Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department uses Office for National Statistics estimates of personal well-being when formulating policy; and what policies his Department has introduced to improve national well-being in the last 12 months.

The Department uses a range of surveys and data on well-being when formulating and evaluating its policies. The Office for National Statistics personal well-being questions are also included as measures for the wider Measuring National Well-being programme, which began in November 2010.

The Department has introduced several policies that have a positive impact on national well-being. This includes the Industrial Strategy White Paper, published in November 2017, which aims to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK.

The Industrial Strategy’s Grand Challenge Missions bring government, businesses and organisations across the country together to make a real difference to people’s lives. The Ageing Society Mission is to ensure that people can enjoy at least 5 extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035, while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and poorest; and the Clean Growth Mission is to at least halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030.

The Good Work plan, announced in February 2018, set out how for the first time the government will be accountable for good quality work as well as the quantity of jobs, and that government recognises well-being as one of the five principles that underpin quality of work. In addition we have increased the National Living Wage to £7.83, whilst the UK has experienced the lowest unemployment rate since 1975.