Financial Services Bill (Tenth sitting)

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree. Many a time have I had conversations with constituents about how they buy things, and they do not see it as a problem. They have no other option, so they use the catalogues and do not look at the interest rates. What they need is not more financial education, but more options. The brutal reality is that it is very expensive to be poor in this country. That is why it matters that the things we do to help them if they get into difficulty work.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when it comes to debt and interest payments incurred—the price of having that debt—the concept of an unfair contract is far too lax on those who lend the money and far too harsh on those whose circumstances often, as the hon. Lady just mentioned, mean that they have to borrow?

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend knows that I completely agree with her. She also knows that she is tempting me to discuss other amendments that I have tabled about that fair fight, and I do not want to disrespect you, Mr Davies, or the Clerk in trying to keep us to the issue at hand. My point is that when we talk about a respite scheme to help people with problem debt, we have to be clear about what we mean by problem debt and whether people recognise that they have a problem. The point of a breathing space is to be able to address that problem.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and I tabled the amendments because we recognise that people do not necessarily see things as a problem until it is too late, so when we construct measures to help people in these difficult places, we have to be able to work with them and where they are at, and how people deal with debt. We might look at something and say, “That is an unsustainable financial situation that you have got yourself into,” but our constituents not see it that way.

I said at the start that it was worth thinking about where this country stood at the start of the year. There are conflicting figures, which I am sure the Minister has been looking at. I know he shares my concern about consumer debt and consumer credit. Bank of England data shows that during the coronavirus crisis people have actually been trying to pay down their debts—frankly, they have been stuck at home, so they have money and they think, “Well, I’ll try to pay down my debts.” Since March this year, £15.6 billion of household debt has been repaid, and credit card debt has fallen by 13% in the last year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

My right hon. Friend is right, and that was one of the points I was going to make. If we are dealing with a new group of people who have never been in financial difficulty before, one of the sources of help and support for them may well be our welfare system. Anybody who has ever dealt with people trying to make new claims in our welfare system knows that 60 days is an incredibly tight timeline for that to happen—to deal with any appeals and paperwork, and to even get a response to the claim that has been made. Yet experience tells us then when people do get into problem debt, sometimes they do not know what support they are entitled to.

The amendments speak both to the reality of people and to the practicality of making a breathing space work. I hope the Minister will see them in that way and recognise that that is why so many debt advice providers support the amendments and say, “Yes, actually, what’s proposed does feel too tight to get things right.” Some people’s situations can be resolved in 60 days; others’ will take longer. It is not right to close off the opportunity of a breathing space by setting a deadline or threshold that means that for some people who are waiting for information it will be too late. The amendments speak to how we can make the process work for everyone, giving debt advice providers the discretion to be able to work with people and to use the breathing space for its intended purpose, which is to give those who recognise they have a problem the chance to get it sorted before we go into some of the more serious options.

The brutal reality is that we know that, with jobs thin on the ground, debt already mounting up and the cost of living not reducing any time soon, not everybody who gets a breathing space is going to be able to breathe again. I know the Minister would be frustrated if, rather than the financial position of the people involved, it was that timing, that threshold, that meant the breathing space did not work in the way in which it is intended.

The Minister will have seen that I have tabled other amendments on we make this breathing space work. I know he cares about getting this right. In these Committees, there is always pressure on Ministers to say no to amendments, but I hope he will acknowledge that this is about making the policy work, recognising the evidence on the ground about what works with people who are in problem debt and how long it takes them to see that they have a problem. If he does not accept the timescales, if he does not accept the intentions of myself and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West in acknowledging the distress people feel when they have to front up and talk to a stranger about the financial position they are in and their fears in an environment where unemployment is widespread. Goodness knows, getting people to take debt advice at the start of this year, when there seemed to be jobs in our economy, was difficult—anybody who tried to refer a constituent to Citizens Advice knows that. Getting people to a point where they have the chance to breathe again means making this process work.

If the Minister does not think the extension is right, I am keen to hear what he thinks we should do to make sure that that threshold is not a cliff edge over which people fall and cannot come back from. We are all going to be seeing a lot of people in financial difficulty in the coming months in our surgeries—people who have nowhere else to turn, people who are very frightened, and people whose families, homes and mental welfare depend on us getting this right.

[Ms Eagle]

I wish to spend a short amount of time congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow on the focus and experience she brings to this very important topic. As she said, debt is one of those taboo subjects. People feel ashamed if they have got into debt and tend not to discuss it—sometimes within their own relationships, let alone with other people—because it is a source of shame.

To some extent, it is a bit like the people who fall for scams or fraud. It is a uniquely difficult thing because if someone has got themselves into that situation, it makes them feel ashamed of their behaviour or that they have fallen for something. They feel isolated and unable to discuss it and go to get assistance. To some extent, even getting to what my hon. Friend is suggesting in her amendment means someone has gone a considerable distance: first, admitting there is a problem, and secondly, seeking help and trying to see what can be done to alleviate the problem.

I also feel that when people get into debt in this manner, they are uniquely judged by those looking on. The taboo is reinforced by the judgmental nature of onlookers who think, “I would never get into debt like that,” or, “How on earth have they done that?” There are caricatures of how people who get into debt behave that are almost designed to blame them for their debts, suggesting that somehow they are incoherent with money, that they cannot manage, that they have inadequacies, or that they have gone on spending sprees all over the place and not thought about the future. I suppose in a minority of cases that might be true, but in the majority of cases, in my experience—certainly in my advice surgery—it is not. People get on a slippery slope.

We live in a consumer-oriented society where those who wish to sell us things, and the financial services companies that wish to provide us with the wherewithal to buy them immediately, are very sophisticated. We are in a culture very different from the one I grew up in. I will now reveal how old I am: when I was growing up, one had to put money away and pay for goods gradually before one could get them. Now there are all sorts of electronic currencies that can be used.

On Black Friday, I was shopping for deals from my room, but—uniquely—had no positive results because everything was out of stock. That demonstrates how easy it is to spend money to acquire things, and to get into debt. It is now instantaneous. With the shift to online, one does not even have to physically be in shops to buy things; one is two clicks away from having this kind of problem.

If ever there were something that made it easier for people to get into trouble, it is the speed and effectiveness with which they can click on things and spend money. We talk about that with regard to gambling, but buying goods can also be addictive. People are propagandised the whole time about how success comes with having goods, and that one has to have the right trainers and the right brands.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. In my constituency some years ago, a survey was carried out on how people felt in local communities about the pressure on them to have things. Does she agree that in many communities there is a huge amount of pressure put on people to fit in and to have those goods? Lots of shame is carried by families who feel they cannot afford things, which then puts pressure on them to go beyond their spending limits.

[Ms Eagle]

Absolutely. It is about success and belonging, and that is the kind of culture that the very sophisticated advertisers that push this kind of thing go for. They also advertise to children, so there is the pester element of it. Kids used to want the latest Cabbage Patch Kid; I do not know what it will be this year, but whatever it is will be extremely expensive and beyond the means of quite a lot of people.

[The Chair]

Can I gently interrupt the hon. Lady? I am happy to give a bit of latitude for people to set out the issue, but I do not want this to become a Second Reading debate on debt. If we could stick a bit more rigidly to the amendment, I would appreciate it.

[Ms Eagle]

Of course I will, Mr Davies. The amendment is about having breathing space when one has got into this situation. I accept your guidance, obviously; I was merely trying to set out how people can get into a situation of requiring breathing space, how judgmental people can be about debt, and how different the culture is now about getting into debt. It is so much easier to do it—just two clicks away.

To introduce breathing space and some of the issues that we will get on to in terms of trying to get people out of debt, we need to shed the taboos so that people can ask for help. We need to think about how we can put more warnings in between the two clicks it takes to spend. We also need, as a society, to stop being quite so judgmental about the situations that people find themselves in. If we can do that and foster more upfront and open discussions about how such situations happen, and if people can stop feeling so ashamed about it and so alone, we may find that there are better, more effective ways of tackling debt and preventing the necessity for the breathing space issue.