Time and again, we've heard that not enough has been done to achieve this and bring about the shift to sustainable development across public services that the Act seeks to deliver. We can all appreciate that raising awareness and understanding and changing culture take time. However, the Act was passed nearly six years ago.

Although public bodies have had adequate time and the opportunity to take those vital steps towards embedding sustainable development in all public services, we are simply not seeing words translate into tangible action. It is still not clear what difference the Act has made to the way that public bodies operate. More work is needed to support public bodies charged with implementing the Act, to understand not only the seven well-being goals, but also the five ways of working set out in the Act.

In his statutory report, the auditor general states that public bodies must improve how they apply each of the five ways of working if they are going to effect genuine cultural change—the very essence of the Act. From his earlier 2018 report, the auditor general asked public bodies how their process for setting well-being objectives had differed from how they had set corporate objectives previously. Most said that it had been different, but often failed to give a detailed explanation of how, or give examples of how they had used all of the five ways of working.

Yet, a further three years on, we are still asking the same question. Without this shift in cultural change, we cannot overcome the barriers to implementing this Act. The five ways of working must take centre stage as we look to make real gains in sustainable development, including involvement and collaboration. As Building Communities Trust states, we must highlight the key role that communities and their organisations play in delivering the future generations Act's ambitions of improved well-being citizen involvement and collaboration. 

The auditor general is responsible for assessing the extent to which public bodies have adopted the sustainable development principle when setting and working towards their well-being objectives. In practice, this means that he is responsible for assessing whether bodies are adopting the five ways of working.

In response to the recommendations made to the auditor general in our predecessor committee's report, we welcome the updated guidance that he has issued to auditors, which raises expectations of audited bodies in adopting the sustainable development principle. We also welcome his statement that public bodies should ensure that the Act's principles are enshrined in their COVID recovery plans.

Recommendation 2 of our predecessor committee’s report called on the Welsh Government to review funding available to public services boards, or PSBs. In its response, the Welsh Government says that it considers

'on an annual basis, the package of funding and support we make available directly to PSBs and will be looking at how we can raise awareness of the range of funding sources available to them.'

The Welsh Government also states that it commits to working with PSBs to better understand how they are resourced. However, since PSBs are not directly funded by the Welsh Government, we seek clarification from the Minister on the approach that will be taken to consider the package of funding received by PSBs on an annual basis.

Recommendation 7 asked that consideration should be given to which bodies are covered by the Act, particularly as a number of new bodies have been subsequently established. The Welsh Government states that it will complete a review by summer 2022, engaging with Audit Wales as part of this work. However, we would expect the future generations commissioner to be fully involved in this review also, and note that no similar commitment to engage with the commissioner has been made that we are aware of.

In response to recommendation 8, we note that, following the Senedd elections in May, the Welsh Government has moved to term of Government remit letters, the remits of which will be applied from the current 2021-22 financial year. The response adds that the framework for the new remit letters includes a requirement to fully meet the well-being duty set out in the Act. This Act became law in 2015. So, my question to the Minister is why the decision has only been taken now to frame remit letters around the Act and how this will work in practice.

In summing up, it is clear implementation of the Act is being restrained by far too many barriers. The Welsh Government has committed to addressing these, but progress has been slow. There is no clear pathway to addressing these barriers, and we stress that implementation of all legislation requires monitoring, evaluation and a clear timetable for action. The Welsh Government needs to take the lead by setting a clear direction of travel, to enable us as a Senedd, and Wales as a country, to take collective responsibility for reshaping public services for the better.

Finally, there remains much work for us in the Senedd to do in monitoring implementation of the Act and undertaking post-legislative scrutiny. I welcome the response from the Senedd's Business Committee in accepting the recommendations directed at it, that consideration be given to how scrutiny of the Act should be taken forward. I'm pleased that in establishing the sixth Senedd committees, the remit of the Equality and Social Justice Committee includes this Act. The Business Committee also stated that this scrutiny should not be done in isolation from the work of the other committees, and I look forward to working collaboratively with the Equality and Social Justice Committee and ensuring that the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee will maintain a key role in this work. Diolch.