Well-being

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, for securing this debate, which has enabled us to discuss this important issue today; I congratulate her. My noble friend Lord Layard talked about the point of Government—which is of course the well-being and happiness of the people. I agree with that very much. I agreed also with his point that all Governments are attracted to things that are in their own self-interest. All Governments do that. They need to fundamentally rethink their priorities and the methodology used to decide those priorities, to ensure that direct measures of well-being are included in what they do. As we have heard, such thinking has been used in the NHS for many years; the more the Government do the same, the better.

As we have heard, our gross domestic product—GDP—has been the usual performance indicator used in recent decades, although there have been recent moves to widen how we measure national performance. There are limitations to just using GDP, as many noble Lords have said, with its measurements based on the three different approaches of income, expenditure and production. While this measurement is a key performance indicator of the overall strength of the economy, it is not enough on its own. That has been generally accepted by everyone who has spoken today. As we have heard in this debate, it is recognised by many that this fails to capture other things that are of value to society, and captures some things which may not be of such value. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth is correct that while policy is decided in Westminster and Whitehall, it can feel very different on the ground where the policy is in place. The pressures on young people, which he talked about, are huge and very worrying. The fact that in recent years we have spoken about mental health much more freely is a good thing. More needs to be done.

I had not read the report from the Children’s Society, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, referred. She shared some really alarming figures showing that so many young people are so unhappy; that cannot be something we want. I left school a very long time ago. When I meet young people now, they have such different experiences of life. It is not healthy that they often spend hours in their bedrooms playing on their computers, iPhones and iPads. I am guilty of those things—I play on my iPhone as well—but equally, when I was a young person, I did lots of other things. I got out of the house and went to football and cricket. These are the kinds of things all young people should be doing.

The gang culture also affects so many parts of our communities—including communities close to this House. On the Wyndham estate in Southwark, which is on one side of the Camberwell New Road, you will meet young people who have never crossed that road and walked into Lambeth—because another gang runs Lambeth and they are terrified of them. That is a ridiculous situation, just two or three miles from where we sit today. It is very worrying.

Let us consider the amount of voluntary work that is done, where people support relatives and others in the community. There is no payment, no money changes hands, but this is vital to our well-being and we would be considerably poorer if that work was not done. The work that the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, mentioned with people with learning disabilities is also very much in that vein.

I was interested to read in the excellent Library briefing for this debate about the work in many other nations over many years, including that of the French Government in 2008, setting up the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission, which found that the time was ripe for new measurements of the system—for shifting the emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being. There has been a general move since then on the international scene for additional indictors or measures of performance to supplement GDP and other more established measures. Progress has also been made in the United Kingdom.

Some welcome initiatives were undertaken by the coalition Government to measure national progress not just by economic performance but by our quality of life. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, talked about how we achieve national well-being. He made a very honest, welcome and good point about the austerity agenda pursued by the Government from 2010. I know the case that the Government made for doing that but, looking back, that approach could have been tempered. It is important to recognise that sometimes we have to go beyond the argument of balancing the books.

In November 2012 the Office for National Statistics published a first report looking at life in the UK, and it published another in 2016. It was interesting to see the changes that had been observed over that period. I will name four indicators: there were improvements on measurements such as the employment rate, as well as deterioration with measurements such as satisfaction with the National Health Service, and there had been a decrease in disposable income but a welcome fall in greenhouse gas emissions.

Using well-being as a measure for informing policy priorities and goals has considerable merit in validating decisions and enabling better choices to be made when used alongside more traditional measures, as well as making good economic sense, as many noble Lords have said. Economic and non-economic indicators are used to enable better policy-making outcomes and a more accurate picture of how our policy decisions affect people’s lives on the ground—the very point made by the right reverend Prelate.

The OECD suggests potential benefits of considering well-being indicators in a policy context: this provides a more complete and coherent picture, highlighting such things as inequalities and diverse experiences. All these things are very important, if we are to make better policy.

When the noble Lord, Lord Bird, spoke he reminded me of when I was very young, seven years old, and we moved out of private rented accommodation and into a council property, in 1969. That move was transformative: my siblings and I had lived in quite cramped conditions, and for the first time—all of a sudden—we each had our own bedroom. The property was clean, safe, warm, dry and had a rent my parents could afford. My parents worked every day of their working lives to enable their family to survive and thrive. Now my siblings and I are all home owners, and all much better off than our parents; living in that council property really helped us. My parents now live, retired, happily back in Ireland where they came from to the UK in the 1950s.

I often ask questions here about council housing, and the need to build more homes on social rent. I know I disagree with the Government on this, but I think the affordable rent model does not work. We need to move much further, and look at this more.

The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, about loneliness is very well made. Loneliness destroys people’s lives, and tackling it should be a priority for all Governments, as she said. I agree with her on the importance of art to stimulate young people and get them engaged in more positive activities. When I was first elected to Southwark Council in 1986, my first vote was to end the ridiculous dispute with Sam Wanamaker and build the Globe theatre. I am very proud of that, as it is a wonderful theatre on Bankside. The Globe’s wonderful education department engages with young people from schools in London and beyond. That means young people can see the works of Shakespeare, go to the theatre and see a live performance for the first time. Arts education like this is really important. The Fabian Society has published a report, Primary Colours, which looks at the question of arts and young people. It states how important arts are for stimulating young people and giving them other things to do. I very much welcome that.

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is right that work is good for people. It is much better to work, if you are able to, than to sit around not working. I used to have a Saturday job when I young—they have all gone now. I used to work in a clothes shop where I learned to talk to people and handle money. These things are all good, and there needs to be more of it.

In the few seconds I have remaining, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, for her Motion today. This has been a fantastic debate. I look forward to the response from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, who I congratulate on her appointment to the Government.