I have been working with Jan Bebbington and the new policy team at Carnegie Trust UK on raising awareness of and interest in the Report of the Round Table on Measuring Economic and Social Progress in Scotland.  I wanted to let you all know how this work is progressing and to thank those Round Table members who have been able to give further support to this work by being so generous with their time.
 
The Edinburgh launch on 19th May was very well attended as were events in Belfast on 8th June and in Cardiff on 9th June.  The latter two events provided an opportunity to raise the profile of Scotland’s National Performance Framework with other administrations.  We aim to generate further interest in the potential of using such a framework to help improve measures of progress by also taking the report to events in London and Dublin.
 
In Belfast we were fortunate to have the current Permanent Secretary Stephen Peover engage in a very frank debate around the meaning of the term “sustainable economic growth”.  It is encouraging that all the events have generated ideas and requests for further meetings and/or input to future activities.  The work has been discussed by the team responsible for child health and well-being in the Scottish Government and its Strategy and Performance Directorate; while a member of the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee has drawn on the report in submitting a proposal for an inquiry into alternative economic indicators.  Meanwhile the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre has been commissioned to carry out further work over the summer to help the committee decide if this should be included in its work plan.

We have also been working well with Oxfam Scotland’s team which has been consulting with Scottish people to help create their Humankind Index of well-being.  This work makes a significant contribution to addressing the Round Table’s Recommendation 8 and so we were very pleased to be invited to retain a role on their project’s steering group and to accept an invitation for a member of the Round Table to speak at a recent event held at the Scottish Parliament by Oxfam and Scotland’s Futures Forum.
 
The Royal Scottish Geographical Society will have a piece by Jan about the Round Table’s findings in its next quarterly magazine and is seeking to address this topic in its lecture series. Interest has been expressed in encouraging Professor Amartya Sen to come to Scotland for that. However, you might know that Professor Amartya Sen will be in Edinburgh on 18th July as a guest of the University of Edinburgh taking part in the David Hume lecture series. Tickets are still available at http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/video/lecture-series/hume/lectures