Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

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

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, to the disadvantaged is an inspiration to us all and we should surely welcome the Bill. Urgent and immediate matters understandably preoccupy our leaders; in contrast, some of the most threatening issues are global and long-term. In optimising people’s welfare, we should care about the prospect of a baby whose life will extend into the 22nd century; indeed, we should not knowingly jeopardise the life chances of generations as yet unborn. But investment decisions almost all discount the future so steeply that minimal weight is given to what happens beyond about 2050. The guidelines in the Green Book could be changed to ease this issue. The national risk register also needs to be extended beyond traditional economic timescales.

Plainly, many things are utterly unpredictable a century ahead but environmental, population and climatic scenarios can be analysed. It may be prudent to pay an insurance premium today, as it were, to guard against global threats that could emerge a century hence. Expert assessment of these issues is surely an endeavour that should be expanded, and it deserves all-party support.

We should also scrutinise our built environment. Our grand public buildings, such as the one we are in now, the great churches, museums and monuments, and even our railway stations, date from the Victorian era or earlier. They were built to last; not so the tower blocks that dominate the skyline today. Their planned lifetime is typically only 50 years, and they are not a legacy that future generations will thank us for.

I conclude with a cameo. Ely Cathedral is near where both the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and I live. It overwhelms us today, so think of its impact 800 years ago and the vast enterprise that its construction entailed. Most of its builders had never travelled more than 50 miles; the Fens were their world. Even the most educated knew of nothing beyond Europe. They thought that the world was a few thousand years old, and that it might not last another thousand. However, despite these constricted horizons in both time and space, and the deprivation and harshness of their lives, they built this vast cathedral. Those who conceived it knew that they would not live to see it finished. Their legacy still elevates our spirits, nearly a millennium later.

What a contrast that is to today. Unlike our forebears, we know a great deal about our world. Technologies that our ancestors could not conceive of now enrich our lives and understanding. We know that we are the stewards of a “pale blue dot” in a vast cosmos, a planet with a future measured in billions of years, whose fate depends on humanity’s collective actions this century. However, all too often, our focus is short-term and parochial. We downplay what is happening even now in impoverished faraway countries and give too little thought to the world we leave for our grandchildren.

In today’s runaway world, we cannot aspire to leave a monument lasting 1,000 years, but it would surely be shameful if we persisted in policies that denied future generations a fair inheritance. We need more cathedral thinking and that is a signal that this Bill will send.