A Welsh law designed to ensure future generations in Wales have at least the same quality of life as today lacks teeth and is too vague, a Senedd committee has been told.
The Senedd's equality committee was looking at the decade since the Welsh Parliament passing the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in 2015.
The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act is about improving the social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing of Wales.
The act gives a legally-binding common purpose – called seven wellbeing goals – for national government, local government, local health boards, and other specified public bodies to follow.
However Labour MS Mick Antoniw told the committee it lacks impetus and risks being a "bureaucratic tick-box exercise". The former chief law officer for the Welsh Government was involved in early stages of scrutiny of the then-bill.
He said: "It started off... as a sustainability bill until no-one could actually define what they meant by sustainability... came up with the term future generations and... that might be seen to be equally nebulous."
As well as describing the act as vague the former minister suggested Wales' future generations commissioner has few – if any – powers to hold public bodies to account. "I always thought that was a mistake right from the beginning, [you] don't give it proper teeth to actually have the impact that shifts decision-making," he said.
Professor Calvin Jones, an environmental economist, said the commissioner and his predecessor had told him their only "big stick" is to "name and shame" which they are reluctant to do. "As soon as you get the stick out people take their eyes off the carrot," he said. "There's this constant tension between wanting to chivvy the laggards along but realising once you get a reputation as somebody who's an auditor effectively then games start being played and boxes start being ticked.
Most Read
"That 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."
Prof Jones warned of a major lack of funding for the commissioner's office, describing the money allocated by the Welsh Government as akin to using a sticking plaster on the Titanic. "Let's remember we are trying to guide a £30bn public sector with a body which is funded to the tune of £1.6m per annum," he told the committee. "Now that is absolutely laughable."
He said Audit Wales should have more of a role in holding public bodies to account in a similar way to their bookkeeping duties.
The academic called for a legal duty to ensure at least a 0.1% "haircut" for every public body captured by the act, generating a total of about £30m a year. "Without that any future government that wants to hobble the office will just not give it money," he said.
Eleanor MacKillop, a research associate at the Wales Centre for Public Policy, raised concerns about institutional complexity, with corporate joint committees, public services boards, regional partnership boards, corporate safeguarding boards, and councils in Wales.
Giving evidence Prof Jones warned of a culture of "box-ticking and backside-covering" hampering innovation and transformation in the Welsh public sector. He said: "We have consensus politics in Wales: it's a consensus of 19 rabbits and a polar bear – the polar bear says what happens and all the rabbits say: 'Yes sir, yes ma'am'."
He questioned the ambition of some public bodies' wellbeing plans, saying ministers similarly fail to set themselves stretching milestones and timescales they can be held to. Prof Jones reflected on then-First Minister Mark Drakeford's decision to scrap plans for an M4 relief road, pointing out that the decision letter did not refer to the act as a reason.
Don’t miss
He told the committee: "He said it's because it's too expensive and we have a different view of the environmental costs and a part of me thought: is that deliberate because if he places this 'no' on the basis of the act it's going to be open to judicial review?"
But, on the other hand, Prof Jones said it would be difficult to imagine the Drakeford-led government pushing ahead with policies such as the default 20mph without the act.
In written evidence Derek Walker, who succeeded Sophie Howe as commissioner in 2023, said the act contains no specific enforcement mechanisms – making judicial review the only option.
He wrote: "This is a difficult and costly procedure. It might mean only a class of people rather than individuals can use it. I understand that none of the very few attempts to use the act in judicial review have obtained permission from the court to proceed."