The next item on our agenda is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government on the Welsh Government’s future trends report. And I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Mark Drakeford, to make his statement.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which was passed into law almost exactly two years ago, requires the production within 12 months of the election of a new National Assembly for Wales of a report that contains an account of likely future trends in terms of economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being in Wales, and any related analytical data and information that the Welsh Ministers consider appropriate. This week, for the first time ever, the report known as the future trends report has been published.

Llywydd, nid bwriad yr adroddiad yw bod yn rhyw fath newydd o seryddiaeth wleidyddol. Nid yw’n ceisio proffwydo’r dyfodol. Yn hytrach, mae’n ceisio tynnu ynghyd, mewn un lle hygyrch, amrywiaeth o wybodaeth er mwyn helpu dinasyddion Cymru i ddeall tueddiadau sy’n amlwg heddiw yr ymddengys y byddant yn fwyaf tebygol o beri risgiau neu greu cyfleoedd yn y dyfodol.

Mae’r dasg ddinod honno, hyd yn oed, yn llawn anawsterau posibl. Doedd y rhyngrwyd prin yn cyffro pan etholwyd y Cynulliad Cenedlaethol hwn gyntaf ym 1999. Mae’r iPhone wedi bodoli ers llai na degawd. Bydd traean o’r swyddi yn economi heddiw wedi mynd yn angof, o bosib, ymhen llai na 15 mlynedd.

Mae pethau’n newid yn gyflym, er iddi ymddangos felly erioed, o’r cyfnod pan wnaeth Cincinnatus ymddeol i’w fferm yn y flwyddyn 458 cyn Crist er mwyn dianc rhag helbul bywyd a gwleidyddiaeth y Rhufeiniaid, a byth ers hynny. I geisio osgoi camgymryd yr hyn sy’n newydd am yr hyn sy’n arwyddocaol, nod yr adroddiad yw defnyddio a dehongli’r ffynonellau data y mae’n eu defnyddio i ddatblygu darlun mwy hirdymor ac ehangach o’r penderfyniadau a wnawn heddiw, yn unol â gofynion Deddf Llesiant Cenedlaethau’r Dyfodol (Cymru) 2015.

Mae'n gwneud hynny drwy nodi tueddiadau cymdeithasol, economaidd, amgylcheddol a diwylliannol allweddol yn y dyfodol i Gymru, o dan chwe thema sy'n cael effaith ar bob agwedd ar y llywodraeth a gweinyddiaeth gyhoeddus. Mae'n ymdrin â phoblogaeth, ag iechyd, â’r economi a seilwaith; mae'n canolbwyntio ar y newid yn yr hinsawdd, defnydd tir ac adnoddau naturiol, ac ar gymdeithas a diwylliant. Trwy ein helpu ni i archwilio’r darlun mwy hirdymor, mae’r adroddiad cyntaf hwn hefyd yn dechrau archwilio rhai o’r ffactorau a allai effeithio ar y tueddiadau hyn wrth i’r dyfodol esblygu.

Mae’r adroddiad hefyd yn ein hysgogi i feddwl yn ehangach. Am lawer o resymau, mae busnes y llywodraeth, ar bob lefel, yn dueddol o ganolbwyntio ar feysydd polisi unigol wrth geisio cyflawni buddion. Mae’r adroddiad hwn yn ymgais i greu darlun ehangach, yn ogystal â darlun mwy hirdymor. Mae’n dwyn ynghyd ffactorau yr ydym efallai wedi’u hystyried yn unigol o’r blaen ac yn rhoi sylw penodol i archwilio’n ofalus y rhyngweithio a’r gyd-ddibyniaeth rhwng y ffactorau, gan greu cysylltiadau rhwng gwahanol dueddiadau mewn gwahanol feysydd o lywodraeth.

Llywydd, fel y dywedais, nid bwriad yr adroddiad yw darparu cyfres o broffwydoliaethau. Ond mae’n cynnwys cyfres o gwestiynau a luniwyd i ysgogi’r darllenwyr i ffurfio eu hymatebion eu hunain wrth iddynt ystyried y data o dueddiadau a’r sefyllfaoedd posibl yn y dyfodol y gallai’r data hynny dynnu sylw atynt.

Mae’r adroddiad hwn yn dechrau’r gwaith o wella ein gallu i wneud penderfyniadau sy’n addas ar gyfer y tymor hir. Rwy’n awyddus nawr inni ddechrau datblygu adnodd byw sy’n datblygu’n barhaus ar gyfer Tueddiadau’r Dyfodol at ddefnydd y sector cyhoeddus yng Nghymru. Rydym eisoes wedi cymryd y camau cyntaf, trwy lunio’r adroddiad cychwynnol hwn drwy broses o gydweithredu ag ystod eang o sefydliadau’r sector cyhoeddus, yn ogystal ag adrannau Llywodraeth Cymru. Rydym wedi ceisio defnyddio’r byrddau gwasanaethau cyhoeddus, a grëwyd yn sgil Deddf Llesiant Cenedlaethau’r Dyfodol, er mwyn deall pa fath o adroddiad sydd ei angen a dwyn ynghyd y data ar gyfer tueddiadau’r dyfodol sy’n bodoli eisoes. Byddwn yn parhau i weithio yn y modd hwn, gan gynnwys yn llawn bawb sydd â diddordeb mewn datblygu ein hadnodd a’n gallu ar y cyd, a darparu adroddiad sy'n ddefnyddiol ar gyfer llunio polisïau yn y dyfodol yma yng Nghymru.

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today and the publication, indeed, of the future trends report—another first for devolution, although maybe not quite as groundbreaking as some firsts that we’ve had? It’s probably, I’m afraid to say, Cabinet Secretary, not going to be the talk of pubs and clubs across the nation, but I take your statement in the spirit that you meant it, and hopefully it will provide some use in the area of policy decision making.

This is clearly part and parcel of the future generations Bill, and, as we know, there have been concerns across parties in this Chamber about the implementation of that Bill and whether it’s actually delivering its objectives out there on the ground. I think the jury is still out on that, and, hopefully, this report, if you’re right, will help to steer the course ahead with the future generations Bill and will shed some light on some of the murkier aspects of it.

Cabinet Secretary, you said that this report is trying to cover a huge range of areas in a relatively short space, ranging from climate change, population to health statistics. How confident are you that this forecasting—the set of questions, as you called it—is going to be accurate enough in any way to be of use for the decision-making process? I think what I’m trying to ask you is: I understand that you’ve had to provide this report because of the future generations legislation—are we not just going down the road of a box-ticking exercise? Will this actually be worth the time that has clearly been spent on it?

You said honestly that the report is not intended to provide a set of predictions, but is designed to prompt readers to formulate their own response. I must admit, again, I’m not entirely sure how useful that process can be. I hope you can persuade me of it. And particularly in the area of environment, I quote:

‘there are a wide range of climate change scenarios and models’.

That’s from the climate change section. Well, yes, clearly, there are. I think we know that. That’s not really a prediction and it’s not even really a question; it’s just stating where we are with that. I can’t see how that assertion really is going to provide any meaningful input into the decision-making and policy-making processes in the short term but, again, maybe you can tell me how it will.

It is clearly the culmination of extensive collaboration—I don’t doubt that—between Government departments and outside bodies; a lot of work has been done on this. You said towards the end of your statement that this is the beginning of work to improve decision-making capabilities. How do you envisage that work progressing? You’ve said about building up a database. What tangible form will that database take? Will we be seeing future reports? Is there a requirement for future reports? I’m not sure. Will there be a different means of building up that database? Will it be for the Government departments to do that, or will it be centrally collated? And will there be an evaluation of this? I know that you can’t evaluate the future until it’s happened—clearly, I’m not suggesting you could—but, at some point in the future, it will be quite evident whether the predictions or questions in this report are hitting the mark, or whether they are way off. It is likely that they will be somewhere in the middle, but at what point do you intend to assess whether this actually has been a useful process and whether it is aiding the future generations legislation in rolling that out?

Finally, Cabinet Secretary, it does seem to me—and I think you would accept this—that this report does ask as many questions as it answers. I think it would be helpful if you could clarify how you do intend to build on it, clarify how you intend to evaluate it and at what point in the future you will look back and say, ‘That was actually a very worthwhile exercise’, or, ‘Perhaps there was a better way to proceed at that point.’

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd, and thank you to Nick Ramsay for those questions. I’ll start with his final point, which I think is an important one. I was very keen in discussing the nature of this report with my officials some months ago that it should not set out to be a report that purported to be a set of answers that people could just go to, because I think it could be positively misleading if it were framed in that way. It is therefore intended to be a resource document, a document where people can go to get authoritative information about key future trends, and where people can engage with that data, because, the sorts of questions that they may want to ask themselves about, drawing meaning from information, there will be sufficient prompts for them there to allow them to do that.

Now, it has a number of applied purposes as well, most significantly in helping our public services boards in their local assessments of well-being, part of which requires them to look at future trends in their own localities. This document was shared with local service boards back in November in its earlier form to assist them in that work, and, whereas this report is inevitably at an all-Wales level, I think if you look at some of the local well-being assessments that are now available online—. If you look at Pembrokeshire’s for example, you would see, I think, a very sophisticated discussion of climate change, the possible scenarios for that in future and the way it affects a local economy that is particularly dependent on shipping and on tourism. In looking at the way in which the information here has helped local organisations to carry out their thinking, then I think you can see some of the way in which this report does have a practical impact.

Nick Ramsay asked me about how the report might be developed in the future, and I said I am keen, if we can do it. What I don’t want to do is to meet the letter of the law here by publishing this report one year after the last Assembly elections and for us then to forget about this, and then there’ll be another report in five years’ time. I think, for this sort of report to be genuinely useful, it ought to be online as much as possible and it ought to be capable of being updated and added to all the time, as new trend data emerge.

I met recently with the National Union of Students in Wales, who wanted to talk about the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, and they were especially interested in ways in which their members who are working on developing their own studies across a very wide range of topics reflected in this report, might be able to add to the resource that this report provides. If we were able to do it—to have that sort of iterative resource to which people could contribute, could take away from and could keep up to date—that, I think, would make it more likely to be something that is genuinely used by policy makers and by Welsh citizens to help them to reflect on the future. Will there be a point at which we evaluate its usefulness? Well, it’s a legal requirement under the Act to produce this report every five years, within one year of an Assembly election, and I imagine that, when the next report is prepared, part of what we will want to do will be to look back at this document to see whether it captured the sort of data that are genuinely useful, to see whether it identified those trends that were making the most difference, and, no doubt, to report on those things that none of us here have been able to foresee so far but will be making a difference to people’s lives five years from now.

I have mixed feelings about the report that’s been published. I don’t want to disillusion the Cabinet Secretary that he’s following in the footsteps of Cincinnatus, going back to some farm because of political problems. I do think that it’s a good thing that the Government is producing a report of this kind and that we are having a discourse at a governmental level on the future and future trends. In the past few years, the whole area of futurology has been given something of a bad reputation because of the work of people such as Philip Tetlock, Daniel Kahneman and Nassim Taleb, who have questioned to what extent we can predict the future. I do think the Cabinet Secretary is right to avoid falling into that particular trap, but the fact that we can’t predict the future doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a policy conversation on future trends. Therefore, in terms of a framework, I do think that the framework and approach are right.

The concern that I have is the lack of detail in the document at the moment, if we compare it, for example with the masterpieces produced by the Singapore Government, for example, which, for decades, have placed so much emphasis on this question of assessing the impact of future trends. The same is true of Finland, for example. So, they are relatively small nations that provide a fair amount of resource to the production of a report that is far more substantial than this one, and which has dozens and dozens of sub-reports based on the detailed input of specialists in the area.

So, I’m asking, and it’s a plea from me to the Cabinet Secretary: fine, this is the initial report that’s been produced within a year, but could we build on these foundations and ensure that sufficient resources are available so that the report published, and its sub-reports, isn’t as superficial? There wasn’t much in the report that I could identify that I didn’t know already to some extent or other, and that was a disappointment. Strangely, it was useful in the other regard, in looking backwards. There are a number of things in the report that talk about the post-devolution period, where it points out where we have failed. We have failed in terms of not achieving more than flatlining against the rest of the UK in terms of the economy, and the aim, of course, was to close that gap.

There is reference here to the growth potential in Wales in terms of energy, which is as yet unfulfilled. There is reference to a slower start in Wales in terms of broadband as compared with the rest of the UK, and an increase in the number of people under 18 living in poverty over the past years. And finally, another policy area where we have failed: the number of households increasing more swiftly than the number of houses available. And what’s interesting about all of those is that they were long-term policy objectives that we hadn’t been able to achieve as a nation. And in looking to the future, would it be possible to ask the question ‘why’? I know we’re in an election period, but I’m not putting all of the blame on Government here—there are a whole host of reasons why policy objectives aren’t delivered, but, in asking why there has been a failing in those areas over the past 18 years, then perhaps we would be in a better position for the future.

Thank you very much, Llywydd, and thank you, Adam Price. Of course, I agree—this is an initial report before the Assembly this afternoon. We did go out and speak to people who will use the report in due course, as the Act requires us to do, and the one thing they kept coming back to tell us was, ‘Don’t prepare a report that is too lengthy to be usable. Try, if you can, to prepare a report that allows us to use the information contained within it.’

Mae hynny'n creu tensiwn, yn anochel, rhwng y negeseuon sy’n dod o lawr gwlad ac oddi wrth ddarpar ddefnyddwyr eu bod yn dymuno cael adroddiad, fel y dywedasant, a oedd yn gryno ac yn eu galluogi i gael yr wybodaeth yr oeddent yn dymuno’i defnyddio yn gyflym. Ond mae’n bwynt pwysig gan Adam Price—sef, pan fyddwch yn ceisio llunio adroddiad o'r math hwnnw, byddwch, yn anochel, yn colli rhywfaint o'r cyfoeth o ddata sydd ar gael. Mae'n rhannol —i ateb ei ail gwestiwn ynghylch sut y gallwn ni ddatblygu'r adroddiad yn y dyfodol—pam fy mod i’n awyddus y dylai fod yn adnodd ar-lein y gallwn ei gadw yn gyfredol yn barhaus. Oherwydd hynny, rwy’n credu, mae'n bosibl darparu ymlaen llaw set gymharol fyr o ddeunydd i’r bobl sy’n dymuno cael syniad bras o rywbeth, ond bod modd cyfeirio pobl sydd â diddordeb dyfnach mewn unrhyw agwedd benodol yn gyflym at y data sydd y tu ôl i'r penawdau, a lle gallwch ddod o hyd i’r data cyfoethocach hynny ar-lein heb deimlo eich bod yn cael eich llethu ar yr olwg gyntaf. Felly, os gallwn wneud hynny, rwy'n credu y bydd yn ein helpu i ateb y pwynt a godwyd ganddo.

Wrth gwrs, mae e'n iawn: os ydym am ddeall y dyfodol yn well, y gorffennol yn aml yw'r canllaw gorau, o ran y pethau yr ydym wedi llwyddo i’w gwneud—y pethau yr oeddem yn gallu sylwi arnynt yn gynnar ac ymateb iddynt—ond hefyd y pethau hynny lle na wireddwyd ein dyheadau yn llawn. Mae angen inni geisio gweld beth wnaeth ein hatal rhag cyflawni'r pethau yr oeddem yn bwriadu eu cyflawni, a defnyddio’r gwersi hynny i wella ein gallu i wneud penderfyniadau polisi gwell yn y dyfodol, i osgoi canlyniadau anfwriadol neu fuddsoddiadau a gyfeiriwyd yn wael, ac i ddod o hyd i gyfleoedd na fyddem wedi dod o hyd iddynt pe na fyddem wedi gwneud yr hyn y mae’r adroddiad yn ceisio ei wneud. Fel y dywedais, mae'n ceisio edrych yn fanwl, ond mae'n ceisio’n benodol edrych yn fras i weld y cysylltiadau rhwng gwahanol haenau o weithgarwch y Llywodraeth. Gall hyn, er gwaethaf bod yn Llywodraeth fach, fod yn her wrth redeg portffolio unigol lle mae eich sylw yn anochel wedi ei hoelio ar y materion o’ch blaen a lle nad yw bob tro mor hawdd ag y hoffech i weld sut y mae’r penderfyniadau hynny yn cysylltu â phenderfyniadau eraill a wnaed mewn mannau eraill yn rhannau eraill o'r Llywodraeth.

First of all, can I welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s statement and the report? But I’m very pleased it comes with a warning, to quote:

‘the report is not intended to be some new form of political astrology. It does not aim to predict the future.’

I’m always reminded, on this day, of the concerns in the nineteenth century, when the horse was the main mode of transport, over how horse manure, which was predicted to cover the street by anything up to 3 ft, was going to be dealt with in the twentieth century. Of course, the motor car came, and we didn’t end up with that problem. Also, I think everybody in this room is old enough to remember the VHS/Betamax debate, which was fought long and hard—won by VHS, and you tell me where I can get a tape now. I think of those three things that—we see recent major changes and they get overtaken by events very rapidly.

What it does give us is the opportunity to see how things will be if we do not do anything, and what we can do to try and change the future. We know urban agglomerations are economic magnets, and we know improved internal transport links are a factor that could strengthen the economic performance of Swansea and its hinterland, so that we can harness its economic potential more effectively as a city region. Will the Welsh Government consider drawing up a transport plan for the Swansea city region? I know that transport is not part of the city region bid, but I don’t think transport within that region can be forgotten or can be dealt with by one-off decisions like the Llandeilo bypass. There needs to be a much more integrated approach.

We also know that highly skilled people earn more in general, and they’ve got a better chance of employment in general. We also know that too many children, through no fault of their own, start formal education developmentally up to two years behind some of their peer group. They start education feeling a failure and far too many of them end education being a failure. Will the Welsh Government seek to expand further Flying Start, which gives a chance to every child to start school at the age they actually are—their chronological age—so that the development between two and three takes place, which, for far too many children in far too many of our communities, does not?

I thank Mike Hedges for those questions. He’s absolutely right to point out the danger of using future trends reports in a deterministic way, where we project into the future the situation we see in front of us. His horse manure example is a well-known one. My own favourite, Llywydd, recently, was I heard a Pathé News item from the late 1930s—I can’t do Pathé News voices for you, but it was in that urgent way that the commentator uses. The film was of a group of telephonists, and the message was that the spread of the telephone was happening so rapidly in the United Kingdom that, by 1960, every woman—and it was every woman, he said—in the United Kingdom would be needed to be a telephonist. If you predict the future in that sort of way, you end up, as I say, making very bad decisions.

But the plan here is to use the report to help us to make better decisions for the future. I hope there will be a transport plan for the Swansea city region, because it should come out of the new regional arrangements that we propose in our local government White Paper. And, as for education, Mike Hedges’s second question, then what we have learnt, I think, is not simply that those who need fastest access to education need that in the way that Flying Start provides it, but that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, even before education is even part of what might be happening with them, has an enormously influential impact on their future, and this report helps in its way to try to draw together the different factors, whether that be in the health field, whether it be in the housing field, whether it be in the more general environment that a child at that part of their life faces, to make sure that we are able to do all we can to make those first 1,000 days the foundation for the success that that child might want to be in the future.

Thanks to the Minister for his statement today. Nick Ramsay made the point that this report may well not end up being the talk of pubs and clubs throughout south Wales—throughout Wales, rather—and I think he could well be right. And I think, to a few Members here in the Chamber, it all remains a little bit mysterious, even to us. And the process by which we’ve arrived at having a future generations commissioner and a future trends report: it all seems to me somewhat arcane. I have read through the report today. It’s a reasonably hefty report, but I struggle to find any guide in it for meaningful Government action, so I am still slightly puzzled by it all. We did have Sophie Howe, the commissioner, appearing before the equalities committee, and she was a very efficient witness before the committee. She did engage with the committee, but I feel she wasn’t really there for long enough to answer all of the questions that we would have wanted to ask her and to ascertain quite how her role will influence Government action, because she is looking at covering a wide range of potential Government activity. For instance, 44 public bodies are covered by the Act. She herself—Sophie herself—talked about the difficulty of implementing legislation and the need to avoid tick-box exercises, but how are these meaningfully going to be avoided when we have public bodies that, in her own words, already feel beleaguered because of all the statutory requirements that they have to fulfil, as it is, before the future generations Act is even taken into account? Added to that, there is the fact that some of the regulations emanating from the different statutory requirements contradict others. She cited, herself, the example of the need for health boards to have three-year plans, which contradicts the future generations objective of long-term planning. So, I wonder how the Welsh Government will resolve these apparent contradictions.

Looking at the practical issues that may arise from this report, there is an issue of climate change, which is referred to. Now, we know that the climate is changing. There are differences of opinion in the Chamber as to what may be causing those climate changes, but I think, on the whole, we agree that climate is changing. There is increasing desertification. The Sahara is spreading. Areas of Spain and other parts of southern Europe are becoming too arid for agriculture. Given that this is happening and there is less land likely to be available for farming, it would therefore make sense, in the UK, to hang onto our agricultural land. This is long-term planning relating to food security. Why, therefore, are we allowing councils to build on the green belt land? For instance, in the Vale of Glamorgan, there is land that has been farmed for hundreds of years that is now going over to housing. Surely long-term planning considerations should prevent building on green belt land in Wales. So, if you now have a report on the future generations that is going to be in any way meaningful, are you now going to give out advice and guidance to councils to prevent them or to warn them off from building on green belt land? That would be one practicality arising from your purported idea of having long-term planning. Other issues: automation. Thirty-five per cent of jobs—actually, I think it is 30 per cent—are predicted to be at risk in Wales due to automation. So, the working population in Wales needs therefore to be upskilled if this prediction is in any way accurate. More vocational training, I would suggest, would help. So, would you agree that we need to move away from a blanket approach to education in Wales? Do we need to look at the effectiveness, for instance, of the comprehensive school system?

Driverless cars are mentioned. Now, this completely mystifies me. I know that we are supposed to be having driverless cars. Sophie Howe, when she appeared before the committee, suggested that the M4 relief road project should have taken into account the issue of driverless cars. I’m not sure what difference that will make in terms of congestion on the roads. Although we are going to have driverless cars, won’t we just have the same amount of cars on the road? So, how would this actually affect anything? I am puzzled by this. Maybe you can—[Interruption.] Ah, stopping distances. Okay, there may be technical aspects that, as a non-driver—[Interruption.] Okay, thank you. There may be technical aspects I haven’t taken into account, so apologies for my ignorance, but the answers would be good.

Now, you also, rather amusingly, looked at the problems of futurology, and Mike Hedges came up with an example as well—you came with examples relating to horse manure and telephonists, which were quite amusing in themselves. There was also a chap in the early 1960s called Dr Beeching, who seemed to think that there would be no need for passengers to travel on the railways in a few years’ time. That one turned out to be a bit wrong, didn’t it? Anyway, thanks for the report. If you could cast any light on the issues I’ve raised I would be grateful. Thank you.

I thank the Member for his contribution. I’m glad that he’s found the sessions that the committee has had with the commissioner useful. Her office was part of the group that helped in putting together this report. There will be many further opportunities, I’m sure, to hear from the commissioner and to work with her to make sure that the information in this report is useful to policymakers as they try to assess the opportunities that trends we see today provide for future policymakers, and to avoid the sort of pitfalls that the Member pointed to when he referred to the Beeching report.

If I’m frank, Llywydd, I think he’s one step ahead of where the report is today. The report is meant to be the best drawing together we can make of the evidence, of the data, of the different trends that we see in the Welsh economy, in Welsh society, and in those wider environmental things, for all policymakers—including political parties and individual politicians—to draw their conclusions as to how policies should be shaped in the future. The report aims to be policy neutral. It doesn’t aim to push policy in any particular direction. It’s meant to be there as a resource for people to devise the answers that they think would best meet the needs of Wales. Mr Bennett raises a number of important policy matters. He won’t find the answers just in the report itself. What he will find is raw material to help any one of us to try to find answers for ourselves.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.