Appendix—Government response
Introduction
The Government's vision for mainstreaming Sustainable
Development, launched in February 2011, made a commitment to 'making
the necessary decisions now to realise our vision of stimulating
economic growth and tackling the deficit, maximising well-being
in society and protecting our environment, without negatively
impacting on the ability of future generations to do the same.'
The vision gave a specific commitment to 'measure and report our
progress through a new set of sustainable development indicators.'
The purpose of the Sustainable Development Indicators
(SDIs), therefore, is to provide a high level summary of progress
across the three aspects of sustainable development—economic,
environmental and social—with a particular focus on factors
affecting long term and inter-generational progress. The indicators
are generally aggregate or summary statistics, usually providing
trends to show changes over time, used to highlight important
issues. They have been selected to align with the Government's
vision for Sustainable Development, key Government initiatives
(e.g. on social mobility, public health outcomes framework), and
departmental business plans. While individual indicators are likely
to cover economic, social or environmental issues, the essence
of the set of indicators is that different indicators can be examined
together.
Having analysed the responses to the public consultation
on SDIs and taken into consideration the views of the EAC (see
below) work is now underway to develop the first publication of
the streamlined SDI set for publication in summer 2013.
Streamlining the Sustainable Development Indicators
The most recent SDI set (published 2005 to 2010)
consisted of 68 indicators, with many of those indicators comprising
component indicators which were individually assessed. The informal
consultation on sustainable development indicators, launched in
July and closing in October 2012, presented a streamlined set
of 12 high-level headline indicators supplemented by 25 further
indicators. The main reasons for streamlining the indicator set
were:
- To take into account the work
undertaken by the Office for National Statistics to develop a
new set of measures of national well-being (NWB), which measure
progress on current well-being. Given the parallel development
of the NWB measures we propose that it is no longer necessary
to include all of those measures relating to current well-being;
- To allow users to arrive more easily at a summary
of overall progress towards sustainable development;
- To move to an approach which highlights a core
set of headline indicators. This has proved effective in highlighting
sustainable development priorities, and has been followed by a
number of other countries and international institutions (including
the European Commission).
A summary of the responses to the public consultation
was published on March 5 2013.[1]
The Government will issue its response to the headline messages
from the consultation in June 2013 and a full response in the
form of a final set of indicators in the summer.
Response to EAC Recommendations
The Government welcomes the EAC's report into measuring
sustainable development and we have taken careful consideration
of the Committee's recommendations and conclusions. The inquiry
raised some important issues, the incorporation of which will
add considerable value to the final set of indicators. The Government's
response to each of the recommendations is outlined below.
1. As soon as the National Well-being and SDI
measures reach a stable state of development, the ONS and Defra
should consider how a single framework could be produced. We recommend
that this should be done as the UN Statistical Commission's work
on well-being and the post-Rio draft Sustainable Development Goals
take shape. (Paragraph 22)
The two sets of indicators are based on the same
underlying framework covering economic, environment and social
issues, though the national well-being and SDI measures were developed
for different policy and measurement purposes. National well-being
tends to focus on the current well-being of the nation so that
policy makers, businesses, civil society and individuals can make
more rounded decisions about what really matters to people now.
The well-being framework includes a number of environmental and
economic measures, but currently tends towards measuring social
progress. The SDIs are designed to capture progress over a longer
timeframe than the national well-being indicators and the indicators
are balanced across the three pillars of the economy, society
and environment. They comprise leading indicators of future progress,
for example those related to the state of important natural resources.
There is minimum overlap between the individual measures; where
there is, this is necessary to cover the fact that people's well-being
today is influenced by their perceptions of well-being in the
future.
In the short-term it is appropriate that the two
indicator sets are separate. However, once the SDIs have been
published in summer 2013 we will seek feedback on their presentation
from the user community and interested stakeholders, including
users' understanding and interpretation of the indicators in relation
to the well-being measures. We will therefore keep the relationship
between the SDIs and national well-being set under review; as
the Committee notes, there are likely developments in the medium
term that may warrant reconsideration of the question of whether
to retain separate indicator sets or to develop a single framework.
2. The proposed 'debt' SDI should be replaced
with an indicator which reflects the extent to which public sector
debt will be a burden rather than a boon for the next generation.
Bond rates could provide an economic view of the sustainability
of a country's debt. A measure which might reflect social and
environmental purposes behind borrowing should be investigated.
(Paragraph 33)
Public sector borrowing/debt impacts on future generations.
To reflect this, the Government included an SDI on 'Public sector
net debt as a percentage of GDP' in its 2012 consultation. Although
this indicator is useful, it cannot determine whether the debt
is likely to be financially sustainable, or more fundamentally
whether it will provide a benefit to future generations.
Government bond rates have been proposed by the EAC
as an indicator of the sustainability of Government debt. High
interest rates on long-term government bonds indicate a market
belief that levels of Government debt are unsustainable. This
has implications for the economic, social and environmental costs
and benefits for future generations (i.e. more resources spent
on debt servicing and less available for spending on promoting
sustainable development). Although bond rates will also be determined
by a number of other factors, for example investors' preferences
for stocks compared to bonds, the bond rate can still provide
a useful indication of the sustainability of debt.
More fundamentally, when Government borrows, future
tax payers will need to pay back this debt, and so it is important
to understand whether future generations will reap the economic,
social and environmental benefits or not. In order to determine
whether borrowing is sustainable, the cost of repaying the debt
should be weighed-up against the future benefits. Borrowing can
have positive impacts on future generations if it contributes
to long term economic growth and overall welfare. There are many
issues to consider, including whether debt-funded consumption
for redistributive purposes can in fact contribute towards longer-term
welfare. Developing such an indicator is complex and therefore
needs careful consideration.
An indicator that reflects the sustainability of
the UK's debt would complement the debt indicator included in
the 2012 consultation. We are working towards developing a complementary
indicator that serves this purpose. We will aim to include this
indicator in the revised indicator set to be published in the
summer. We will also continue developing our understanding of
how we might reflect better the social and environmental purposes
behind borrowing.
3. Defra should reconsider its proposal to drop
the 'environmental equality' SDI, and explain in its analysis
of the responses to the consultation how it will source the data
for this indicator. It should also review each of the other proposed
SDIs to see how they might measure the range values for how they
affect people's lives, not just the average. (Paragraph 38)
The environmental inequality indicator is a slow-moving
indicator and several of the datasets that are used in its production
are updated less frequently than annually (for example, it is
based on the index of multiple deprivation which has previously
been published in 2004, 2007 and 2010). For this reason the indicator
does not lend itself to being monitored on an annual basis. However,
Defra intends to produce a revised version of the indicator reflecting
that several of the data sources underpinning the previous indicator
are no longer available. Because of changes in data availability,
the new indicator will not be directly comparable to the previous
one but the intention will be to repeat the analysis at a suitable
interval to monitor changes over time.
This indicator will be developed after the main indicator
set is published in the summer and published in the form of a
policy specific indicator report, of the type envisaged in the
announcement on mainstreaming sustainable development in February
2011.
Defra has also reviewed each of the proposed indicators
to assess the scope and value of including distributional information
in addition to averages. Some of the indicators do not lend themselves
to having range values included, such as the environmental indicators
relating to greenhouse gases, wild bird populations and sustainability
of fish stocks. There are also a number of indicators which already
demonstrate a range of impacts. These are:
- Purchases of fruit and vegetables
(supplementary society indicator): includes data for the lowest
income band.
- Infant health (supplementary
society indicator): presented broken down by father's occupation.
- Housing Energy Efficiency
(supplementary environmental indicator): presents energy efficiency
rating by tenure and new or old housing.
- For some other indicators,
data availability precludes making available information on ranges
of impacts. However, the following indicators are ones for which
distributional impacts will be presented to add context, either
alongside the indicator or in the form of links to relevant information:
- Economic prosperity
(headline economy indicator): median income will be presented
alongside income distribution grouped into income bands, to reflect
the range of incomes below the average.
- Long Term Unemployment
(headline economy indicator): this will be presented by age group
to differentiate long term youth unemployment from other long
term unemployment.
- Knowledge and Skills
(headline economy indicator): human capital will be broken into
age groups to identify whether most of the human capital sits
in an ageing workforce, subject to the outcome of ONS's recent
consultation on the measures of human capital.
- Population Demographics
(supplementary economy indicator): population estimates will be
broken down into broad age groups to highlight the changing workforce
and ageing population, where an ageing population may present
distinct pressures on services and resources.
- Healthy Life Expectancy
(headline society indicator): healthy life expectancy will be
presented with a breakdown by deprivation.
4. The 'natural resource use' indicator should
comprise all finite non-fossil fuel resource usage, thus excluding
biomass, timber and fossil fuels, but including aggregates usage
(which is in the current SDIs). (Paragraph 40)
We accept this recommendation and have been working
to develop the natural resources use indicator, which builds on
work for the indicator of Raw Material Consumption. The indicator
will comprise cumulative yearly embedded consumption for all finite
non-fossil fuel resource usage, with fossil fuels, timber and
other biomasses excluded. Embedded consumption measures include
both domestic and imported consumption of materials that have
gone into the production process but may not be reflected in the
final mass of a product. This means that even if a product is
manufactured overseas, the resources used in production are taken
into account in the indicator. Further analysis will display a
separation of construction and non-construction sectors, because
these components behave differently, and will present a comparison
of directly extracted (from inside the UK) domestic resource usage
compared to total resource usage due to UK consumption. This will
show the level of domestic extraction compared to consumption
from imported materials, allowing us to get a picture of how self-reliant
we are as a country. We intend to exclude energy supplies from
the indicator as energy consumption is measured better in terms
of calorific value or carbon emissions rather than mass.
5. We recommend that Defra should apply existing
commitments as targets for the corresponding SDIs, including those
on air quality, emissions and renewable energy. It should also
review the scope for setting targets on the other SDIs, consulting
again those who have recently raised this issue with the department.
(Paragraph 45)
The SDIs are not intended to be a target setting
mechanism. Government has other mechanisms for setting key targets.
However for each SDI we intend to present a traffic light assessment
which, while not assessments of performance against targets, will
help to simplify interpretation of the data and will provide a
clear, quick summary of the general direction of travel on the
indicators. In the public consultation, only around one in five
respondents to a specific question on indicator assessment suggested
introducing targets.
6. We recommend that Defra should produce a full
set of SDIs when it presents the results of its recent consultation
exercise, including those indicators which were identified as
still under development in July. It should plan now to provide
the designated resources necessary to ensure that there is no
delay in finalising those outstanding indicators and establishing
the necessary data sources. It should also confirm that the new
set of SDIs will be designated as National Statistics, fully subject
to the quality controls that that implies. (Paragraph 49)
Work on the final indicator set is underway and we
plan to publish the full set in the summer. The majority of the
indicators in development will be finalised by publication time,
though some will need to reflect ongoing work on parallel Government
activities such as DECC's changes to the fuel poverty measurement
framework and DWP's review of the definition of child poverty.
The Sustainable Development Indicators published
up to 2010 were designated National Statistics by the UK Statistics
Authority. Assessments of compendium publications against
the Code of Practice for Official Statistics relate to
the processes involved in preparing the publication and its presentation,
rather than in producing the statistics that are included. As
the processes involved in the publication will remain the same
for the revised SDIs, they too will be designated National Statistics.
This can broadly be interpreted as meaning that the statistics
meet identified user needs, are well explained and readily accessible,
are produced according to sound methods and are managed impartially
and objectively in the public interest.
1 http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/files/sus-dev-indicators-consult-summary-responses.pdf Back
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