Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Graeme Morrice

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

I thank the Minister for his opening remarks on Third Reading. He and I have got to know each other, as Minister and Opposition spokesperson, and other members of the Committee quite well over the past few weeks. We have now discussed the key issues on Third Reading. He will know that we have had a total of 23 votes on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. I hope that that illustrates the strength of feeling about the Bill among Labour Members. It contains only four clauses, yet we have managed to have 23 votes on a range of issues as we continue to oppose the Bill. We have fought the Bill at every opportunity, and will continue to do so in another place shortly.

We oppose the Bill because the abolition of the child trust fund will reduce the opportunity for the poorest in our society to have a capital asset at 18. We oppose it because the abolition of the saving gateway scheme will reduce saving opportunities for the poorest in our society. We also oppose it because it will reduce the help available to pregnant women by stopping the £190 grant that is available to them in the 25th week of their pregnancy. Again, I must point out, for the Minister’s benefit, that that will hit the poorest in our society the hardest.

As Opposition spokesman, I have tried to be as pragmatic and helpful to the Minister as possible on a number of occasions. I have tried to help him by giving him an opportunity to delay the implementation of the Bill, so that we could see whether some of our economic woes—which are difficult and challenging at the moment—are overcome in the next three years. We offered the Minister the opportunity to postpone implementation of the bill until 2014, or 2016, but he rejected it. We offered him the opportunity to have payment holidays, but he rejected it. We also offered him the opportunity to deal with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland differently, but he rejected it.

We offered the Minister the opportunity to fulfil his manifesto commitment to keep the child trust fund for the poorest third of our society, for those on disability living allowance and for looked-after children—a point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has particularly focused on during the debate. We have considered a range of issues, including whether the Bill needed a proper equality impact assessment, but the Minister has chosen to reject them all. Well, so be it; that is his prerogative. I believe that he has made the wrong choices in relation to tackling the deficit, by putting women, children and the poorest at the forefront of his deficit reduction plan.

In doing that, the Minister has broken his manifesto commitments on the child trust fund for the poorest third, for looked-after children and for those on DLA. He has made a U-turn by abolishing the saving gateway scheme, which he supported during the election and right up to the moment when the Bill was introduced, and by abolishing the health in the pregnancy grant, for which he had no mandate. He never argued for its abolition at the general election, or mentioned having to cut it; he never said that he was concerned about it at all. He must have known at that stage that there would be, as there are, challenges for whoever won the general election to ensure that we met those needs.

The Bill abolishes the child trust fund completely; it abolishes the saving gateway completely; it abolishes the health in pregnancy grant completely. It is the deficit reduction plan hitting women, children and the poorest in our society the hardest. The Minister will know that the child trust fund was introduced by the Labour Government not just as a way of helping poorer people to save, but as a means of ensuring that we have individuals with a capital asset at the age of 18. He will know that there was a take-up of about 70,000 a month until he introduced this measure in July; with this Bill, we now look to 3 January 2011. He will know that 6 million families and people have the child trust fund in operation at the moment, but that in future that opportunity will be denied to individuals across the UK because this Minister has chosen—of all the choices he could have made—to ensure that the deficit reduction plan falls on those people who need the help and support the most. The Minister will also know that £2 billion of saving has been generated by the child trust fund to date. He will know that it might not be generated in future because the partnership between Government, the state and individuals will no longer be there in future.

In its place, the Minister wafts in front of us the prospect of a child ISA for the future. I await the details, but so rushed is this proposal that it was not even worked out fully for the Committee. So rushed is this Minister that he brings a proposal before the House today, yet he cannot even say what the child ISA scheme will be in detail. He cannot say when it will definitely be introduced. He cannot say whether contributions from looked-after children—an issue brought to our attention by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East—will be possible. He cannot say how much will be involved or how the scheme will operate downstream, yet he asks us today to abolish the child trust fund, which has had a proven record of saving success to date.

The Minister brings forward the abolition of the saving gateway, doing away with the Saving Gateway Accounts Act introduced in 2009, even though it was not opposed by the Conservatives on Third Reading. The purpose of that scheme was to promote savings habits among working-age people on lower incomes. He will know that we have had two pilots, neither of which was criticised by the Minister at the time, and they involved 22,000 people generating £15 million of savings—helping poorer people to save for the future. He does this at a time when his deficit reduction plan is going to put 500,000 people in the public sector on the dole. With VAT increases, with loan sharks operating in the community and with the collapse of schemes such as Farepak, which my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) mentioned in Committee, the Minister will find that the need to give help and support to poorer savers is even greater now than before. But, no, the Minister will not even allow a three-year gap to see whether the economy recovers. The scheme would not cost him a penny in the next three years, but he wishes to abolish it because of dogma—nothing else but dogma.

When he abolishes the saving gateway scheme and when Government Members vote for that abolition this evening, they need to know that they are voting to ensure that people on working tax credit, income support, incapacity benefit and jobseeker’s allowance, and other low-income people will be denied the benefits of that scheme. Let us remind the Minister that a Labour Government would have brought this into play in July 2010, supported by our Chancellor and supported by a deficit reduction plan in last March’s Budget that would have ensured that we halved the deficit within four years.

Last of all, the Government are abolishing the health in pregnancy grant—a one-off tax-free payment of £190 to mothers-to-be who are 25 weeks pregnant. We can debate it and have debated it in detail, but nobody can deny that a £190 grant would have helped the poorest pregnant mothers in our society to meet the costs of their pregnancy and to ensure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, that they receive further help and support through medical advice in the 25th week and beyond, linked to medical visits. The Minister knows that 750,000 qualifying pregnancies each year will not receive the grant. Again, he has hit women—pregnant women—and children hardest.

It would be different if the Government’s proposals were due merely to the fact that these were Labour Government initiatives. However, Mike O’Connor, chief executive of the watchdog group Consumer Focus, has said:

“The Saving Gateway would have been a great opportunity”.

The Child Poverty Action Group, which was led with distinction by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), has said:

“It’s a real shame that this move to help people build up savings to deal with crises… should be scrapped.”

The National Childbirth Trust has said:

“At a time when families are trying to make ends meet, the Coalition Government has hit parents particularly hard. Cutting pregnancy and maternity grants”.

The Royal College of Midwives—this answers the point made by the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter)—has said that it is

“disappointed at the decisions to abolish the Health in Pregnancy Grant”.

A common thread runs through the Bill. The Government are hitting the poorest hardest. They are ensuring that those who need the help, support and partnership of the state are hit hardest; and although they claim to be doing it in the name of deficit reduction, they are actually doing it in the name of dogma. I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to reject the Bill, but I also urge the Minister to reflect on the fact that, although there is much on which we have disagreed today, there are still areas on which we can reach agreement.

I particularly hope that the Minister will examine in detail the methods and discussions being undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East in regard to looked-after children, and that he will return with positive proposals so that, although the Bill has not been amended in this House, amendments may be made in another place. Whatever the Minister says about the need to abolish help and support through the child trust fund, or about the removal of the saving gateway or pregnancy grants, he must know that looked-after children do not have parents who are responsible for them. Their parents may be dead, or they may be in difficult circumstances—they may be in prison, or involved with alcohol or drugs. But the Minister knows that those parents are not there to support their children, and he should know that in that instance, if in no other, the state needs to step in.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the Government’s proposals are a direct attack on the poor. In my constituency 7,824 children, many from backgrounds that are less than affluent, currently benefit from the child trust fund. The Minister said earlier that it was a luxury that we could not afford. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an affront to all those people in my constituency and throughout the country, many of whom are impoverished?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments. The Minister and the Conservative party—and let us not forget their partners, the Liberal Democrats—are ensuring that they hit such people hardest in abolishing the child trust funds, particularly looked-after children and those whom they said they would defend, the poorest third. They are hitting people on jobseeker’s allowance who would have benefited from the saving gateway. As for the removal of the health in pregnancy grant, the loss of £190 may not be the end of the world for many people, but for the poorest in our society it was a contribution on which they depended to ensure that they met the costs of pregnancy.

Whatever disagreements the Minister and I have had—and we have had many over the past few weeks—I hope that he will take the opportunity to consider some of the key issues that he can still salvage. I hope that he will at least ensure that we can provide a partnership for looked-after children. Undoubtedly all the promises that he made before the election will be quoted again in another place, and every one of the issues will be tackled again there. We shall see what is said in the other place, but I hope that the Minister will reflect on those issues. In the meantime—with some pride in what the Labour Government did—I urge my hon. Friends to reject the Conservative-Liberal Democrat proposals.