Green Book Wellbeing Guidance

6. Whether she plans to update the Treasury Green Book supplementary guidance on wellbeing. [R]

The Treasury published the Green Book supplementary guidance on wellbeing, which helps officials to assess how their policies and projects affect the wellbeing of citizens, in 2021. In February, this Government published an update to the Green Book that reaffirms the importance of considering wellbeing. Most importantly, my new Green Book will support fairer and more balanced decisions on investment in every part of the country, including outside London and the south-east, across urban, rural and coastal communities, so that projects have a better chance of securing Government funding.

I thank the Chancellor for her response. With the constantly growing evidence base behind it, wellbeing economics offers Governments an increasingly sophisticated means of supplementing conventional economics in decision making. It reveals that big-ticket items very often offer little wellbeing benefit to our constituents, while much cheaper interventions can have a dramatic impact. Wellbeing levels have even been shown across Europe to be a better predictor of electoral outcomes than traditional economic measures. Would the Chancellor be willing to meet me and other members of the all-party parliamentary group on wellbeing economics to discuss how wellbeing economics can enhance the work of the Treasury?

I will ensure that the relevant Minister meets my hon. Friend and others to discuss how we can make further enhancements to the Green Book. Something that has held Britain back for too long is that projects outside London and the south-east, including in rural and coastal communities, have missed out on funding because of the way in which the Treasury used to evaluate those projects. I have changed those rules so that we can make investments in all parts of the United Kingdom.

In my constituency, Chess Dynamics, part of Cohort, is a world-leading developer of counter-drone and air defence technology, yet like much of the defence sector, it has been left waiting for clarity on future investment. Given the recent turmoil at the top of the Labour party, can the Minister assure us that the vital defence investment plan will not be pushed back even further and finally give defence manufacturers the go-ahead—

Order. That is not relevant to the question.