Sophie Howe: Safeguarding The Nation’s Future Generations
Buzz’s Adam Williams talks to the inaugural Future Generations Commissioner of Wales, a unique post created with the aim of assessing and safeguarding the nation’s economic and social wellbeing in decades to come.
What is the main role of the Future Generations Commissioner? The role was established through the Wellbeing Of Future Generations Act and passed in the Senate in 2015. My job is to make sure that our public institutions demonstrate how they’re thinking about the needs of future generations when making decisions, and hold them to account.
Has your own background influenced your view on which decisions to make? I grew up in Ely in Cardiff – an area often at the wrong end of the poverty, life expectancy and health statistics. I grew up with a sense of frustration. But, because my parents worked, I went to school in north Cardiff – Whitchurch, the leafy suburbs – and there was a real difference between the aspirations of kids I went to school with and kids I played in the street with.
Why should a child’s life chances be determined on the basis of where they’re born – or when they’re born? For the first time in hundreds of years, this generation of young people’s life chances could be worse than their parents. They’re much less likely to be able to afford a house, they’re potentially paying for costs incurred by climate change, paying pensions, dealing with the costs of an increasingly aging population. We really only make decisions on the basis of whether it’s going to be good or not for the next election.
Since the Future Generations Act’s inception in 2015, how have the four challenge areas – climate change, economic change, population change, and citizen disengagement – improved in Wales? We’re trying to change things in the long term, but there have been some really positive changes as a result of new legal requirements around the Future Generations Act. The Welsh parliament was the first in the UK to declare a climate emergency and set out a plan to reach net zero – but we’re still not doing enough; there’s no country in the world, other than Namibia, who is doing enough to keep global temperature rises below two degrees. At the moment the world is heading for about 2.8 degrees, which is kind of catastrophic – that’s why November’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow is going to be so important.
In Wales, there’s been record investment in active travel and public transport over the last couple of years, and the National Forests For Wales plans to plant millions and millions of trees are good for the nature crisis and for reducing carbon. Planning applications now have to take into account their impact on climate.
On demographic change, the pandemic has highlighted some big challenges – combined with an aging population, many in poor health because we just patch them up when they become ill. We’ve seen the strain on the NHS as a result of that. I’ve recommended we ensure carers are paid a living wage, not just the minimum wage, which Government have accepted.
Some programs have taken place as a result of the Future Generations
to problems. A publicly funded program in Gwent is pairing young people and older people, aiming to address the isolation and loneliness epidemic that’s affecting
Act, about intergenerational solutions
both. Another involved local primary school kids just going to spend time befriending adults in the local care home. Some kids taking part previously had the worst attendance, behavioural problems, potentially challenging backgrounds – and in this care home there’s been a 50% reduction in the use of antipsychotic medication since those visits have started, and a 39% reduction in calls to the Ambulance Service. The residents in those homes are engaging with these young people, the young people are engaging with them, and behaviour is improved in the school.
We’ve seen big changes in workforce during the pandemic: two years ago, who would have thought 30%- 40% of us would work from home? Carers can better balance work and family life, and not travelling to work has reduced carbon emissions. However, up to 35% of jobs are currently being lost to automation and artificial intelligence – this is predicted to increase in the future, and could impact people who are already vulnerable, the poorest in society, ethnically diverse communities.
I’m challenging the Government to address that and the climate emergency. We could create 60,000 new jobs in Wales in the green industries of the future: electric vehicle infrastructure, home insulation, work in
energy – good jobs. But we need to target those jobs at people who are currently not in those industries. There’s definitely not enough Black people, enough women, disabled people.
Although citizen disengagement is still an issue, the Future Generations Act asked, in our national survey, is there a sense of community in your area? Two years ago, 52% of Welsh people said yes; last November it had increased to 74%. However, there are still substantial challenges in terms of engagement in the political system – the number of people who feel it can make a difference to them.
In addition to working with future generations, have you done anything to influence the present generation? We’ve reduced the voting age in Wales to 16, which is brilliant. Politicians are still very much guided by the way in which people are going to vote them either in or out of office: that means we really need to get current generations on board. I did a lecture yesterday where I was talking about people’s brains almost being hardwired to ignore the future. It’s why we’re so bad at paying into our pensions; it’s why we’ve ignored the climate crisis despite knowing about it. I think there’s a dual issue.
As you don’t have the power to make things happen, or stop them happening, how can you ensure a public body has behaved in accordance with the Act? You’re absolutely right: I don’t have that power. I can’t intervene in individual cases. My job is to kind of be the conscience on behalf of future generations, to inform how public bodies take decisions; to monitor the progress they’re making and advise them on things they could be doing, and look at where there are systematic problems.
I also have powers of review on particular issues. I’ve just done a big review into way that we spend money in Wales. We’ve still got public bodies buying ambulances and refuse trucks, and they’re still procuring diesel fleets, in the middle of a climate emergency. I’m asking them to
renewable
justify that. Universal basic income, which a few years ago was seen as pie in the sky, is something I’ve been recommending, and now we’re going to pilot UBI in Wales. A lot of my time is spent building a movement of people doing brilliant things, and making sure we’re getting more of them.
What other issues in Wales today do you believe are most important to tackle? At the moment, we’ve got a crisis in our NHS because of COVID – but actually, the NHS has been in crisis for very many years, because we’re not turning off the tap in terms of demand on the system. Every single November and December – and this year will be worse – we get the same headlines, ambulance waiting times increasing, the system hits breaking point. Every year we just throw more money at A&E.
I want to mention jobs and skills for the future. Wales, driven by the Future Generations Act, has had a curriculum reform, which aims to produce ethical and informed citizens, creative and enterprising individuals – to equip young people not just to go into another industrial-age job, but for a life well lived. Increasingly, menial tasks in our jobs will be done by AI or automation, so critical skills for the future are things robots can’t do:
empathy. These skills are crucial – that is, until part of the curriculum falls off a cliff aged 14, the GCSE system is teaching you how to pass tests, and you regurgitate everything you learned in two years in a two-hour exam. That’s utter bullshit. We’re still facing big issues in how to reform our education system.
How have the general public responded to the Act? Today, the Irish government came to talk to us about it, because they’re intrigued, but if I started chatting with someone at my local pub, there’s a fair likelihood they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. In an ideal world, everyone would know about it. From my postbag and the number of people who engage on social media, I think it’s improving, but it takes a long time to get those messages out.
People might talk about what we need to do on climate and other government decisions, and not necessarily know a lot of that is driven by the Future Generations Act. In some ways, does it matter? Or is what matters is the fact that they are talking about it, and it’s in their consciousness?
How well do you believe the Act has improved long-term living standards? A lot of work has gone on tackling inequalities, but there are still endemic problems. Poverty levels have not really shifted – one of the reasons I’m proposing universal basic income. Gains in life expectancy have improved in most countries every year, but have levelled off in Wales. I’ve always said this is an expedition rather than a journey: the things we’re doing now will pay dividends in 10 to 20 years’ time. It’s difficult to predict.
Read the full interview at
buzzmag.co.uk creative skills, cooperation, collaboration, and
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