Citizens Advice Bureaux

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, on initiating this debate, which is very timely. I declare an interest in that my daughter is a representative councillor on the management committee of her area CAB. It is not a financial interest. I also quote a statement by Ed Davey, the Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs:

“The Citizens Advice service is a respected brand served by a network of volunteers whom people really trust. In many ways, they are one of the best examples of the Big Society in action”.

That surely indicates that the CAB means a lot to our Government.

I spoke earlier today to a friend who works on a voluntary basis as a solicitor—I was going to say “a young solicitor”, but she has been around longer than I realise, as we are all growing older. She devotes many hours a week to employment issues, which is her field. She said that a difficulty that comes up all the time is a lack of communication and that people often say to her, “You are the first person who has ever actually listened to what I have got to say”. She said that she has had cases where a Filipino woman would be working for a Nigerian man and there was really no issue in it at all; it was simply that they did not understand one another. Each had broken English, but the English had broken in different ways. Therefore, there was no common language between them. That reminds me of how important it is that the Government make knowledge of English language an important feature of life in this country, because it is terribly hard otherwise, unless you are an old lady or an old gentleman whose family looks after everything for you, to participate fully in life. To do that, you really have to have a working knowledge of English as it is spoken today. English is a living language and constantly changing; therefore it is very important that people know what it is about.

The level of professional help and courtesy in the CAB is very high. The Kensington and Chelsea Citizens Advice Bureau service was one of the first branches to open, in September 1939 at the outbreak of war. More than 97 per cent of people have heard of the CAB and 40 per cent have used it at some stage. The total can be counted in millions. At every level, the work represents cost savings to other service providers. That point is highly relevant. In our previous debate on the health service, it was pointed out how so many of the specialist nurses and services save the National Health Service money. I believe that the CAB, too, saves rather than costs money. We tend to look at these things in a slightly short-sighted way.

The two branches of the bureau in Kensington and Chelsea benefit from more than 330 hours a week of volunteer input. It is not easy to get people to give up time now. Even my friend who volunteers a large part of her week said that, as times get harder, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to give up professional time to be there, but we are lucky that she is still doing it.

The London School of Economics found for the Department of Health that face-to-face debt advice was a cost-effective intervention, not only in preventing anxiety and depression but with a return of £3.55 for every £1 invested. The statistics show that the greatest number of people presenting to the CAB now are coming with cases about welfare or debt. That reflects the worrying financial times that we are all facing. When we hear on the radio about people falling into the hands of loan sharks, that is cause for worry. Citizens Advice must prevent many of those disasters from happening by giving people better advice.

Certainly, unemployment is growing. My informant told me that the number of people coming for unemployment advice is rising to new levels. People who did not need help before need help now. It is widespread. Some 76 per cent of people trust Citizens Advice to provide free advice that is truly independent and impartial.

So many things could be said in favour of Citizens Advice, but I have one final point about prevention. The CAB solves many cases, but there is no estimate of the thousands of cases in which Citizens Advice has prevented the need for legal or other action. That is an uncosted value that should be taken into account. I do hope that the Government will take this message on board.