Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Balfe Excerpts

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

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on getting this debate and on the Bill. It is the beginning of a long process. We are getting to grips with, and trying to define, a whole new way of looking at society. An undoubted truth is that there is a lot of short-termism in society. That is largely because the generation that takes decisions frequently lets the next generation pay for its consequences. On occasions we are a bit too happy to take decisions based on our emotional view of the world, rather than a practical one. One of the most interesting points in yesterday’s debate was the admission by my noble friend Lord Tugendhat that austerity might not have been the best way of tackling the problems we have had in the last 10 years. That is quite a fundamental confession, because many in our party—I am guilty to an extent myself—accepted that the best way forward was reining in, cutting our cloth, and all the rest of the old sayings. We saw a complete change of direction in the Budget this week. If that had been taken some years ago, we might not have spent any more money, but we might have spent it slightly more wisely.

One of my hopes for the well-being objectives and the commissioner—if we get that far—is that we will have a more nuanced view of the future and that we will look at the way society can get better. Society has got better. I do not intend to turn this into a great personal thing, but I grew up as the child of alcoholics. Nobody cared. That is my overwhelming memory of growing up in the 1950s in that sort of family. People turned the other way, and the well-being of future generations has to mean us helping future generations—I was very struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said—to come to terms with and to give a fair life chance to people as they mature, grow up and face the future. According to the recent survey, 200,000-odd children are unhappy. It is no good rubbishing that unhappiness and the way it is measured; we have to accept that they are unhappy. A child defines its own unhappiness. It does not need someone else to do it for it.

My hope is that we will look at the French commission mentioned in the Library briefing—the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission—and the work of Thomas Piketty. I do not think he has necessarily got everything on his side, but it is a different way of looking at welfare economics and the way we can build society. I greatly welcome the initiative of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Bird—I do not mind calling people in other parties friends. I hope that this can be built upon to get us to a much better place than where we are now. He is great pioneer in bringing this forward.