Liberal Democrat government would put happiness at the heart of its agenda, says Jo Swinson

Happiness would be at the heart of a Liberal Democrat government agenda – with every spending decision and new law assessed for their impact on public “wellbeing”, Jo Swinson has announced.

The party would publish “wellbeing budgets” as part of the chancellor’s annual budget statement, and would create an official wellbeing watchdog to determine how the government’s actions were affecting happiness, said the Lib Dem leader. Aides said she would consider appointing a “happiness minister” to oversee the process.

Making her first speech as leader to the Lib Dem annual conference in Bournemouth, Ms Swinson said that a snap general election in the coming months will present voters with an opportunity to “choose the kind of country we want to be”.

Staking her claim as a genuine contender to be prime minister after the vote – expected in November or December – she confirmed that a Lib Dem government would cancel Brexit “on day one” of her premiership. She made no mention of a People's Vote referendum on EU membership, though aides insisted that it remained the party's priority if no election is called.

And she said that the Lib Dems would create an “open, fair, inclusive society”.

“At the next general election, voters will choose the kind of country we want to be,” she said.

“Insular closed and selfish or collaborative, open and generous.

“A politics of fear, hate and division or one of respect, hope and inclusion.

“Liberal Democrats, we can build the broad, open, liberal movement that our country needs. We can defeat nationalism and populism.

“We can change our politics, stop Brexit and win a brighter future.”

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Ms Swinson said that the wellbeing budget would “spell out our priorities for public spending on the things that matter most – both right now and for future generations” in a “fundamental rethink of the purpose of our economy”.

Quoting Bobby Kennedy, she said that the current focus on GDP means government is measuring “everything except that which makes life worthwhile”.

“We have been conditioned to believe that as long as GDP keeps growing, everything is fine,” she said.

“But this ignores the reality behind the numbers. That the social contract is broken – that working hard and playing by the rules is no longer enough to guarantee a better life. That our planet is at breaking point.”

Aides said that the Office for National Statistics already collects data on life satisfaction, happiness and anxiety under an initiative of the coalition government, but that the current administration is making no use of the figures.

Lib Dems would use them in impact assessments of all new proposed legislation, they said.

Ms Swinson also announced that the party would require companies to report on the climate risk posed by their activities and re-establish the Green Investment Bank created under the coalition and sold off by Theresa May.

Warning that today’s generation is “the last … that can stop irreversible damage to our environment”, she said that Boris Johnson’s government had done nothing in response to parliament’s declaration of a climate emergency.

“We’ve set off the fire alarm, and now they are just standing by watching it burn,” she said.

She also promised to introduce a Glasgow-style public health approach to driving down knife crime and to ring-fence funding for mental health services.

Ms Swinson took aim at both Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, telling delegates that voters in the upcoming general election “deserve a better choice than an entitled Etonian or a 1970s socialist”.

In a jibe at the prime minister’s tangled personal life, she said: “We all know that commitment has never been Boris Johnson’s strong suit.”

And she accused him of acting like a “socialist dictator” by suspending parliament, purging critics inside his party and threatening to ignore the law barring him from taking the UK out of Europe without a deal.

Pointing to Johnson’s use of “big girl’s blouse” and “girly swot” as insults, she said: “If he thinks being a woman is somehow a weakness, he’s about to find out it is not”.

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She warned that a no-deal Brexit “will put lives at risk” by disrupting medical supplies and accused Mr Johnson’s government of wanting “to pay for their ideology with other people’s jobs”.

She accused Mr Corbyn of being half-hearted in the 2016 EU referendum campaign, and said: “Nigel Farage might be Brexit by name, but it is very clear that Jeremy Corbyn is Brexit by nature.”

In a highly personal account of how she was inspired by her late father and by close political friend Paddy Ashdown, who died last year, Ms Swinson said she determined to return to frontline politics after losing her seat in 2015 and feeling despair over the Conservative leadership.

Watched by mother Annette and husband Duncan, she said that when she thought of the futures of her young sons Andrew and Gabriel, she knew that “even if there was only the smallest chance that we could change the direction our country had taken, I had to do everything I could to make that happen”.

She won a standing ovation after telling delegates: “The opportunity in front of us is huge. And it is for the taking. We can win. We must win.”