Online Conference Write-Up: Morning Sessions

On Wednesday 31st March 2010, over one hundred delegates from across the South West convened at the Assembly Rooms Bath for the South West Observatory’s 7th Annual Conference. The morning sessions of the event, themed around ‘Health, Wealth and Happiness: What Makes a Prosperous Region?’, sought to stimulate discussion and debate about our notions of prosperity and well-being. The afternoon took this further to consider how ‘prosperity’, in its many forms, might be realised in the South West.

• You can now access presentations which were given on the day by clicking here.

• For a write-up of the morning session, compiled by the South West Observatory Core Unit team, please see below. To access the afternoon session, please click here.  

Sustainable Development Indicators; as well as more direct well-being indicators - ‘the social science of happiness’ as proposed by Richard Layard.

Dr Gabriel Scally (Regional Director of Public Health for the South West) continued the discussion around prosperity, with a presentation focusing on the importance of health in this debate. Gabriel framed his debate around the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Constitution preamble: ‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’ He looked at some of the social determinants which might go into our notions of prosperity and considered some of the issues which affected their selection as indicators. Drawing on the Stiglitz Commission’s Report on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Gabriel highlighted some of the recent key messages: in particular that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being. Gabriel contrasted our system to that in Bhutan, where a Gross National Happiness (GNH) measure is applied. Drawing on this, the presentation affirmed that our well-being faced enormous pressure from obesity and rounded off to consider some of the interventions, as adopted in other countries, which could assist – in particular in relation to childhood obesity.

Dr Sara Eppel (Head of Sustainable Products and Consumers at DEFRA; former Director of Policy at the Sustainable Development Commission) offered the third perspective on prosperity, looking more specifically at sustainable development indicators and well-being measures. She referred to the Government’s Sustainable Development Indicators and explained the framework. This focuses on sustainable consumption and production, climate change and energy, natural resource protection and enhancement and creating sustainable communities and a fairer world, but decouples from this emissions, resource use and waste and takes into account a gambit of factors ranging from society, to justice and equality, health and education. The presentation also explored life satisfaction ratings by socio-economic class, demonstrating the link between those in managerial and professional occupations and higher life satisfaction ratings as opposed to those in more routine/manual occupations or those unemployed. It also looked at regional dissatisfaction and highlighted the South West as having one of the lowest dissatisfaction ratings.

Leading into a panel debate on ‘what is prosperity?’, delegates heard from Matthew Taylor (Chief Executive, Royal Society for the Arts) who stressed the importance of civic participation, of creating responsible citizens and of creating happiness as a by-product – not pursued for its own sake. He suggested that we live in an era where people want cheap flights as well as action on climate change, affordable houses but not built where they themselves live – in essence ‘Swedish welfare on American tax rates’. Accordingly, he suggested that we need to move from an us-and-them political engagement to an us-and-us one, with citizens engaging with the trade-offs between different interests and objectives, and understanding the altruistic role they themselves can play in creating a better future.

Delegates also heard from Professor Tom Schuller (Director of think-tank Longview, Director of the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning and former Head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation) on the role of life-long learning and well-being. Tom opened his discussion by looking at well-being as a dynamic state in which the individual is able to develop their potential, work productively and creatively, build strong and positive relationships with others and contribute to their community. He pointed towards life satisfaction, mental health and posited that these are both improved when we feel we have control over our destiny. Referring to the recently published NIACE Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning, Tom expanded on the role life-long learning can play in improving life for older people through the power and control which it offers learners. Tom highlighted the case study from a residential home where, through life-long learning, observers saw the use of medication declining by a half, the use of incontinence pads declining by two thirds, in addition to specific positive individual cases, all leading to higher reported well-being

Dame Suzi Leather (Chair, Charity Commission) and Nigel Jump (Chief Economist, South West RDA) had an opportunity before the panel debate to lay out their ‘stall’ in relation to prosperity.

Dame Suzi underlined the need to develop notions of prosperity that acknowledges civic participation and importantly looks after the most vulnerable in society. She drew parallels between the richness of our soil and the richness of our society, stressing the importance not just of families and friends but of societal groups (e.g. charities and pressure groups, political parties, local resident groups).

Whilst agreeing with previous presentations, Nigel Jump went on to suggest that economic growth was not in any sense ‘evil’ and that there were important, different notions of economic prosperity which are all essential to the debate. In particular, Nigel emphasised the differences between absolute and relative prosperity, stressing that we value relative prosperity more than gaining absolute prosperity whereby it is natural to do better economically than previous generations and whereby we naturally want our children to do better than us. Nigel also looked the different elements of prosperity including inter-generational and sustained prosperity.

Q) Do we need to go to low (or very low) growth in order to be prosperous? (in reaction to Layard’s assertion)

• Matthew Taylor (MT) suggested that no society has ever survived without growth however there was a question in terms of behaviour and civil society – where is the trade-off? Referring to John Kay on growth and expanding human choices, MT argued that consuming ‘more stuff’ was not the same as expanding choices although there were certain areas where there was now more choice – food equity, for instance

Q) How might civic participation and society be aligned with market forces and the state with a concentration of economic power?

• Professor Martin Boddy (MB) spoke about the levers of the state, hinting that these might not be as powerful as some think. MT referred to news from the day (the Prime Minister made an announcement on mutuals) and questioned why it should be that it is much harder for a charity to fail than for a business. Dame Suzi Leather (SL) countered, arguing that charities do fail and do die but there was a tremendous move – highlighted in the question – from the private to the third sector to come in and deliver. Nigel Jump (NJ) asserted that the market was not something separate from you and me – it is ‘you and me’ – and measures what we value. MT disagreed, arguing that the market is quite different from you and me.

Q) Would having less financial resources and using less natural resources be in the interests of the common good?

• Sara Eppel (SE) talked about the work on carbon accounting and suggested that this had been done in too much detail and was too complex. She argued that there was a case for doing the simpler bits – carbon accountability on shopping bills and improving ‘carbon literacy’ and that more awareness was needed in terms of carbon impact, of decisions made and a better understanding of embedded emissions. SL cited  war-time Britain and pointed out the positive impacts it had on behaviour – in particular food behaviour and suggested that more now needed to be done on food impacts.

Q) What are the likely impacts of an ageing population on society and prosperity?

• Professor Tom Schuller (TS) suggested that we need to take people’s learning needs seriously and urged that we rethink the age-brackets through which we currently categorise learning, for instance, in order to better understand the lay of the land and help people work through the challenges. He spoke also about inter-generational issues – for example the Browne Review of HEIs and the possible implications of removing the cap on tuition fees. This could see a generational leap, with more grandparents supporting grandchildren through college and university than parents.

Q) Should we be looking for a single definition and measure?

• NJ pointed towards 2 or 3 indicators which were important to keep track of but that it was important too to have a better handle of people’s values. SE suggested the 68 SD Indicators were useful and gave a finer granularity – but concurred on the idea of 2 or 3 main indicators. SL suggested that as a descriptor it is useful and that for the purposes of research a basket of indicators is helpful but that we should not attach a monetary value to these. TS concluded by stating that the process of how we measure was the important factor to keep in mind.