Climate Goals: Wellbeing Economy

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this important debate. I very much agreed with her eloquent and detailed speech.

Members may remember that the renowned author Naomi Klein stated in 2011 in her paper “Capitalism vs the climate” that:

“Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture’s most cherished ideas are no longer viable.”

Sadly, 10 years on from Naomi’s groundbreaking paper, not much has changed. We are now faced with more stark messages in the form of covid-19, the social care crisis, an energy crisis and a cost-of-living crisis. We simply do not have an economic system geared up to ensure that everyone flourishes. We see growth prioritised, but rarely do we ever question the real nature of such growth or what its adverse consequences could be. The OECD has stated:

“If ever there was a controversial icon from the statistics world, GDP is it. It measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignore values like social cohesion and the environment. Yet Governments, businesses and probably most people swear by it.”

Growth means nothing to many families struggling, living in cold, mould-infested homes, wondering if they are ever going to get a lucky break. It means nothing to the pensioners struggling to get the care they need, and it will mean nothing to our children if they have no future because the flawed and relentless pursuit of growth above everything else finally destroys our planet.

The good news is that with real economic and political will, we can develop a system of economic metrics that centres our economy around what should be the most important measure of success for any Government: wellbeing. As Katherine Trebeck from the Wellbeing Economy Alliance explains, that means recognising that

“The economy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is an economy which regenerates nature, an economy where collaboration trumps competition, an economy where activities and what organisations do is purposeful, not simply just to make money. In which individuals’ desire to be acknowledged for meaningful contributions with a decent living is not dominated by a motivation of acquiring wealth. And which is financed by a stable, fair and socially useful financial system that serves the real economy for the long term.”

I hope that today’s debate is just the start of a long overdue conversation about what that really means in practice: from finding a new way of measuring the economy’s performance away from the distribution-blind GDP and towards indices of wellbeing, through to ensuring the economy distributes wealth more fairly, provides stable and sufficient incomes, supports socially and environmentally useful enterprise and, importantly, ensures the ownership of economic assets is shared more widely and democratically with workers and communities.

Ultimately, the Government are not a mere economic spectator here. They have the power to implement that change. As such, the debate goes to the very heart of what we think the sole purpose of Government is. Are they the caretaker of a broken economic theory that preserves wealth for the few, at the expense of the many, or are they the engine that drives the economy to deliver health and wellbeing for all? In Salford, we know the answer to that. We say the welfare of the people is the highest law.