Anne Meikle says there are improvements needed if the Future Generations Bill is going to make a difference.
What difference will the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill make?
I chair the Sustainable Development Alliance of more than 20 Welsh charities, social enterprises and community groups – and we think it’s important to answer this question.
It was raised many times during the recent committee scrutiny of the Bill.
Put simply, we believe that it should help ‘future proof’ Wales – so our grandchildren can at least have the same quality of life as us. Moreover, we believe that through this Bill, we can make changes that ensure a better quality of life, for ourselves and for our children.
Last week we published a report which explains some of the positive changes that a strong Bill can deliver. With the right amendments, this law can make a real difference on issues such as jobs, poverty and climate change.
The recently published Environment and Sustainability Committee Stage 1 report agreed with the Alliance’s calls for amendments to strengthen the Bill. I believe our report complements this. It shows why it is important for everyone with an interest in the Bill to work together. Through collaboration, we can build a Bill of which we can all be proud and which will deliver real benefits for Wales and wider world.
Here I’ll set out some examples of what an effective Bill can do. I’ll also raise some questions that we hope AMs will ask the Minister, concerning how the Bill will deliver these benefits for people and the planet.
The Green Jobs Revolution
Wales is starting to reap the benefits of the green economy.
Take the recent study by Innovas Consulting. It revealed that, since 2006, ‘renewable energy technologies’ and ‘environmental goods and services’ sectors in Wales have grown. Employment has increased from 22,160 to 30,100. The study concluded that support from Government was an important part of that success.
One Low Carbon business success story is the Cenin Group in Bridgend. They are creating a cluster of renewable energy generation projects and producing a cement product which contains only 5% of the carbon of ordinary cement.
The Bill should change the mindset of Government and public bodies about their support for such companies. From economic development policies and business advice to a strong legal framework, planning system and procurement, we must integrate our efforts. That way, we can ensure our economy can both face the challenges ahead and prosper.
A strong Well-being of Future Generations Act would also send a strong signal on the direction Wales is heading. It would give companies the confidence to invest in green industries in Wales.
Will Welsh Government amend the Bill to ensure its economic goal is unequivocal about reducing our resource use to levels compatible with healthy global life support systems?
Using our purchasing power for good
The Welsh Public sector spends over four billion pounds a year buying goods and services. We want more of that money to be spent in a way that helps people and nature.
The Welsh Government paved the way in 2009 with its catering contract which gave greater value to ethical considerations. Because the contract was so large, it meant that suppliers were willing to make more effort to get hold of more ethically sourced products. That included local meat and dairy products to support local farmers as well as Fairtrade tea and coffee.
The potential is huge. For example, if every school in Wales made the same progress in Fairtrade sales in their tuck-shops as the two leading schools, then Fairtrade sales in Wales would be boosted by more than £600,000. This could transform the lives of people across the world.
Despite some good practice, this is not nearly widespread enough across the public sector. A strong Well-being of Future Generations Act should ensure that all purchasing decisions are made with consideration of wider benefits for people and nature.
Will the Welsh Government make changes to the Bill so that it’s clear that the duty covers the delivery of public sector functions and decisions, including financial decisions and procurement?
Warm Homes for everyone
Too many of us are struggling to afford to heat our homes.
A household is officially in fuel poverty if the people in it have to spend more than one tenth of their income to stay warm. Around 30% of households in Wales were in fuel poverty in 2012.
Government investment in improving home energy efficiency can have many benefits: reducing greenhouse gas emissions; tackling fuel poverty; creating jobs and boosting local economies.
Welsh Government schemes such as Arbed have demonstrated this. But this programme is not enough to make a significant impact on fuel poverty or our greenhouse gas emissions.
By bringing the 728,000 worst performing houses in Wales up to an energy rating of D, we would reduce the number of households in fuel poverty by 40% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from housing by 40%.
Such integration across policy areas should produce more effective outcomes from the same expenditure.
Will the Welsh Government commit, in the Bill, to setting ‘outcomes’ for their goals, which will clarify for everyone the scale and urgency of the changes we need to make?
In the coming days and weeks, we look forward to seeing these questions answered and addressed.
We also hope to see the Government and AMs act on the Environment and Sustainability Committee’s report, which recommended a number of changes.
I’m confident that with the right amendments, we will see a Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill that makes a real difference to people and nature.
This is all very well, but the figures here are tiny: an 8% change in employment, £600k more free trade sales, carbon emissions reducing, but there are too many “shoulds” and “woulds”. I can’t help feeling that this approach is simply re-arranging the deck-chairs on the titanic. Of course we can be proud that we are emitting 10% less carbon than the USA, but we are a long way short of the agreed target to keep global warming to 2%, namely something like 2 metric tonnes per person per annum worldwide. This chart shows the scale of the problem. It won’t be solved by measures like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Having read your article Anne, perhaps a more apt title would have been ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ as your organisation’s title clearly states it’s the Cymru people that matter in the post devolution period – Majority of Welsh people no longer relevant – Perhaps worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co as a reminder that Social Engineering of any society portraying its self as a ‘Democracy’ can never work!?
If the Arbed programme needs expanding and we have the money then expand it. You don’t need a Bill to do that. If there are sensible changes that can be made to government procurement that would help local business, change procurement rules and practices. You don’t need a Bill for that. Can someone please explain what is the point of a Bill at all. To send a signal? Heaven give us strength. Do the right thing and people get the message. Empty bits of legislation send one signal: that our politicians think passing pointless laws is a substitute for action. They cannot run a PU in a brewery so they pass a law saying all brewery parties in future should be a success. Satire is helpless.
The Bill is a slightly strange beast, not only because it has changed so much since originally conceived but because it seeks to promote sustainable development through improving governance arrangements – in other words how decisions are taken rather than what decisions are taken.
And although it claims to be about sustainable development, reading the small print brings you to slightly different conclusions. Sustainable development is supposedly about 3 pillars – economic, social and of course environmental. The goals that are in the Bill are heavily biased towards the social pillar & the proposed changes in governance arrangements are strongest with regard to those delivering services at local level. My personal reading is that if the Bill makes a difference it is most likely to be in the planning and configuration of local services. In my view that would be highly welcome and long overdue (and now of course especially urgent) – but indirectly driving public service reform is probably not what Jane Davidson had in mind when she wrote the commitment into the 2011 Labour Assembly Election Manifesto.
But similar to R,Tredwyn’s argument, it is debateable whether this requires legislation rather than simply a more determined drive on public service reform which after all has only been on the agenda since the Beecham Report in 2006.
Whilst there are pockets of good practice of sustainable development in Wales, evidence shows us that this is not at the scale or pace needed to address the issues we face in Wales or the wider world.
We are already seeing the impacts of unsustainable development, for example through climate change.
These impacts are being felt across the world and in Wales.
Legislation is a powerful tool which can be used to drive the change we need. It of course needs to be the right legislation. And of course, legislation alone is not enough to achieve these kinds of change.
However, major cultural change rarely seems to happen without legislation as part of the tools for change.
The Sustainable Development Alliance has drawn on evidence from Audit Committee reports and examples from across the world of what is needed for effective legislation on sustainable development. This identified the need to include financial decisions within the scope of the duty.
How money is spent is the other key lever for change that the public sector can employ. Therefore procurement is an important tool. Although we have guides on sustainable procurement, it is still not the main practice across Welsh public bodies. Having legislation which requires sustainable procurement should drive that change.