Carnegie UK Trust calls on Scottish Government to legislate on wellbeing

• Influential report builds on earlier work and looks at how Scotland performs on wellbeing and what it should do next
• Scotland seen as a leader in wellbeing but more needs to be done if it is to improve people’s lives

Carnegie UK Trust, today launches a new report ‘Shifting the Dial in Scotland’ which looks at how wellbeing is measured in Scotland. This latest work looks at what needs to be done to embed wellbeing into Scottish government policies.  Its key recommendation calls on the Scottish Government to legislate to embed the National Performance Framework to ensure that wellbeing is at the heart of all government policy.

Shifting the Dial in Scotland, has been influenced by the international wellbeing movement, led by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which draws on the failure of GDP to measure what matters to people.  Case studies from other countries suggests that focusing on measuring wellbeing, rather than just GDP, can improve the lives of the people of Scotland because government policies will be wellbeing orientated.

Jennifer Wallace, Policy Manager at the Carnegie UK Trust and author of the report said:“The advancement of wellbeing is the founding principle of the Carnegie Trusts. It is only right that in our centenary year, we take a closer look at what steps are needed to make wellbeing an essential part of policy in Scotland and the rest of the UK if not internationally.”

The report recognises that Scotland’s Scottish National Performance Framework is an international leader in wellbeing approaches to public policy.  This view is endorsed by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, an international expert on the issues and recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.  The report from the Trust celebrates this but also notes that wellbeing isn’t yet at the core of Scottish policies and more needs to be done to embed the approach.

Jennifer Wallace added: “We began this work in 2011 on the premise that wellbeing should not just be a measure of GDP and the money in people’s pockets. There are many more factors to take into account although the measure of wellbeing should complement, not replace GDP.  What we would like to see is Scotland build on the great start that it has made by enshrining wellbeing measures into legislation to ensure things like mental health, education and other wider measures of society are always in mind for any future policy development.”

Recommendations from the report are:

• Embed Scotland Performs and the National Performance Framework in legislation in order to provide a year on year study into Scotland’s social progress
• Review the impact of the National Performance Framework in relation to its use in policy development
• Capitalise on the interest from civil society organisations to share thoughts on wellbeing and put Scotland at the heart of the debate
• Engage with the public, Scotland performs is alone in international planning in not involving the public in the debate
• Support Single Outcome Agreements as part of local wellbeing through the Community Planning Partnerships. At the moment this is done on a limited basis and a trick is being missed
• Understand more about wellbeing policy by carrying out holistic reviews of how much impact individual policies have on wellbeing

A full copy of the report and previous work on the same topic can be downloaded here;
http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/2013/shifting-the-dial-in-scotland