Economic Recovery Implementation Plan: Scottish Government response to the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery

3. Monitoring Progress towards our Outcomes

117. Delivering wellbeing to the people of Scotland is central to Scotland’s National Performance Framework. To understand how well we are performing as a wellbeing economy, we need to ensure we are monitoring more than GDP and headline indicators.

118. In order to capture an assessment of the needs of both current and future generations, we will adopt a four capitals approach to understand how we are impacting on our key economic, human, social and environmental assets, and thereby gain an understanding of the long-term strength and resilience of the economy, environment and society. This approach will help us understand the interconnectedness of the drivers of a wellbeing economy.

119. To support this, we will develop a Wellbeing Economy monitoring framework, based on the National Performance Framework, that will assess how well Scotland performs across the multiple dimensions of wellbeing and whether we are reducing the gaps between groups, as set out in section 2 above. This will provide a detailed understanding not just of how the economy develops and changes as a result of COVID-19 its impact on people’s wellbeing and living standards, it will also provide us with a clear and robust measure of the impact of our policies and interventions. We will use this understanding to review and refine our policies to ensure that the actions we take are fully contributing to our longer-term strategic aims

120. Collectively this work will aim to set a clear direction for our economy. It will represent our long-term goals and should provide a framework within which we can make decisions that benefit the wellbeing of all of Scotland’s people. The COVID-19 crisis has shown that we can make fundamental changes to how the economy operates and do so in a way that is to the benefit of all.

121. We are presented now with an opportunity to redesign how we think about our economy and what work and wellbeing mean. To achieve meaningful change, we need to work together, that means government and the wider public sector, it means business and trade unions alongside individuals and our communities. Each will have a role to play in this new partnership approach and change will not be immediate but it can be transformational for our economy and the wellbeing of Scotland’s people.