Natural Capital Committee needs to be made permanent
5 Jun 2014 11:01 AM
The Government’s ‘Natural Capital
Committee’, set up to check how far the Government bases its policies on
the cost the benefits the UK derives from its natural environment — such
as clean air, water, food and recreation — should be put on a permanent
statutory footing, the Environmental Audit Committee
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Chair's comments
Chair of the Committee, Joan Walley MP,
said:
“Improving the quality of life in the UK for us
and for future generations will depend on how well we measure social well-being
and the free environmental services we all rely on to live – like
pollination, fresh water and clean air. It is important that the momentum
behind the Natural Capital Committee’s (NCC) work is maintained. With its
current remit finishing at the time of the General Election, there is a risk
that the required longer term changes it identifies will be overlooked. The
Government should signal its continuing commitment to the NCC and its work by
putting it on a long-term statutory footing and by responding formally to the
NCC’s annual reports, starting immediately with its latest March 2014
report. I would like to see that Government response accepting the NCC’s
key recommendation for a 25 year plan for improving natural
capital.”
Background
The
NCC was set up in May 2012 with a three-year remit that ends just before the
General Election. It has produced 2 progress reports so far, highlighting gaps
in the available data on these factors and calling for a 25-year plan to plug
the gaps and start using the information in Government decisions. But the
Government has yet to respond in detail to those NCC reports.
Well-being
The
environment is just one strand of a wider view of people’s well-being,
which also addresses people’s economic and social circumstances, as well
as their view of the satisfaction they get from their lives. In November 2010,
the Prime Minister launched a programme to measure well-being to complement
economic statistics like ‘GDP’ in “measuring our progress as
a country”.
However, more than three years since then, the Committee
note, our quality of life is not yet receiving the same attention as those
economic metrics. The Committee highlight the links being uncovered in the
statistics between people’s view of their well-being and their background
and circumstances — for example the link between well-being and
people’s health, marital status or religion. But the MPs warn that the
data are not yet sufficiently robust to support a single metric that could
encompass well-being and which could be set alongside
GDP.
Chair of the Committee, Joan Walley MP,
said:
“The Government-commissioned work on
‘subjective well-being’ is producing valuable new insights into our
society, showing not just the state of citizens’ life-satisfaction or
anxiety but also how well that correlates to their particular circumstances or
where they live. The data will be at the heart of the debate on inequality in
our society.”
“The Government should start using the already
available data to ‘wellbeing-proof’ existing policies. And it needs
to start planning now for how the statistics should be used proactively to
identify new policies. Without that essential step, the number-crunching will
be just interesting, when it could actually be helping to reshape Government
policies for the better.”