Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Bill: consultation

Annex B: Stakeholder views

As lead Minister supporting policy development for the WSD Bill, the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights, Mr Harvie, has engaged across public organisations and third sector groups to hear views on the Bill. This included the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe.

The Deputy First Minister has also discussed the Bill with key organisations who have an interest in this area.

Alongside this, Scottish Government officials have engaged with a range of organisations and stakeholders nationally, UK-wide, and internationally to develop our understanding of emerging ‘future generations’ policy at a UN and country level, and to gain further insights into how the National Outcomes shape policy and delivery decisions.

We also note that in July 2023, over 200 charities, economists, businesses, trade unions, and academics (including Carnegie UK, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, Scottish International Development Alliance, and Oxfam UK) sent an open letter to the First Minister calling on action to fully realise a Wellbeing Economy.^[17] They recommended that clearer sustainable development duties should be defined in a Bill to ensure the interests of future generations are central to decision making. They also called for the creation of a new Future Generations Commissioner to provide advocacy, accountability, and support for public bodies to work towards these sustainable development duties and the National Outcomes.

Similarly, the Auditor General for Scotland has stated that a long-term approach to policy and decisions is needed to address deep-seated issues such as climate change, low and falling life expectancy, and widening health inequalities.^[18] These feed demands on health and social care and risk the sustainability of services – a concern shared by Public Health Scotland.^[19]

We have engaged closely with several of these groups and are also seeking the views of others through this consultation. In the engagement undertaken to date it has become clear to the Scottish Government that we need to consider:

• strengthening duties to ensure all policy and delivery decisions are focused on achieving wellbeing and sustainable development
• more effective accountability to ensure all decisions sufficiently uphold the interests of future generations

In developing the Bill, we therefore have an opportunity to consider how legislation can ensure better decision making which has a focus on sustainable long-term outcomes.