Reforming Schools for Student Wellbeing

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK How many streaming subscriptions do you have Is it the same for your business Avoid it by having all your business on one platform. Try Odoo for free at odoo dot com at' odwo dot comot Your phone is your lifeline, calling your kid to say goodnight, waiting on a job callback, or just sending a meme to your best friend when it's been that kind of day. Wherever life takes you, the teext now app keeps you connected for free. getet a real phone number, unlimited talk and text, and five G data for your favorite apps, all for zero dollars a month. No fixed contracts, no hidden fees, no panic when bills pile up, justust phone service that's there when it matters most Text Now, we've got your bag. Download tees now in your app store today. Why plantans require the purchase of aIM card? is textnowot com for terms and conditions Hey guys, it's Moel here. Before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you about a stellar guest that we've got coming up on Radical. Her name is Sophie Pnder and she has made a name for herself creating something called the ninety three percent Club. The name refers to the proportion of people in the UK who are not privately educated. In other words, they' state educated, and the club is designed to tackle something that Sophie believes has been an enemy of social mobility for a long time time, networking and class. It may have evolved slightly over the years, but Sophie firmly believes that old boys' networks or similar variations among the privately educated are getting in the way of social mobility. She decided to do something rather radical I'd say if you can't beat them Join them And she founded the ninety three percent Club ten years ago while she was at university. She calls it the UK's least exclusive members Club. It's built on the principle that state educated people should have the same access to the networks of support that have historically benefited their privately educated And I should say that we want your questions for her. So questions for Sophie Pnder please on class, on social mobility, on private versus state education, on private schools which he has strong views on on networking on the lot. seend them in by emailing radical at bbc. co. uk or sending us a voice note on WhatsApp zero three threezero One, two, three, nine, four, eight, o. We'd love to hear from you. Now onto this week's episode Hello, it's amole here. Welcome to Radical. These are conversations about the deep global trends changing our world and offering you some radical ideas for the future with some pretty radical thinkers. and we've got one this week. He is Richard Leard, Professor Leayard, Lord Leard, a labour peer, an economist. and by the way, I'm really excited about this. He is our first ninety two year old guest this podcast. He's someone who spent decades and particularly the last couple of decades arguing that we need to fundamentally shift the focus of public conversation and yes, public policy. those things that the government, the state is responsible for from economic issues, like wealth, like welfare, like GDP to something else, which is wellbeing and human happiness. In fact, in two thousand four, he wrote a book called Happiness lessons from a newew science, which was translated into lots and lots of languages, and they argued that you can now measure happiness And the impact of Richard's work has been deeply felt all around the world, but particularly here in the UK. If you're someone who has benefited from the NHS talalking Therapies programe, that was his idea. If you're someone who cares for the government measuring wellbe, that was one of his ideas. If you're someone who thinks that schools should do much, much, much more on looking after the welfare of their pupils He's been a big advocate there as well. This is riveting, it's radical. It's a kind of fun and uplifting conversation with someone who basically thinks we're getting an awful lot wrong And I think you're going to end up not only with a bunch of radical ideas, but frankly feeling rather happy about it too. Here is Richard Leard Richard Leard, Lord Leayard Welcome to Radical V wonderful to be here on your wonderful series. I have to say, I'm not easily star struck. But we have never met. Well, we haven't met until about five minutes ago And I have been looking forward to this, not just because if I may say some people will be armed by the idea that a man in his nineties, if I may say, is radical and you are pretty radical But also because your book and your work and your thought has been a a significant influence on my life You wrote this book called Happiness, which I'm holding now Happiness, lessons from a N new science in two thousand five. when I was an undergraduate reading an awful lot about utilitarianism. and I thought you were going to unleash a moral revolution. in Britain How's it g Well, we've made a lot of progress I think we've made more progress perhaps on the policy front But also we've made big progress in the population. So in the population We've got this movement called Action for Happiness, half a million members and more pledge to in their lives create as much happiness as they can and a little unhappiness. This is I think a powerful movement to enable people to live lives which are better from society's point of view, but also more satisfying from their own point of view. I mean, on the policy front, we got David Cameron to measure well beinging of the population. That's gone on ever since We have made progress on a more important thing, which is of course for happiness to become the objective of government policy, we persuaded the treasury to revise their so called Green book V is a manual departments are meant to follow when they make their case. for money to spend. so they got to show that the money will be having a significant and adequate effect on people's happiness. That went through in twenty twenty one. Of course it takes a while to to actually work through the system. So we've been involved in training civil servants in how to do this type of analysis. You've also, you are the key figo influence behind talking therapies on the NHS There'll be people listening to you now who have received such therapy and benefited from it, perhaps That's now touched for sort of millions of lives. Eight million million people. eightight million treated of whom two thirds improved and one half lost their symptoms Give you a feeling as you reflect on your contribution to public life in Britain, that you have made a really significant difference to a lot of people and that you have increased happiness Well I hope so, but of course you have to keep Battling on, so I've got my pet projects for the moment which I'm pushing. I want a parallel service to the one that you mentioned, which is for anxiety disorders and depression We don't have proper psychological therapy for people suffering from addiction, which is a huge problem for them men others. and personality disorder. we want to get a parallel service Set up for that. I'm very unhappy about the situation of young people leaving school. who don't go to university It's incredibly unfair that someone going down the academic route can expect to find a university place if they get their grades. And if you're not going down that road, you have no idea. And what you can expect. That's another battle I'm fighting. And we also I mean we have a huge amount of unhappiness amongst young people and actually we'll get there But one of the, I think great challenges of the age is that we have something like approaching a million needs as they're called, peopleople not in education, employment or training, eighteen to twenty four year olds. and there's been a very sharp rise in the proportion of them who say that their mental health is holding them back In broad terms, Richard, why do you think that happainess or wellbe, to closely related ideas, should be the focus of public policy. Well, I think you can write down a whole list of things that you think are good wealth, health, freedom, and happiness thenen you can ask, why are they good? And you can give reasons. People feel bad if they are poor people feel bad if they're sick People feel bad if they're unfree Did you ask why does it matter People should be happy You can't give any explanation. So it's obvious that that is the overriding for humans, not the selfish pursuit of happiness a society in which people are happy and enjoying their lives, feeling satisfied. fulfilled. I think that has got to be the goal for everybody. So it's the goal for government This is what Jeremy Benthon proposed. I think it's one of the greatest radical ideas of the modern age The goal of government is to create happiness. Act Thomas Jefferson. said it's the only goal of government And I think there's a lot to be saidays that. Why else do we have government? except to make us happy and we probably be without it It's also, of course, a basic ethical principle how we should live We individually should be also trying to contribute as much as we can to the happiness of society, including ourselves and that's the great rule. I think it's a very fundamental inspiring I would like to see it incidentally in every party its election manifesto in the next election. this should be government is about And I think that would lift people's spirits if they thought that was really what government is trying to do and also of course, having everybody individually coming in behind it. So Jeremy Bentham, for those who most people listen to this, may know, but some may not, he's an English philosopher who is a proponent of utilitarianism. And utilitarianism is the approach to ethics which says that you should aim for something called the sumum bonum. That is the maximum happiness. The greatest happiness of the greatest number Jerry Bentham and Thomas Jefferson and later people like John Stuart Mill in the mid nineteenth century, who wrote a book called Utilitarianism it was published in eighteen sixty one believed that the goal of not just individual lives, but of the state was to try to promote happiness They then sort of accommodated and responded to various criticisms of their position, which I'm going to air in a moment. Before we get there, from two thousand five, which has been translated into many, many languages. It's a huge international bestseller, It's been very inflential. an interesting subtitle, which is Lessons from a new science What did the new signs of happiness reveal The new science of happiness. That was based on the idea that you can measure people's happiness And the question we use is how satisfied are you with your lives these days That's incredibly informative. For example Just the answer to that one question are better predictors of whether a government will be reelected? than the state of the economy is that's true in Britain, it's true in Europe iss true in U.S. presidential elections. So the basic idea is extremely simimple And we then go on, of course to say Well, what will the effect of different policies Be on this outcome And will they be high enough to to justify the expenditure and that's the basic a thing that goes into this treasury principle. that's what government spending is about. government spending is about producing. the greatest amount of happiness from the money which is available. We've been working on that producing a book later this year called Value for Money. new well being approach to cost benefit analysis And what you found is just an extraordinary variation in the effectiveness of government expenditure. For example Ging back to mental health that you mentioned we can show that these treatments that are provided will pay for themselves to the government within a couple of years. So there's no cost to the taxpayer. putting on these services At the other end you have things like new roads, new railways which are very small benefits people's happiness and take up a lot of money. In the middle you had things like police, it turns out that the police because of their effects on crime have actually a substantial effect. on the well beinging of the population So this is how you should look at all government policy. And your key sort of, if you like update to it, the thing that sort of took you on from Bentham and Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill was you said that we now have the tools to measure this much better than we could in centuries gone past. U these words, I think almost interchangeably, but what is happiness and what is well beinging? I know what you say about you can measure it using that one question, and I might end this podcast by asking you it is happiness and what is human wellbe? Happiness is a feeling. It's subjective Because that is the most important thing to us is actually how we feel about our lives And I think the fact that it has such an effect on politics It is a very good reason why we should expect our politicians to take it seriously and It's time they did. What do you make of one objection which s that actually to live a good and complete and full life So very I love the Aristotle word from his Nicomachian ethics, which is eudaimonia, human flourishing Some people would say that to live a life that you know, when you get to your nineties, you might say, well, I've lived a good and full and complete life that you know, it was a sense of human flourishing that there is actually a benefit to at times being unhappy For example, people who might be unhappy or dissatisfied with their life That might be a spur to action. It might be their frustration or they're suffering in some way causes them to take decisions which makes them happier many years hence Isn't there a value various times in your life being unhappy. I don't think there's an intrinsic value But I certainly think it's true. we all need to have an understanding of the range of human emotion which we can't really have unless we've experienced it ourselves. And I think you can't really sympathize with somebody else's suffering Unless you had some suffering yourself So I think it's a means to an end And I think also that Go back to what you said about Aristotle, I think he actually made a slight confusion in the way you talked about this because He talked about virtue being a part of happiness Virtue is not part of happiness. Virtue is a means to happiness. We can help other people by behaving virtuously And that's what we want And we also we do have this really extraordinary piece of good luck, we human beings by behaving well, You can actually make yourself feel better. and there have been wonderful laboratory experiments where people are playing these games and they can cheat or not cheat and they were up and when they don't cheat their reward center in their brain starts lighting up This is a fundamental part of human beings. think I think Mark Twain said, if you want to cheer yourself up, cheer somebody else up This is what binds humans together. And as you say, it does involve having a ranger experience yourself. I'm going to do something which my twenty one year old self Graduating in two thousand five would be very proud of I'd like to spend a few minutes asking you about utilitarianism. By the way, it's funny, I have to think about the purpose of this podcast. In a way, this podcast aims to make life better. you know, it's a home for radical ideas, but we want to make life better. And making life better is about making good ethical choices. Utilitarianism is that ethical system which aims to increase the general happiness or promote the maximum happiness of the maximum number Are you a utilitarian Well, there are two types of ualiltarian. There's the Uualiltarians like Bensham which say that it's just the total of happiness. That's what he meant The aggregate in a society. Yes, regardless of who the happiness is accruing to So if you have a policy and it increases happiness people are already happy, that's as valuable as if it increases happiness of people who are miserable I don't think anybody Well not many people these days there are one or two. There's a philosopher Peter Singer who I respect But I disagree with him. Most of us are more egalitarian these days, and we think it's more important to reduce misery by a given amount and to increase existing happiness So that's the way that I write about these things and think about these things. In fact actually we've done a very interesting study. So the answer to this life satisfaction question. is under scale n to ten Lord. not at all satisfied compleomtely satisfied unt soil we ask people How important is it? to raise somebody from say say seven to eight compared with two to three. Interesting. And we find Christy Commons've done it on student groups, so we've also done it on a population group People think that moving from seven to is about half as important as moving from two to three. That's so interesting. That gets us into something called the Easterlin paradox which is about countries and their approach to wealth, which is this idea that People ask what's the connection between happiness and wealth actuallyctually, if you have a philosophy which you might call it, I don't know, Leardism which says that happiness should be the aim of public policy If your aim was happiness, you might give greater weight to reducing unhappiness for those who have very little wealth. you give greater weight to that than you would to increasing happiness for those who already do. And the Eastern paradox gets us into the fact that if you increase the happiness. If you get people in poor countries, if you like from two to three, if you increase their wealth, you might increase their happiness But once societies get to a certain level of happiness increasing wealth produces diminishing returns.. In other words, if you're going to increase the wealth, by certain amount It makes a huge difference to happiness for those who go from very poor to poor For those who go from rich to very rich, it doesn't actually make that much of a difference in the end, it's sort about the margins What do you think that says about us? would you infer from the fact that all your studies suggest that most people are more interested in getting people from two to three than seven to eight Well, I think that people's ethical views and I think we have begun a more democratic and more sympthetic people in all states of life than people were in the eighteenth century. definitely been a lot of progress in that dimension When you're talking about the effect of removing Poverty There are twoparate completely separate issues The first is what is the scientific effect of the increase in income on a person's happiness And that used to be a matter of speculation You talked about diminishing returns We now know that pretty much the effect of change in income on a person's happiness. depends on the proportional change in income So If somebody who is poor gets an extra pound They get ten times more benefit in terms of happiness from that than a rich person who is ten times richer would get from the same increase in income of one pound Quite a different question is the ethical question How important is it to raise somebody from two to three post seven to age And that, of course is something we can study. told you about last study, you can study what people think about that And I think in democracy That's relevant evidence that politicians might use. This is kind of the representative ethical position of the population they elected to represent There's a separate issue which is what are the factors than out of fighting whether somebody is a two or at seven. And that's what you mentioned the science of happiness in the title that So we now know a huge amount about What are the causes? And of course, income is by no means the only cause of unhappiness that in fact Number one is mental illness and then physical illness Number two is relationships Lndy on your own and conflict Having a job, which is a relationship or not being safe in the community And third, after health and relationships, comes income And I think it's really important that we get income into perspective in our political thinking. That's so interesting I think that such an assumption in politics. that the miserable people are the same as the people who are poor. That's so interesting the evidence from the new science of happiness is that first of all, most people are more kind of ethically motivated by the idea of getting people from two to three than from seven to eight, but also if aim is a kind of a happiness or well being public policy And that involves reducing unhappiness If you want to reduce unhappiness, the evidence would suggest that in order it's Mental and physical health number one relationships and connections and bonds to other people number two and income number three.. Be it would suggest that the focus of our politics, which is really aimed at growth. I mean, most public conversation in this country is aimed at kind of how to increase growth and stop economic stagnation It would suggest that growth should be just a little bit lower in the pecking order of priorities Um Growth is very important If it provides more income to people that matters, especially at a time when as now, people's income is a bit lower than they expected because of the cost of living. this canan I just say that that's a very important point which Paul Johnson, the director, former director of the Institute for Fyscical Studies is now Pvost of the Qeens College in Oxf One of Britain' most influential economists, he's just produced a book with some colleagues called Challenging Inequalities in which he said that growth is a precursor to reducing the inequalities that matter. Because if you don't have growth And that's the condition of Britain at the moment You create a kind of zero sum game where the argument is just sort of how do you divide up a finite amount of resources or a diminishing amount of resources So he would argue that growth, as you say, is very important And it's important that reducing inequalities, once you've got growth, you can work out how you help people perhaps in terms of their mental and physical health. Y I mean, Grace helps. families are that income issues but it also producces more taxes and gets people off benefits. And that gives money to the state, which it can spend on public services or on redistribution growth is an important means, but growth cannot be the objective and I think being a bit of a mistake. to say it's the objective of the government. I think it It doesn't resonate with people. I mean what resonates with people is rememarks about their own quality of life and growth is something out there it's sort of common part from it differentnt people can can benefit, but it doesn't resonate So I think we need to get back much more to a language of talking about the quality of life. People do, off course, they do But let's be precise about it. We do mean now When we talk about quality of life, something which can be measured and something where we can get actual numerical evidence on what are the best ways of spending money in order to priot it. I just wonder, you know, you're a labour peer. We have a labour government. You know, one criticism of Kistama that's often made, whether it's true or not, is that he doesn't know what he believes in Would you say that if this labour government wants to make Britain the happiest place in the world That would be a pretty radical idea And it would be a pretty good North Star I think it'd be terrific. Yeah Inidentally, I mean, I did have a talk with him aboutout five years ago now And he was very sympathetic to that idea. Was he? But I think what happened was that the public finances are in such a bad way It' such a worriry not only you know about collecting enough taxes to keep public services going but also to reassure bond market. you know, the government is serious about tackling the public deficit and so on. that somehow or other that kind of not very human objective too high into the rhetoric.'s very theseese are very important things to worry about bond markarkets matter and wevend a huge amount of money now on servicing public debt For the public at large, we want something more inspiring than about What are the opportunities for your children What are we going to do for the problems that are besetting you and the health service and so on. theseese have got to be much more central. The utilitarians called themselves the phhilosophical radicals. Yep. What do you think makes it radical the idea of recasting the modern British state around general wellbeing rather than growth Well, radical means means getting to the root And in general, it's something which you use, at least, to mean something good And I think that would be a very good thing to do. I think I use it in the sense of something brave Given the challenges of the age, which I think are so profound, so immense So huge, given the forces the rate at which the world is changing because of these underlying forces and trends I think it's a time for radical ideas. and It's so interesting what you say about welfare and the bond market. And I wonder if you could just touch on that for a moment It is the case that in this country The second biggest item of government expenditure is servicing our debts, debt interest. It is also the case that the amount spent now on welfare relating to work is something like three hundred thirty billion lots of people measure you can quibble with this because you can measure it in different ways. but that now exceeds the receipts from income tax. Well, I think you're including pensions in that. Including pensions, maybe included pensions. But we're spend a huge amount on welfare broadly defined, including pensions One of the reasons we're spending so much on welfare is because of Mental health which is in a very bad way, particularly amongst young people. Why do you think so many people C it be young people? Unhappy Well, first, let me agree with what you said about the situation because this is what is shown in these surveys in these international surveys, there are two of them. will happen every four years or so Britain has always been the lowest in Europe For the last ten or fifteen years But it's also gone down more Yeah, than any other European country I think that is partly I'm sure connected with social media I think another big problem been our schools have increasingly becoming clam factories And if you look at the Children's Society sururvey You have a pummeting of satisfaction with life. But if you ask them satisfaction with different aspects of life, they haven't all gone down Sad sex from his family Is slad But what's really plummeted satisfaction with school satisfaction with schoolwork and increasingly, since twenty ten as schools to be under pressure produce exam results on the theory that that will produce goodood workers. but it produced in fact, a generation of young people who feel a bit empty purpose And I think that takes us back to the original idea we were talking about If you're told, your purpose is to Do better than other people Better grades. Get a better job, get better income That's a zero sum game because if one person does better, somebody else has to do worse if it's all relative kind of competitive, ultra competitive ethic which has been increasingly pushed on the schools through the league tables and all the rest of it I think it's been very, very unhealthy what we want people to do. When they learn. It's either to do it because it's just so interesting or to do it because it's going to enable them to make a contribution to society and the well being of others with some reward to them from being useful And we've got to get a different spirit into the education system in order to restore a sense of purpose satisfying purpose to young people because passing exams is not satisfying enough because because somebody does well, somebody else does badly. You know, one of the great privileges of doing this podcast and meeting such great minds is you sort of come to your own views about particular issues and I've starting to wonder if Basically the last fifteen years have been a uniquely difficult time to be young So since twenty ten Social media smartphones Yeah, even before the pandemic, which was incredibly rough and tough on young people We do have this absolutely astonishing Not just crisis, but really I'd say good worse than that catastrophe for young people in this country. The team sent me some statistics for judges. to you because I think it's really important that people listen to this have the facts. In twenty twenty three, a couple of years ago now three years ag now About one in five children and young people agged eight to twenty five probable mental disorder This was twenty point three percent of eight to sixteen year olds twenty three point three percent of seventeen to nineteen year olds and nearly twenty two percent of twenty to twenty five year olds In other words, if you're eighteen in this country There's about a one in four chance you've got a mental disorder Absolutely astonishing Next, we get onto Ns, nine hundred fifty seven thousand people. age sixteen to twenty four and neat or were in the last measure That's twelve point eight percent of that age group So these are young people who should be in the prime of their lives One in eight of them roughly O one in seven of them roughly. and not in edation, employment or training. Of course, if they move on to welfare They're likely to stay on welfare for a very, very long time. It's hard to get off it And a final thing here, this is from the charity mind. As of april twenty twenty four A record four point five million children in the UK were growing up in relative poverty. Now the labour government have changed the two trial benefit cap and they're doing lot that they would say to tryry to reuce that. I find those statistics so Appalling and so shocking. And it suggests to me that something quite dramatic has happened quite recently push those numbers up. What do you think that is Well, I think social media are a very big problem They obviously peopleople into themselves U they socialize less They get out and the about less, they play less Uh that that's what they lose, but what they gain is increasingly an obsession with how they're appearing to other people. and how are other people appearing to them? Everybody is trying to put the best image of themselves on the screen. Everybody else feels their own average is worse than the other person's person best So This is very negative leaving out alogher the sex toortion and all of those extreme cases So I support the social media bam under sixteen I think that's an absolutely essential step and the banning of phones and schools But I think that something more radical has got to happen in schools The well being of the pupils has got to become a much more central There's got to be much more professional approach to teaching of life skills. So we've got what used to be called PSHG one hour a week. The surveys are not encouraging about what it's achieving And we have, in fact, got very good evidence based programs which should be the basis of an agreed curriculum There should be inventory of approved evidence based materials for teaching that curriculum And in secondary schools The teachers who teach it should be trained And it's been demonstrated over and over again that why it's ineffective at the moment is because of lack of teacher training and lack of structures materials. so One huge thing which could be done would be to improve the teaching of what used to be called THHE, but how are we going to get that to happen? And I agree with those who say we will not get schools to take the well beinging of the children more seriously than they currently do Unless we put something into the scales. A the moment, you've got scales Well There's a heavy weight on exam results and there's no weight on well being We've got to get some weight on well beinging Youjoy it by measuring it and there are very good schemes for doing that. It's done In Wales, it's done in South Australia very systematically organized and made it easiy for the schools I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Richard Leard, Professor Leard, Lord Leard, but Richard to you and me. If you are, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds, that way you won't miss future episodes And yeah, if you do subscribe, just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on and that way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode. And you'll never miss out Thank you and now back to Richard Leard Let me just put a principled objection to your position if I may, which is that if you focus more, not ignoring knowledge and all the rest of it and one of those most highly educated men one could come across and you've been a public intellectual for seven decades If you focus more on wellbeing and less on if you like crunchy subjects, knowledge Is there a danger that people just know less are less equipped? No, I mean there's really good evidence. from interventions that if you have an intervention that raises wellbeing, it also improves exam performance and test performance. How would you improve well being in Nolic Basically happy children learn more. I mean, it's as simple as that. How would you make for happier children? How would you rethink? what would you do that was radical in schools to make happier children. What does that actually involve? Well, think I think you need a wellbeing strategy You need a code What's done in some schools is periodically You have a big debate about what are the values of the school involving parents, the teachers and the children and they adopt the values. and then try to live out the values And if somebody goes amk they are sat there to think about the values which are written our around the school. There are different ways of doing it, but it's got to be central to the purposose of the school. What the values are It's got to be embedded obviously, as it is in very many schools in assemblies and so on, but also as far as possible in lessons in English or f from so on And it's got to be very strongly promoted through this weekly PSHG lesson. But there's one other thing I want to say. in relation to the mental health of young people When we got involved of the previous Labour government in promoting psychological therapy. We realized that to persuade Tony Blo initially, then Gordon It would help you could show that it was going to pay for itself and you can see the returns are more obvious when you do it for adults than when you do it for children because that comes later So that's why we went for the adult programe T years later when Jeruary hunt was the health secretary And we persuaded him to set up a parallel service psychological therapy in schools mental health support teams in schools That has been going rather slowly. It's covering about half the country now It's been promised to cover the rest of it by the end of the Parliament But it's also, it's remarkable that this happened standard of the service in terms of the training of the therapists is lower than for adults Now, just think about that More than half of adult problems already manifested in childhood thinkink of not doing as much for children as you're doing for adults, it doesn't make any sense. So the' So I just want to sail another choke twowo main forms of child mental health problems. onene lot of anxiety, which are well handled in this areit The other are what they call conduct disorder. And Cnduct disorder is the best predictor of what you said before Beoming not an employment educational training. This service Psychological therapy Svice, I mentioned Hard the truts Cuct disorder. This is extraordinary because there is A very, very good treatment for children with moderate Conduct disorder calledold incredible years. It's a system of group training of parents How to deal with these young people themselves which has been shown to more than halve ten years later the antisocial behavior of these children whose parents have been trained bring them up in a way that is better for their self respect and their behaviour We know what to do It's just a matter of having some energy behind it. And these are tiny sums of money compared with HS two or road programms I'm flightly frustrated that we have not managed this time round, but maybe we can in the next spending review to get money Int these mental health services These very cheap prizes to improve teaching and well beinging in schools and so on, tiny sums of money which would also repay for themselves. But it's interesting you say it because most people would have an assumption that We're spending more on health than ever Maybe we're spending on different things. Maybe we're spending it on beds or cancer treatment or dementia or but most people would say we are spending a huge amount on health already And the issue is the underlying causes type two diabetes, obesity, these underlying chronic health conditions, and we need to fix those in lifestyle changes You know, a lot of Liberals, libertarians, even just people who've worked in the government. if they were sat here listening to you now and perhaps they'd had the pleasure of reading your book They would say this is all lovely stuff and yes, we agree happiness matters. But the function and the role of the state is to feed the people them safe. and to increase wealth and then let them live the lives that they want A liberal and it's interesting you spoke recently to Adrian Waldridge, who's At Bloomberg, former writer for the economist, he's written a book called Centrists of the World Unite. And his position would I think be more towards saying that actually It's not necessarily for the government to tell you what you need to do to be happy. It's for the government and the state to create the conditions in which you can pursue your own happiness best way of doing that. would be to create some economic growth. And that is why GDP be the prime focus of every government department? Well, I would say first that increasing GDP is quite difficult So't donon't assume that that's the easiest thing to do. But second, I think it's quite good to think about history I read history. So I mean if you go back to the days of Gladstone. I mean, the state did nothing in education. Ver, very little in health, public health, all of these things. come into the sphere of the state Since then for very good reasons at the state. is a better agent When I kn other for producing a good coverage of education that make people good citizens and also effective workers. The state is actually a good provider of healthcare because of the asymmetry in in the medical market, the patient doesn't know what the doctor knows, etcera. So There are so many of these areas and the same is true with mental health Well State is actually the most effective provider. So That's we're talking about well beinging What do we know about the size of the stage in relation to the well beinging of the real because it's often asserted a big state the high tax rates are inimical to the well beinging of the people. Well, that's no evident that supports that. In fact, if anything, the evidence suggests that know over time, as states have increased coverage, well beinging has increased As a result of that So I think that the liberal position just doesn't have the evidence to support it Do you feel like the agenda that you've advanced It's not made as much progress as you want But I do feel that it's basically got a receptive audience I say that partly because we had on this podcast a very interesting man called Ed Davies, who is the research director at the Centre for Policy Studies, which is an anti poverty kind of wr of centre tank there' got people from a range of different political perspectives And he mentioned that David Cameron's initiative to measure wellbeing, which was done at your instigation still goes on But my sense is that talk of wellbe and talk of happiness is not as high up the agenda as it was perhaps fifteen years ago What's your sense I think that it's not at the very high level talked about so much But I think At the low level, there's a great tide coming in of people who are interested in it notot just the ordinary citizens, but At work at the workplace is a huge transformation and the amount of talk about the well being of workers, that's a barrier healthy thing. it's still got a long way to go even political discussion We used to talk about health, people now talk about health and well beinging. So they've got a wider concept of what. Health is that it's something which involves the mind as well as the body and in fact people are very much more conscious than they used to be of the way that the mind affects the body I mean, here's an extraordinary fact that if you ask people just simple questions about life satisfaction and you give them a medical examination, And you want to predict whether they'll be alive in ten years time The life satisfaction question is as good a predictor as the medical examination. I mean, there is that huge interaction between person's mental state. and their physical well being, people are increasingly aware of that I think people U much more willing psychologically aware, they're willing to talk about mental states as the ultimate reality people. So I think the condition is that I think We do need though a set of politicians who are radical daring enough to talk about this. I mean, I'm thinking, you've got my textbook on well beinging in front of you There is a huge body of knowledge in which we tried to reflect in that textbook but shows How different things affect people's well beinging? And that should be the centerpiece of thinking about government policy. If you were to do three things, radical things in government straight away There would be the funding for therapy for children in schools be an addiction hotline along the sort of groove or kind of kind the model set with your talking therapies, which is affected or being used by eight million people, high success rate, and that's for anxiety and depression. you'd have a similar one on addiction What else would you do? What is the Layard program for government? Well, the other one, I mean, you mentioned the bad situation of young people And we're talking particularly of non graduates. So I think it's really Shocking that we haven't got a proper Career progression system. You me through vocation vation We've had a halving in youth apprenticeships in the last ten years This is absolutely extraordinary that this hasn't created an absolute outroower and a scandal Only one in three of young people who apply for apprenticeships Get one So almost my top priority of everything is to have a government commitment to a systemen where any qualified applicant for apprenticeship, just like any qualified applicant for university to receive an offer I think that is critical because Employers are turning their backs on young people as you know. that they u partly been allowed to use the apprenticeship levy for in service training instead of a new hres. that's been a terrible mistake. They're partly worried about the characters of young people. of the reasons that you mentioned And we're in danger of really abandoning A whole generation. H cohort going into our society, which we shall pay the penalty for What are the Underlying trends of the last twenty five years has been the very rapidly diminishing amount of wealth or money that makes its way to the labour force. Workers are getting a smaller slice or share of the pie. It used to be in the post waroy years And I'm interested you were born in nineteen thirty four, I think. I wonder if forgive me for raising it. I don't remember that yeah. Dt you? Do you remember the start of the war Of course I do, yes. How old are you? five, six, when? I was five, I remember coming up from the beach and listening to Neville Chamberlain's speech at eleven o'clock in the morning Were you separated from your family when the war began No, no, we were all together no What was your experience of the war itself? So you wentnt from what being five to eleven. So those early years were shaped by the wall What was it like? Well, it was an idealistic period. As you know. support the strong sense of social cohesion And a very strong belief that you know we could have a better world after You said that we've got a very good new signs of happiness where everyone gives themselves a score from zero to ten zero being Completely unhappy, T being completely happy I mentioned a couple of times that you're ninety two. I hope you don't mind me doing that. But at ninety two, having spent sixty years at the LSC having seen the war as a child How do you sc your own life My whole life Well, I think I've been actually very lucky. I've I've had u Good friends. I've got a wonderful life took me a while to find her Um, I've had really interesting work. I still have interesting work. It got my health, I've gone on playing tennis until earlier this year So I do write myself I very lucky Could we get you from a seven to an eight? Are you an eight or a nine? Not nine. No You see, I think that if you're trying to influence the world. I mean, you're bound to feel a certain sense of frustration I think they call it divine discontent. So I experienced quite a bit of that Well Richard, it's a pleasure and a privilege talking to you. We've had lots and lots of questions from our listeners and you're very kindly going Stick around and answer some of those for our bonus episode, which is coming out on Monday But for now, Thank you very very much for telling us about the new science of happppiness Well, thank you and let me wish you A lot of weens There is just something extremely charming, if I may say, about a ninety two year old man who was born in nineteen thirty four who has seen an awful lot, who's thought an awful lot arguing for a very, very, very radical reconsideration of the entire function and workings of the British state. And that in turn follows from a social revolution really in that we start prioritizing very different things. And when Richard Leayard argues that happiness, that well beinging is the fundamental, it's the unarguable things, the thing that everyone wants. And when he argues that we've got a huge new science that says We can measure now What gives people satisfaction, what gives people a sense they've led ppy lives It is quite hard to argue against that.. I try to, as you'd expect, I've tried to apply some scrutiny to it, I try to say policy terms and there again he's got some pretty radical ideas. So talking therapies, which is that NHS treatment that eight million people have been through, he wants one on addiction, a similar program for addiction, just as he's affected eight million lives, which are affected by anxiety ress He's got some very radical ideas, hasn't he about how we need to rethink the entire nature of our school system? Not to denigrate exams, not to say that it's not about achieving academic standards, but just to say that well being of our children because happy pupils make it for happy learners is just much, much more important And I just thought there was something of a sort of clarion call or something kind of wonderfully focusing about him saying Everyone's got an answer. If you ask everyone how happy they are from zero to ten Most people have got an answer And it was also very interesting that he said most people think we should give more attention and time. to getting people from sort of two to three than getting seven to eight. Mbe think that actually this is potentially