Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you, convener, and good morning to colleagues on the committee. As the member in charge of the Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill, I am looking forward to answering your questions.

The bill is about putting wellbeing and sustainable development at the heart of public sector decision making. It seeks to create a clear legal framework to help public bodies to think long term, act sustainably and promote the wellbeing of current and future generations. Committee members will be aware that I feel passionately that we have to do more to further embed wellbeing and sustainable development as the key drivers that inform policies, decisions and actions that are taken across the public sector.

Scotland faces major challenges, and they are interconnected. They include the climate and nature emergencies, poverty and inequality, and they threaten the wellbeing of people today, including our constituents, and future generations. Too often, short-term priorities have driven decisions over long-term sustainability. That is understandable, but it has led to decades of decisions that harm the environment, entrench inequalities and will make the lives of future generations worse. To fix that problem, we need to embed wellbeing and sustainable development as core considerations in decision making in order to get policy coherence. We need to support public authorities to do that—to think long term, act sustainably and put wellbeing at the heart of their work.

Attempts by the Scottish Government to embed wellbeing and sustainable development at the heart of public sector decision making have not gone far enough. Committee members will recall that, before the last election, there were more than 150 organisations campaigning for us to put those ambitions into legislation. Without a clear legal framework, public bodies are left without the tools, the guidance or the accountability to make meaningful progress and deliver joined-up thinking. We need a different approach.

My bill does three things. It places a statutory duty on public bodies to have due regard to the need to promote wellbeing and sustainable development. It defines those terms in law, to provide clarity and consistency. I am conscious that, over the years, we have had numerous references to sustainable development in law, but we do not have a definition of it. Finally, my bill establishes an independent future generations commissioner, drawing on the successful Welsh model, to provide guidance, share best practice and hold public bodies to account.

Public bodies face real challenges and pressures, and that is why the commissioner’s role is not only about oversight, but about support. That is critical. The commissioner would help public bodies to meet their responsibilities and improve outcomes over time. There is a challenge in that Governments and Parliaments change too often for us to get that consistent focus on long-term issues. That makes it even more challenging to tackle those issues. I have been looking at different pieces of legislation, reviews and reports that have been produced over the time of our Parliament, and we do not have that consistent, joined-up thinking and accountability. That makes it even more challenging to tackle the issues that are in front of us, and stakeholders with deep expertise in the area have made it clear that we need to do more. It is not just a campaigning issue; it is an issue of policy coherence, joined-up thinking and action.

I worry that, without an independent body to offer continuous and dedicated oversight, Scotland will continue to fall behind on the United Nations sustainable development goals and we will see a cycle of short-term fixes. The bill is a chance to change that.

I have found it constructive to hear the questions that the committee has asked and the discussions that you have had thus far. I thank all those who have given evidence in Parliament or provided written evidence for their helpful insights. I have been reflecting on the issues that have been raised and I look forward to discussing them with the committee this morning.

It considered the definition to overlap with existing human rights protections. I go back to the point that I made earlier. It does not duplicate existing rights or enforcement mechanisms, and it does not go into the specific human rights of key groups in society. It is about a general wellbeing approach, which affects us all. That is the distinction.

The key issue is having work done jointly by different commissioners, so that they do not try to do the same thing. The work that is being done by the children’s commissioner is fantastic, but it does not think about 2050, because that is for future generations. A huge amount of work needs to be done in this area, and that is not currently happening. I have absolutely no worry about overlap, because the experience in Wales is that joint work is really good.

I do not know whether you are suggesting that we should strengthen the definition of wellbeing in the bill.

Absolutely. The point of the bill—the point of having the combination of the duty, the definition and the commissioner—is to get on with delivering that systemic change. The support, oversight and scrutiny functions are critically important. You can see that if you look at the experience of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, which has carried out two major reviews: one into how the Welsh Government has implemented the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and one into how that act has informed public bodies’ procurement decisions. We can learn lessons from what has been done in Wales.

Having a commissioner in Scotland with teeth is critically important, because that is how we would bring about that systemic change. You need the oversight to be in place, you need the work that is done by public bodies to be supported and you need to have that scrutiny function.

The issue is not at the top of my agenda. Joint working and collaboration are the way to move forward. If people think that I can strengthen the definition in some way, I am happy to look at that, but it was not the overarching issue that was raised in the evidence or stakeholder feedback when I introduced my bill.

We also have the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and we have rights embedded in law, but the bill brings a broader approach in terms of sustainable development and wellbeing. There are also the outcomes that are defined by the Scottish Government in the national performance framework. I think that there is scope for more discussion, and part of that is about collaborative work.

One of the things that I have recognised from the outset is the challenge of getting the definition perfect for now and for five or 10 years down the line. I wanted to have a focus on this so that we raised it up the agenda and enabled organisations to focus on it, too. The collaborative work is critical.

Is there another question that you would like to ask me?

Having looked at the frameworks that are in place, I am very conscious that I want to get that joined-up thinking, which has not happened thus far. It is not about a lack of ambition or support—it has just not been happening, and the challenge lies in being able to deliver it.

The national performance framework was introduced in 2007. There are regular thoughts about the issues in Parliament, but they are not joined up. We need both policy coherence and accountability. It has been interesting to look at how other legislatures across the world are joining up their decision making and holding organisations to account. The key is to have support, policy guidance and a backstop that says that this is a duty and we need to be doing it now.

Those issues go together. The issue of how we ensure that the principles of the bill and the public duty are actually delivered is critical, so that question is important.

Some people think that the “have due regard” wording is not sufficiently strong. However, if we look at the framing of the duty, we see that it is based on the public sector equality duty, which has been very impactful since it was introduced in 2010. It is not a new framing—it is something that public sector organisations are well experienced in doing. It is about ensuring that, when guidance on sustainable development principles is produced, organisations are accountable for making the principles deliverable. That is the critical point. We all love the principles of sustainable development, but there is currently a critical gap in terms of implementing them.

Having evidence from the commissioner will be important, so that aspect is critical.

I will let Caroline Mair come in on that.

That report highlights that the joined-up thinking and support for organisations have been critical and have started to change outcomes. I can give some practical examples of where there has been change. A new hospital was being built in Swansea, and the then Future Generations Commissioner for Wales asked what was being done about environmental impact. The response was, “We’re NHS Wales—that’s not our job.” The commissioner pushed hard on the matter, and a solar farm was built at the hospital that generates £1 million a year, which goes straight into NHS Wales.

Another practical example is the metro work that has been done in Wales. That has made significant changes to public transport, with increased passenger use, and it too was a direct result of the work of the commissioner. The approach has also involved reducing fares in areas of deprivation.

I am not saying that those things are happening everywhere or that such initiatives account for every single change that has been made, but those are practical examples of policy changes that have been made as a result of the commissioner’s reports and engagement with significant public sector bodies in Wales. The public sector investment that is being made now will deliver both short-term and longer-term benefits to people in Wales.

I absolutely believe that we need to have both legislative change and the commissioner in place to push that forward. It is partly a matter of raising awareness across the public sector. There are lots of pressures, and people have to make short-term decisions. That is a reality of public sector life. The important thing is to push wellbeing and sustainable development up the agenda and share best practice.

Some excellent work is being done in different areas of Scotland, but it has not been replicated. You mentioned the excellent work that has been done in North Ayrshire, and I note that Aberdeen Heat & Power has existed for more than 20 years. There are some really good organisations. However, there is also risk. A commissioner would help public sector organisations to avoid taking risky decisions that could result in bad outcomes. Given the risk-averse nature of decision making, we need to share both best practice for what works and challenges that need to be overcome. That is really important.

Having a clear public duty pushes wellbeing and sustainable development up the agenda, and having definitions puts them centre stage. That approach means that, when public sector organisations make decisions—when a new building is being planned or new infrastructure is being put in place—wellbeing and sustainable development can be on the agenda. That is not the case at the moment. It is a question of building on and sharing best practice and enabling public sector organisations across the country to deliver wellbeing and sustainable development. The critical change is to have the definitions, the duty and the advice and guidance.