Politicians are failing our children and our children’s children. We must protect future generations

There are 4.2 million children living in poverty in our country. It is a damning and depressing indictment of government and our society.

Beyond this sobering statistic is the hunger that children suffer each and every day, unsuitable and unstable housing, the increasing impact of climate change and the diminishing of opportunity and children’s life chances.

This tragic situation has not just come about through political choices, as harmful as individual policies can be. It has also occurred due to a dearth of political direction and vision, and an absence of proactive, collective will and a failure to consider future generations in decision making.

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To an extent, we are all culpable. We are failing our children and our children’s children by allowing our politicians to make short-term, siloed decisions.

But I know there is another way. For seven years, I had arguably one of the most rewarding jobs a public servant could ask for. The people I looked to represent couldn’t always write to me to tell me what a good (or bad!) job I might have been doing, in fact most of them could not speak, and certainly did not vote.

That is because as the first future generations commissioner for Wales, and indeed the world, I represented not only Wales’ younger generations, but also those citizens who are not yet born, namely our children’s children and beyond.

As commissioner I had a legal responsibility to represent the future generations of Wales, and to listen to and help build the future of communities, and I had to constantly ask the question: what do we want to leave behind, for our children, grandchildren and the generations that follow? 

The Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015) set out the legal obligations that all public bodies in Wales had to consider, to help improve our country’s social, environmental, economic and cultural wellbeing.

While there is of course much more still to be done, I believe that the achievements so far have helped to lay a blueprint for a new, bold, healthier, prosperous, and more resilient society in Wales. The act challenged us to change how we think about the way things work in Wales, for the better. And it did.

We now need political parties in Westminster to show the same ambition, and roll-out a UK-wide Future Generations Act.

Neither political party has provided a good enough plan for our future generations to date. The Conservatives have focused on a national service, pensioners and taxes. Meanwhile, while the Labour Party has identified child poverty as an issue, they have not yet fully committed to the solutions needed to tackle this generational crisis.

Labour’s Child Health Action Plan is a welcome step in the right direction, and their ambition for the next generation to be the healthiest ever is certainly laudable.

However, the change that our children desperately need will only come about if there is a tangible, joined-up, sustainable direction of travel that underpins a party’s programme for government.

A Future Generations Act would empower local communities, and public bodies, to help build a better future for younger generations. It would hold our institutions accountable to tangible, long-term policies that improve society, health, and the economy to make the UK the best place to grow up.

There is already of groundswell of support for such a change. Ed Miliband highlighted the concept in his book Big Ideas. Former Green Party Leader, Caroline Lucas MP, has long argued for similar legislation, and the founder of the Big Issue, Lord John Bird, has previously campaigned for a cross-party Future Generations Bill.

Just last week, the House of Commons liaison committee, made up of the chairs of all the parliamentary select committees, issued a report calling for new mechanisms to be established in parliament and within government to ensure the interests of future generations are considered.

It is not just politicians either. Kids’ food brand and early years advocates, Ella’s Kitchen, are also calling for a UK wide Future Generations Act to be adopted, so that political leaders place the health and well-being of our children at the heart of government decision-making. We are seeing other countries beyond Wales consider similar measures too, and the UN Secretary General has also proposed a Future Generations Declaration.

Sticking plasters simply are not going to cut it any longer, we need fundamental change. If political parties want to lift children out of poverty, provide them with security, and give them back their future, then they must commit to a Future Generations Act.

Sophie Howe is the former future generations commissioner for Wales and Wales TEDX Speaker.

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