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Sturgeon: focusing wholly on economic growth is indefensible

<span>Photograph: Ken Jack/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Ken Jack/Getty Images

Nicola Sturgeon has said it is “morally indefensible” to focus purely on growth as the measure of a nation’s success, arguing: “Some of the measures that create that growth in the short term are doing lasting and arguably irreversible damage to our planet in the longer term.”

Speaking at an event on economic justice hosted by the IPPR Scotland thinktank, Scotland’s first minister described a growing awareness – made more acute by the climate crisis – that national success could not be gauged solely through GDP, the traditional measure of goods and services.

“While GDP measures the outputs from our work, it says nothing at all about whether that work is fulfilling,” Sturgeon told the audience in Edinburgh. “It places a value on, for example, illegal drug consumption but no value at all on unpaid care.”

She added: “None of this means that we turn our backs on the importance of having a strong, vibrant growing economy. But what that approach does mean is we recognise economic policy is a means rather than an end, to help people live happy, healthy, fulfilling lives.”

Last year, Sturgeon joined the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WeGo) alongside the prime minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and her New Zealand counterpart, Jacinda Ardern. The women are calling for new social indicators to be considered beside GDP data, and will meet next at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this November.

With the Scottish government aiming to reach net zero emissions by 2045, five years before the UK target, the Holyrood parliament passed the final-stage legislation on Tuesday to set up a Scottish national investment bank, whose primary aim is to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The speech was delivered on the same day as the first minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls published its second annual report, setting out an ambitious framework to bring gender equality into mainstream policymaking and ensure that it is properly resourced.

Taking inspiration from Barack Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls, the council was established by Sturgeon in 2017.

Its first annual report, presented by the council’s independent chairwoman, Louise Macdonald, last year, included radical proposals intended to make Scotland a world leader in gender equality, offering 50 hours of free childcare a week for all children between six months and five years old, and establishing a world-leading process for complainants of sexual violence.

Advocating a “Scottish approach to gender coherence” across all spheres of government, public services and business in its second report, the council calls for this to be reflected in a significant increase in status and funding through the creation of a standalone equalities directorate to replace the current Equalities Unit.

The report also calls for existing scrutiny bodies such as Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission to be more proactive. It recommends that Scottish ministers deliver an annual statement, followed by a debate, on gender policy coherence to the Scottish parliament, to provide a focal point for others to work around.