APPG for Future Generations past impact review and personal retrospective

By weeatquince @ 2025-12-17T14:04 (+43)

Introduction

In 2019 to 2021 I (Sam) worked as the secretariat for the APPG for Future Generations. I produced two impact reports: 2020 report and 2021 report [or on the EA Forum 2020 here and 2021 here].

I have been helping out with the APPG since 2020, mostly in 2021 to 2023 where I worked for 1 day a week on the APPG. I now plan to wrap that up fully to focus on my next career steps. This document is retrospective, written for myself and for key contacts and funders. It explains what happened next to the APPG and it reviews the outcomes of the policy changes discussed in the previous impact reports 5 years down the line. 

Summary

In the first few years (from 2019) the APPG secretariat was run primarily by Sam with support from Caroline. Caroline took over in 2022. In early 2024 due to a family emergency Caroline had to pause this work and this left the APPG without a secretariat. Caroline is now back and supporting the APPG.

The past impact reports noted the following impacts

• A new House of Lords select committee on risk management set-up.
• A UK government commitment to “review our approach to risk assessment”.
• Scottish Government plans for a Future Generations Commissioner.

Reviewing those today it looks like there has been government policy change, although less than hoped. There have been noticeable improvements to government risk assessment, some improvements to government risk accountability and minimal progress on Scotland's Future Generations Commissioner plans. 

What happened

In the beginning

In late 2018 Caroline and I (Sam) were chosen by the previous secretariat to co-run the APPG for Future Generations in the UK Parliament. We had different backgrounds: I had a non-profit (effective altruism) & civil service background and Caroline had a defence, foresight & think tank background – this was later reflected in the things we worked on as Secretariat. Funding was limited, about £30k to start.

2019 & 2020 – Sam

From March 2019 until February 2021 I did most of the work providing the secretariat with support from Caroline (who had a full-time other job). The APPG sessions and outputs, although following the interest of Parliamentary members, also aligned with my interest areas: long-term-decision making in government, national risk management, and pandemic preparedness. After a good first year and some successful fundraising we hired Natasha in April 2020 to support.

Dates: Mar 2019 to Jan 2021

Secretariat: Sam (80% FTE), Caroline (20% FTE), Natasha (junior, FTE, from April 2020)

Projects: Report on risk management. Longtermism inquiry. Future Generations Bill.

Growth: Membership went from 23 (Mar 2019) to 100 (Jan 2021) parliamentarians

Key impacts:

• A new House of Lords select committee on risk management set-up (confirmed April 2020).
• UK government committed to “review our approach to risk assessment” (Mar 2021).

Documents: Jan 2019 Strategy, June 2020 impact report, Aug 2020 Strategy

2021 – Natasha

In early Jan 2021 funding was short. I had unsuccessfully attempted to fundraise to scale up, mostly looking for funding to do more policy research. In Feb 2021 I was offered another job opportunity. Having struggled to fundraise it was decided that I would step back and work one day a week to manage our junior staff, Natasha.

Dates: Feb 2021 to Mar 2022

Secretariat: Sam (20% FTE), Caroline (20% FTE), Natasha (junior, FTE)

Projects:  Future Generations Bill campaign. FutureCheck: a plan to review Bills laid in Parliament for long-term implications.

Key impacts:

• Scottish Government plans for a Future Generations Commissioner (May 2021).

Documents: Aug 2020 Strategy, Jan 2021 scale up funding request (available on request), July 2021 Impact report, Aug 2021 Strategy

2023 – Caroline

In March 2022 Natasha resigned. It was decided that Caroline would leave her job and take on the bulk of the work of providing the secretariat to the APPG going forward. Towards the end of 2022 Caroline finished at her other job and started working full time on the APPG. Whilst continuing to follow the interests of Parliamentary members, the APPG shifted to focus more on areas that related to Caroline’s background: defence, Ukraine and scenario planning. 

Dates: Apr 2022 to Oct 2022

Secretariat: Caroline (20% FTE), Sam (10% FTE)

Dates: Nov(?) 2022 to Jan 2024

Secretariat: Caroline (FTE)

Publications: UNDP foresight paper on Polycrisis and Long-Term Thinking (August 2022). Ukraine 2040 Scenarios (June 2023)

Key impact: Inter-factional Union on Strategic Foresight set up in Ukraine Parliament (May 2022). 

2024 – 2025

When a project is run by one person it is not robust to that person being unable to work. In early 2024 Caroline had a family emergency and flew to the US to care for her family. At this time there was not a steady enough funding stream for Caroline to hire cover. Without a secretariat the APPG ceased to exist (deregistered in March 2024). Caroline began picking up the pieces from mid-2025 and the APPG was re-registered and began running events again in Nov 2025.

Dates: Jan 2024 to Oct 2025

Secretariat: No one

Key impact: None

Other notes

The inquiry into long-term policy making

This never got published. There is very good content in the near final draft – we did a lot of high-quality interviews and events with top decision makers. It is now dated and needs rewriting. Caroline plans to get back to this within the next few months.  

[EA forum edit: On funds donated via GWWC

It is my understanding that if you donated to the APPG secretariat via our GWWC page, that for various reasons (like the APPG not existing for a while) that these funds were redirected by GWWC to their Risks and Resilience Fund.]

Review of past impacts

A number of “key impact” policy wins are listed above. With any policy change it is important to review some years down the line to assess how valuable that change has been. So I looking back at what can we about our past key impacts:

Impacts achieved

A new House of Lords select committee on risk management set-up (confirmed April 2020). AND: A UK government committed to “review our approach to risk assessment” (Mar 2021).

What has happened by Dec 2025

It appears that the UK has made incremental, although not transformative, changes to how it identifies and manages extreme risks. That said much activity is not publicly visible, so additional improvements may exist behind the scenes.

• The government responded positively to many of the suggestions from the Select Committee. The government response can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62321851e90e070ed1cf0a25/government-response-preparing-extreme-risk.pdf
• Risk identification – noticeable improvement. Based on the public National Risk Register (NRR) it looks like the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) has had some updating and is more comprehensive and detailed. The government appears to have reduced its reliance on the misleading reasonable worst-case scenarios and now looks at some risk over longer timescales (5 years rather than 2 years) – both of which were points raised by the APPG report. However the NRR still misses out on very low probability high impact risks (like super-volcanos or AI risk) or even just risks that have not affected the UK in recent years (like self-coups). That said the UK is acting as if AI risk is real (e.g. funding AI safety research), and AI is discussed in the Chronic Risk Analysis and National Security Strategy so perhaps some of these risks are identified but not in the public NRR. 
• Accountability – minimal improvements, so far. There is a new Cabinet Office Resilience Director and Head of Resilience but not statutory powers for this role or oversight of risk management. In 2023 the last government committed to “create an NSRA process which readily invites external challenges from experts, academia, industry and the international risk community”, although I don’t see evidence that this has happened. There was a 2023 update to the Orange Book (a new Part II) to better support and enable assurance of risk management. In July 2025 this government committed to additional external scrutiny and red-teaming of risk planning and preparedness, so we shall see if this happens.
• Resilience – some changes. There have also been small incremental improvements to UK resilience, a new UK Government Resilience Framework, and improvements to Local Resilience Forums. There has not been a major push to make all households more disaster resilient.
• Spending rules – no change. No public changes to spending rules to support spending on long-term resilience.

Impact achieved

Scottish Government plans for a Future Generations Commissioner (May 2021).

What happened by Dec 2025

The debate continues. Proposed non-legislative policy changes work concern for Future Generations more into government policy. Substantial legislative changes, like setting up a new Commissioner, are still on the cards but somewhat unlikely to happen.

• Public consultation, 2023. The Scottish Government consulted on a Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill. Consultation responses were mixed. Respondents were in favour of a duty on public bodies to think long-term, to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Respondents were mostly in favour of some additional reporting requirements. Respondents were mixed on the need for a Commissioner.
• NFP reform proposal, 2023. The government proposed and consulted on changes to the National Performance Framework that puts “improve the wellbeing of people living in Scotland, now and in the future” as the key purpose of government policy (here). This would capture much of the essence of the Future Generations Bill. Such non-legislative policy creates a nudge towards more long-term thinking but not a legal responsibility for government bodies. 
• Members Bill. Meanwhile Sarah Boyack MSP laid the Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill as a Members Bill to address “threats to the wellbeing of current and future generations”. This is not a government bill and at this point it is unlikely to pass before the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. 

Impact achieved

Inter-factional Union on Strategic Foresight set up in Ukraine Parliament (May 2022)

What happened by Dec 2025

This is not something I worked on so I have not looked at this in as much depth. The Inter-factional union is still active. It was engaging senior political figures as at September 2024 (source). It ran a joint event with the APPG in Dec 2025.

Overall impact analysis

My 2019 impact reports assessed policy change impacts with an impact rating and a % score for attribution and counterfactual¹. For more on this see notes in the annex. My updated analysis on the impact of the APPG / the APPG secretariat. 

• A new House of Lords select committee on risk management set-up AND a UK government commitment to “review our approach to risk assessment”
  • Impact: Medium (?) (was high) – There has been meaningful improvements, especially to the UK’s risk assessment processes (although hard to judge as much of this is behind closed doors).
  • Attribution: 50% – work was done by others such as CLTR to get the government to adopt recommendations.
  • Counterfactual: 67%
• Scottish Government plans for a Future Generations Commissioner (May 2021).
  • Impact: Low (was medium) – Lowered as changes have been less than expected.
  • Attribution: 45% (was 95%) – Lowered as other orgs have maintained pressure on government on this topic since 2021
  • Counterfactual: 95% (as per impact report).

Lessons learned and personal reflections 

I am overall very proud of what we achieved. As a small team with very little funding, we achieved multiple changes to UK policy within a few years.

A focus on more specific policy asks could have led to more impact. There is a spectrum of directness when setting policy change goals. For example, one could work to make governments generally function better or work to improve a highly specific policy. I see advantages to both but I lean more than I used to towards the specific policy focus. In hindsight I think more specific work on specific risks to future generations could have been higher impact. 

Small orgs are fragile. They are fragile to sudden staff changes, illness, and so on. I think there is very little I could have done differently here but it is a lesson to hold onto. That said the APPG is now back, with new officers and not expecting future challenges.

Impact reporting on policy is doable. I like the ‘Impact level’, ‘Attribution %’ and ‘Counterfactual %’ model I adopted in the past. I think this exercise shed additional light on the impact we had and expect that policy orgs should do 5 year and 10 year follow ups to assess what has actually happened and update their impact reports accordingly.

Policy change work requires follow-up. A government commitment does not a policy change make. Work is needed to continue to follow through and ensure that the change actually happens. That said in a crowded policy space with allies, you can drop the ball, and it might be OK. I was worried before this review that all the things we did would have faded to naught without our ongoing work. In actual fact other organisations had picked up the slack and were doing the follow up work.

High level change to how governments function is often highly incremental. Such change can be very very slow, especially more technical changes. This is not always going to be the case, but it is a useful expectation to have.

[EA Forum edit – additional reflections

Maybe I should have stuck things out more. When funding for policy work was tough maybe I should have kept going, worked unpaid, etc. I am still split on this. I think with hindsight (based on the impact I have had elsewhere and how UK policy has developed on topics like AI) that moving on likely lead to more impact – but perhaps with the information I had at the time the right thing to do would have been to keep pushing though.

Staff alignment matters. The switch from me to Caroline as the FTE secretariat had a big effect on the topics the APPG worked on, and maybe it is possible that for a while EA aligned funders were funding work that did not closely match their interests. Either way I think I could have flagged this risk to funders more clearly.

EA impact reporting could be better. In general impact reporting in policy, even among EA orgs is very poorly done. Often impact notes, as they exist, class evidence of work as impact when they are clearly not (things like we had x many meetings / were mentioned in x many newspapers). Other times they are extremely vague. As mentioned above I think impact reporting in this area is doable. I think funders should play a grater role in demanding this.]

Looking forward

The APPG is now back up and running. I have fully left this project now. Caroline continues to work with the APPG and the Ukrainian Parliament on strategic foresight. You can still support this work and if you are interested in funding her reach out to her at carolinebaylon@icloud.com. 

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FOOTNOTE

¹ The impact assessment approach adopted here is as follows

• Low/medium/high impact rating – representing how much the policy change is a meaningful step towards an organisations’ long term policy goals. This does not judge those goals as good or bad.
• Attribution – the percentage that our organisation did of the total meaningful work (by outside actors) done to drive the policy change. It adds up to 100% across all involved organisations.
• Counterfactual – the likelihood the change would not have happened without our organisations’ contribution. Across organisations it can add up to less or even way more than 100%, e.g. if 10 steps all done by different orgs were all necessary to make the change happen then each can claim 100% counterfactual impact.