The following blog is an extract from a medium article written by Natasha Brain, from All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). To read the full article, click here.
Politics, an arena rife with short-termism and driven by the latest Twitter soundbite, needs a new way of working – a radical but simple approach. That is where the APPG Future Generation’s new initiative, Future Check, comes in.
Assessing legislation for intergenerational fairness
Future Check, which makes use of the School of International Futures’ sophisticated Intergenerational Fairness Assessment tool, is a citizen-led service. It is designed to help parliamentarians, policymakers and the public to consider the long-term impact of proposed government legislation.
The assessments are conducted by volunteers on live pieces of legislation which are passing through Parliament and identified by APPG as a top priority for future generations. The intention is to pioneer discussions about the potential long-term consequences of legislation.
The APPG has conducted assessments on five pieces of legislation, including the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Environmental Bill and the Telecommunications bill.
Positive Feedback
Initial feedback has been positive from all sides. We have already received endorsements from our Chair, Labour frontbench Minister Bambos Charalambous who thinks ‘it’s great’ and ‘we should be doing this’ as well as the Vice-Chair, Simon Fell, the Conservative MP for Barrow and Furness, who described Future Check as ‘excellent’.
Future Plans
Future Check uses a structured methodology across 40 impact areas which is then reviewed by at least one other volunteer before being reported by the APPG to parliamentarians and the public. We want to roll out Future Check so that we have a trained pool of expert assessors able to conduct detailed impact assessments on legislations of high potential impact on future generations.
Simultaneously, we want to scale up training and resources for citizen volunteers to conduct diagnostic assessments and connect the findings to different parts of the parliamentary process.
In a post-Covid world, it’s essential to ensure policy is fireproofed, rather than always firefighting. And with ever more stark reminders of the impending climate emergency, we are working to ensure that our legislation and institutions work for future generations.
For more information about the APPG Future Generations see our website: www.appgfuturegenerations.com, or to volunteer to help do Future Check assessments at secretariat@appgfuturegenerations.com
About the author: Natasha Brian provides the Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations.
The blog is an extract from a medium article written by Natasha. To read the full article, click here.
To read more about SOIF’s Framework for Intergenerational Fairness click here.