\n The Senedd\u2019s equality committee took evidence as part of follow-up scrutiny a decade on from the Welsh parliament passing the Well-being of Future Generations Act in 2015.\n<\/p>\n
\n Labour\u2019s Mick Antoniw warned the Act, which aims to put sustainable development at the heart of decision making, lacks impetus and risks being a “bureaucratic tick-box exercise\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Antoniw, who was involved in early stages of scrutiny of the then-bill, said: \u201cIt started off\u2026 as a sustainability bill until no one could actually define what they meant by sustainability\u2026 came up with the term future generations and\u2026 that might be seen to be equally nebulous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n As well as describing the Act as vague, the former minister suggested Wales\u2019 future generations commissioner has few \u2013 if any \u2013 powers to hold public bodies to account.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cI always thought that was a mistake right from the beginning, [you] don\u2019t give it proper teeth to actually have the impact that shifts decision making.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Calvin Jones, an environmental economist, said the commissioner and his predecessor told him their only \u201cbig stick\u201d is to \u201cname and shame\u201d which they are reluctant to do. \u201cAs soon as you get the stick out, people take their eyes off the carrot,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s this constant tension between wanting to chivvy the laggards along but realising once you get a reputation as somebody who\u2019s an auditor effectively then games start being played and boxes start being ticked.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThat tension has always stymied the way in which the commissioners have been prepared to name and shame which was, I think, the only serious bit of teeth in the Act.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Prof Jones, who left Cardiff University in May, suggested Audit Wales should have more of a role in holding public bodies to account in a similar way to their bookkeeping duties.\n<\/p>\n
\n He\u00a0warned of a major lack of funding for the commissioner\u2019s office, describing the money allocated by the Welsh Government as akin to using a sticking plaster on the Titanic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Senedd\u2019s equality committee took evidence as part of follow-up scrutiny a decade on from the Welsh parliament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-214806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114747471617908319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}