Tackling Financial Exclusion (Financial Exclusion Report)

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I join other colleagues in thanking our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her consistent and enthusiastic chairmanship over many months. It was a pleasure to work with her and other members of the committee. We were also exceptionally well serviced by our clerks and special advisers, who were exceptional before, during and after the publication of our report.

When the noble Baroness referred in her introduction to the Government’s response, she was diplomatic. I am exceptionally disappointed by the Government’s response on a number of issues. I understand entirely and fully accept the point the noble Lord, Lord Patten, made; you cannot have a Minister for everything. However, given the statistics provided to the committee, which show that 40% of the population do not have £100 and 1.7 million do not have a bank account, and all the other statistics, it is not particularly unreasonable to have a person watching. We rural-proof policies and proof policies for a whole range of things, and I cannot see any reason why we do not look at this particular aspect. It is one of the most fundamental things in front of us.

I will refer to a few specific points which I raised with the committee. However, before I go on to that, the comments that have just been made on gambling need to be taken exceptionally seriously. During the committee’s deliberations, we were provided with evidence about advertising for gambling being shown at 2 or 3 am. We know from evidence provided to us that the companies have a clear mathematical process of identifying who is watching and what their vulnerabilities will be. I had an ad hoc conversation with a friend who knew somebody who worked in the industry, who said that they had it down to a fine art. They knew who was watching, at precisely what time, and what buttons they needed to press. It baffles me that we allow these people to have free rein. I am not in favour of a nanny state, but we control things on television and have a watershed, and we know that a lot of people who are watching at these ungodly hours may have mental health issues. All this evidence was provided to us, and it is time that the Government took this seriously.

Recommendation 21 deals with the question of where people’s rent is paid. I believe that, in theory, universal credit is a great thing. However, as we know, the implementation is not going terribly well. We have had some improvements over the last period, since the committee reported, but it is important that, if housing benefit is for rent—to keep a roof over people’s heads—it should be paid directly to the person who owns the property. What is the point? Are we saying, “We’ll make people learn and we’ll teach them to be responsible with their own money”? I get all that, but the reality is that a percentage of people are vulnerable and not responsible, and so we have to go through this whole process of appointing people to chase after them—a whole industry of people going around, banging on doors and pestering people for money. Why are we doing this? What is gained by any of it? The rent should be paid to the person to whom it is due and then it is done. We do not have to have all these bailiffs and heavies.

We also know that many people living on estates suffer from various addictions, which leads to the roof over their heads being taken away. People gather like vultures because they know the day and the hour when the money will be sent to a person and they are on the doorstep to collect it. Why are we doing this? It would be far simpler to pay the rent to the landlord, as we do in Northern Ireland, and then we would not have any of these issues.

Perhaps I may deal with one other thing, which I mention quite often, and that is credit unions. In Northern Ireland we have considerable experience of credit unions. The Government’s response to our recommendation on that is puzzling. We simply said:

“Government funding provided to the sector should take the form of repayable, long-term investment capital rather than grant funding for ongoing expenses”.


The Government’s response is that,

“the government does not intend to provide revenue support to credit unions”.

We do not want them to provide revenue support to credit unions; our recommendation is not to do that. The recommendation is to supply repayable long-term investment capital. It is a kind of Aunt Sally argument to say in response to a proposal that we have made, “We’re not going to do this and it’s against government policy”. We are not asking people to provide revenue support for credit unions—quite the reverse—but we believe that credit unions should be able to offer a greater array of products to people. People’s experience is that credit unions are responsible lenders.

I wish to make an overarching point in conclusion. With London allegedly being the financial capital of the world, I am baffled that we cannot produce products to minimise the poverty premium that people have to pay—and there are clear examples of that. Surely it makes sense for some time and effort to be expended by the brains in the square mile on seeing what can be done to encourage others to make it easier and less expensive for people on those levels of income to live. I am quite sure that if effort were put into this, it would be found that the brains are there to provide the products, without forcing or shaming people into doing so. That is why a duty of care has been referred to. We all have a duty of care to our staff, the NHS has a duty of care to its patients and education providers have a duty of care to their pupils. Why should the financial sector not have a duty of care to its customers?