democratic but as enabling us to understand better the impact of today’s policy decisions on the future and future generations. We would benefit from the Bill, perhaps after it is strengthened in Committee. We do equality and environmental impact assessments, which make a difference. Surely we should now be undertaking well-being assessments to inform our understanding of our policy decisions today and their impact on tomorrow.