Wales' Future Generations Commissioner has told the Senedd her office's £1.5m annual budget is not sufficient and creates "an impossible task".
Sophie Howe's comments have led the Welsh Conservatives to call for the role to be scrapped, saying it is "wasting taxpayers' money".
Ms Howe, whose annual report for 2021-22 said she has expenditure of £1.7m including £1.2m in staffing, told a meeting of the Senedd equality committee this week that she receives the least funding of all Wales' four commissioners.
She said: "I'm the lowest funded commissioner of all of the four commissioners. I don't begrudge him a single penny, but I get less than half the money that the Welsh Language Commissioner gets, and less than half the resource of the Welsh Books Council, for example. The public services ombudsman gets £6.4 million, and my budget is £1.5 million."
She said that "supporting 44 public bodies and 16 public services boards with 365 well-being objectives set between the 44 public bodies...across all policy areas, considering both now and into the future, is quite an impossible task".
"I think the reality is that I've had to make some tough decisions, and with my limited resources, I've had to work out where do I use that limited resource to get to the thing that's going to have the biggest impact, the thing that will have the biggest impact—not the sole impact, I completely accept that—is getting the policy context right from the top, getting the kind of performance management arrangements right from the Welsh Government, challenging them in terms of how they're delivering their budgets down to these individual PSBs and public bodies and so on. That's the decision that I've taken."
Ms Howe has been in the role since 2016, and her spell is due to come to an end next year. Her annual salary is between £90,000 and £95,000.
The Commissioner’s role is defined as being "the guardian of future generations". "This means helping public bodies and those who make policy in Wales to think about the long-term impact their decisions have".
After the committee hearing, Welsh Conservative MS Joel James raised the issue in the Senedd saying Ms Howe had been "complaining" about her budget which she then "wasted".
He told the Senedd: “If the commissioner is complaining that she is financially ill-equipped to meet her general duties, how can it be that the commissioner has wasted a sizeable amount of her money and her budget hiring an outside body to undertake a [Universal Basic Income] feasibility study and also conduct research into a shorter working week.”
Deputy minister Hannah Blythyn said: "I'm able to actually advise the member at this point that we are in discussions with the future generations commissioner's office on a range of options to alleviate the budget pressures faced by the commissioner, and this includes options with regard to the alignment exercise and the reserves the commissioner has to draw on to manage her work.
"We very much do recognise the work that the future generations commissioner does in promoting the sustainable development principle and advising bodies on how they can work in a sustainable way, including the Welsh Government."
Speaking afterwards, Mr James said: "I have nothing against the Future Generations Commissioner personally, but I don’t think her organisation is delivering for Wales in the way it should and is wasting taxpayer money on ridiculous pet projects.
"Instead of focusing on issues such as Universal Basic Income and a four-day working week, the Commissioner should be working on the issues which matter most to the people of Wales such as the NHS and economy. As Ms Howe’s stint in office comes to an end, it is vital Labour ministers review the set-up with all options on the table, including replacing the commissioner with a dedicated government minister, as Welsh residents deserve better."
In the committee hearing, Ms Howe was asked about her role's scope increasing.
"Public bodies are being added to the act with no additional funding, and that's already happened with the corporate joint committees," she said.
"New public bodies will be added, we're told, by April 2023, and we don't know the exact figure, but it could be in the region of 74 public bodies.
"The discussions that I'm having with Welsh Government at the moment are that I will have to lose a number of staff if the budget doesn't increase, all of the point-of-contact work, and that's at a point when new public bodies are coming on board. And we know from the transition, or lack of transition, if you like, when the act first came into force so, I took up post at the beginning of February and 44 public bodies were covered by the act on 1 April that there's a lot of work that needs to go in in that transitionary year to get these public bodies, we're talking about the potential of housing associations, higher education, further education, Welsh Government-sponsored bodies like the development bank and those sorts of entities.
"They need support, awareness raising, training packages, all of these sorts of things, to get them geared up to apply the legislation when they're covered by it and the last conversation that I had with Welsh Government, they said that they're going to have some conversations with them over the next year to see what support they may want. Well, my point-of-contact team, the public accounts committee and the auditor general have already done that work with the existing public bodies and I doubt it will be much different. So, to me, it feels just a bit like kicking it into the long grass and refusing to fund something that is absolutely necessary if we're going to avoid an implementation gap that I've talked about with these other public bodies."
She is appointed and funded by Welsh Government and despite that said she hoped she had "proved the critics wrong" and remained independent.
"I would say the biggest threat to my independence is the poor budget settlement, which is impeding my ability to do the work that needs to be done. That is particularly the case in this coming financial year. So, commissioners, other commissioners, myself included, have always kept an amount of money in their budget to carry over each year for the purposes of statutory reviews, because you can never completely plan for when you might need to do a review.
"I established that principle around the time when the M4 was a live issue, and whether I would need to go in and use my statutory powers to review in that instance. So, I've always kept £100,000 in reserves. It's the case now, with the new budget alignment exercise, that commissioners will no longer be able to keep that money in reserves, and we have challenged this quite vehemently with the Welsh Government, officials in particular, to say, 'Well, this is severely compromising the independence of commissioners; how do we resolve this situation?' The answer that we got back is, 'If you need to do a review, you will have to make a request to the Welsh Government for resourcing to do that review'.
"Obviously what we put back is, 'Well, what if we want to review the Welsh Government?' There's a clear compromise to our independence there, and that position has not shifted. So, that is still the position that we're in. Commissioners are being asked to go to Welsh Government if they need to resource a review that is above and beyond their annual work programme. That surely can't be a sensible approach to take, and it's a real concern to me. I don’t speak for my other commissioner colleagues, but it's a concern across the board."
In response to Joel James, Ms Howe issued a statement. She said: "Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act and my office’s work have changed the status quo in Wales from a commitment to a Universal Basic Income trial to a radical new transport strategy, the declaration of a climate and nature emergency and more joined-up thinking within public services.
"My wide-ranging and growing role as Future Generations Commissioner includes exploring future trends and challenges and ensuring policy makers are taking preventative action to improve lives now and in the future - across every policy area covered by the Government and public services in Wales.
"My report, Inequality in a Future Wales, shows inequalities only stand to get worse if we don't try radical new ideas. People are already feeling the effects of policy that's failed to catch up - we’re in a cost of living crisis, where people can't afford to make ends meet, and poverty costs the UK healthcare system £29 billion every year.
"What we need is politicians who will wake up to this and look for new solutions like a Universal Basis Income which evidence shows has the potential to eradicate poverty and improve people’s health and provide opportunities for current and future generations. Failing to do so and sticking to the same old is condemning Wales to generations of deprivation.”
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