Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 11. I remind noble Lords of my interest as president of the Money Advice Trust, the charity that runs National Debtline and Business Debtline. I echo my noble friend’s thanks to the Minister for meeting us yesterday to discuss the intentions behind the amendment.

My noble friend has laid out the need to address access to financial services for people in vulnerable circumstances. It is also important to acknowledge the work that is already under way in this area—in particular since the FCA’s paper on vulnerability in 2015. Since then, the British Bankers’ Association’s Vulnerability Taskforce has produced a report challenging the industry to improve, and the issue of vulnerability has remained high on the agenda.

All that is of course very welcome but, as my noble friend indicated, the term “vulnerable people” does not necessarily mean the same as “people in vulnerable circumstances”. Very often in the past, “vulnerability” was used interchangeably with mental health issues, yet there is a growing recognition of the need for financial services and other organisations to consider a much wider range of vulnerable circumstances.

As an illustration of that need, the Money Advice Trust provides training for the sector in supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances, and demand has been growing significantly over recent years. The charity has now trained more than 11,000 staff working in more than 160 firms. Increasingly, this training covers areas way beyond mental health, such as supporting customers with addictions or a serious illness, those suffering a bereavement or redundancy, and people contemplating suicide, to give a few examples. Yet many people in vulnerable circumstances are still excluded from financial services and are unable to access the support they need.

The SFGB provides an ideal opportunity to increase the focus on vulnerability through its national strategy. As I said in Committee, the Department for Work and Pensions, as the sponsoring department, could also provide a very useful link between the body’s work and the broader financial inclusion policy agenda.

This amendment seeks to take the good work on vulnerability that is being done by the industry and the voluntary sector and give it an explicit focus on the face of the Bill. I hope that it will receive careful consideration by the Minister or that something very similar that captures the intention of the amendment but is perhaps better worded can be brought forward by the Government at Third Reading.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to add my support for this amendment. My own particular interest relates to people with learning disabilities, who can be presented with significant challenges when it comes to managing money on a daily basis, even where local financial services are readily available to them.

The move to digital banking and even past innovations such as chip and pin present a real risk for people with limited capacity—a risk of exploitation. When bank branches close, the financial services available at the Post Office are often held up as an answer. However, for people with limited mental capacity—not just people with learning disabilities—they are not the answer. For instance, the Post Office no longer provides a paying-in book, and the only way of obtaining cash is through chip and pin. There are hundreds of similar examples, relating not just to people with learning disabilities but to those who are in vulnerable circumstances at different times, as we have heard from my noble friends.

This welcome Bill is creating a single financial guidance body that could make a significant difference in improving financial capability, reducing debt problems and helping more people to engage with their pensions. Perhaps providing easier-to-read or pictorial guides to finances would be a useful starting point for the new organisation to consider—for example, covering banking and managing personal budgets—with the aim of helping people with learning difficulties take more control of their finances. It could consider appropriate training so that people with a learning disability and their families can be better supported, as online guides are unlikely to be adequate for these groups.

I must declare my interest here as the chair of Beyond Words, a community interest company which works to empower people with learning disabilities by developing pictorial narratives to help them when circumstances are too challenging.

I hope that the Minister will support the amendment to ensure that the new body keeps in mind the needs of people in more financially vulnerable situations.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, we on these Benches would gladly have added our names to this amendment but the list was full, which is always good news, particularly when the inspiration and leadership come from the Cross Benches. I just want to make it clear that we are very supportive of the amendment.

I also want to add one comment. I know that sometimes the use of the term “vulnerable” is challenged but, as I know from dealing with legislation in the other place, although that was quite some time ago, there is a long and very established history of using the term “vulnerable”, certainly at least—although, I am sure, not limited to—among the utilities, which obviously have to recognise and identify all kinds of vulnerable customers for a whole range of purposes. It allows what I would call reasonable common sense to apply in identifying the full scope of people who are vulnerable. Some of the examples that we have had today have been around mental capacity issues and learning difficulties, but it seems to me that nothing in the many historical ways in which this term has been used in legislation previously would limit it or prevent it, for example, applying to care leavers or, in terms of financial education, to younger children and to the broader group that we are discussing.

Therefore, I hope that the Minister will accept that there is a well-tried, true and well-trodden path setting out how we identify vulnerable people. The term is frequently used to tackle a variety of needs and there is plenty of legislative precedent that makes this a very effective amendment.