Well-being inquiry

In this report we have examined two ongoing Government-sponsored initiatives intended to increase the measurement and use of sustainable development metrics. One is the project by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for ‘Measuring National Well-being’

which aims to identify the state of each of the ‘capitals’ under the three pillars of sustainable development—economic, social and environmental (or natural) capital. The other is Natural Capital Committee (NCC) which seeks to address one of those pillars—natural capital.

Natural capital needs to be ‘hard wired’ into policy-making, but it is currently inadequately measured. The Government should give clear encouragement to the work that the NCC is taking forward. To maintain the momentum of the NCC’s work past its current remit ending in 2015, the Government should put the NCC on a long-term statutory footing and respond formally to the NCC’s annual reports. The Government should also accept without delay the NCC’s key recommendation for a 25 year plan for improving England’s natural capital, and make it responsible for monitoring the implementation of that plan.

More than three years after the Prime Minister’s declaration that we should be “measuring our progress as a country not just by our standard of living but by our quality of life”, well-being measures are not yet receiving the same attention as economic ones The ONS work on ‘subjective well-being’—capturing the views of individuals about the satisfaction they get from their lives—is producing valuable new insights into people’s satisfaction with society, our environment and our economy. The process of producing a single headline indicator of well-being, which might be considered alongside GDP, could prompt a useful debate about what matters most to people, but it runs the risk of not being accepted by those who do not agree the weightings given to particular components of well-being. Such a move should not be contemplated until a track-record has been built up and a general consensus and acceptance secured on the appropriate component measures of well-being.

Well-being considerations should increasingly drive policy-making, including ‘nudge’

programmes, as the extent and understanding of well-being data is increased. The so far ‘experimental’ nature of the data, and current gaps in understanding of cause and effect, has prompted Government caution. The Government should begin using the already available data to ‘wellbeing-proof’ existing policy proposals, and set out a clear plan for how and in what circumstances the data should start to be used proactively to identify new policies. It is too soon, however, to contemplate the case for a Social Capital Committee, analogous to the NCC.