Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Baroness Hollis of Heigham Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, this Bill will impact hardest on the poorest in society and on disabled children who at some time between the ages of 14 and 24 move from better funded children's services to more Spartan adult services and who might have used this premium, this sum of money, either to go to college or to buy equipment for their disability. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, it will impact on children coming out of care who often have no family support. The £8,000 a year might have been used, for example, to take driving lessons to improve their work prospects. Ministers talk blandly about corporate parents—local authorities—at the very same time as Mr Pickles is cutting local authority money by 30 per cent and local authorities cannot even protect statutory services. It is complacency gone mad.

The Saving Gateway would especially have benefited women and people from BME communities, most of whom have negligible assets and no ability to aid their children. Also, the Government said—and this was repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—that the health and pregnancy grants were unfocused, rather like the winter fuel payments to pensioners, perhaps. Why do so many people believe that pregnant women cannot be trusted to spend a grant wisely, but there is no attempt to supervise pensioners in southern Spain enjoying the winter fuel allowance?

As Katherine Rake said in her expert evidence, for low-income women pregnancy is the route into poverty, yet the Government are removing a useful resource. Why does the Bill and so much of the Government’s strategy fall on the weakest and the poorest rather than on those who have broader shoulders? The Government have abandoned their manifesto promise to target these policies on the more vulnerable and have provided no equality impact analysis, no doubt because it would make deeply uncomfortable reading. Why exactly do the Government need to incentivise the better-off like me with 40 per cent tax relief on savings, worth up to £11,000 a year, even under the current regime? Why do I need incentivising, yet the poorest among us do not, even though the sums expended will be modest by comparison and their incomes infinitely lower?

I think the junior ISA is remarkably silly. All the evidence shows that people are putting more money into ISAs and pensions at the moment because of ease of access, yet the junior ISA will lock money away for 18 years with limited tax relief because it is designed to help the poorest. So it will combine the worst effects of ISAs with the worst effects of pensions. If there is any spare money, it should go into an adult ISA instead. As I say, it is a remarkably foolish idea.

In debates in the other place, the committee on the Bill took several days of expert evidence—a practice followed in the Commons since 2006 and much to be welcomed—from the IFS, the IPPR, the Family and Parenting Institute, credit unions, Scope, 4Children, the Royal College of Midwives, the National Childbirth Trust and so on. They and the committee discussed, for example, the need for more health visitors, the high risk of miscarriage in the first trimester, which is why the health in pregnancy grant did not come early enough, Gypsies, credit unions, the cost of second-hand buggies, disability needs, the Child Support Agency, folic acid, free prescriptions, financial education, Sure Start, the collapse of Farepak, tuition fees and the pupil premium. All this expert policy discussion was around a so-called money Bill. If it was a money Bill, why on earth take evidence from expert witnesses on its policy implications? No previous money Bill has.

No one at any stage, including the Minister in his evidence, suggested that this was a money matter. Indeed, reference was made to further consideration and report back from the Lords in the normal way. As my right honourable friend Mr Hanson said, this is a deeply political Bill. Committee members fully understood the policy significance of these measures. It was treated throughout as a social policy Bill as, indeed, I believe it to be. If so, why is this social policy Bill coming to us as a money Bill, which means today that we are all in effect wasting our time?

I went back to the 1910 debates to seek to understand how the Speaker on advice could have made the ruling he did. The Lords in 1909 had rejected the Lloyd George Budget and the Commons discussed whether it was entitled to do so. A route out was suggested by Mr Asquith, leader of the Liberals, that the Speaker should rule on what was a money Bill. Balfour, the Conservative leader, had some prescient words to say. He argued that the Liberals were making,

“Mr. Speaker into an arbiter … it will rest with the Speaker of one House of Parliament not merely to say what the duties of that House are, but to say whether a particular Bill shall become law or shall not become law. He becomes not merely the guardian of our rights, but, in a certain sense, the author of our legislation. He is to say whether or not a certain Bill is one that this House can pass over the heads of another place. I do not know whether that is a wise addition to Mr. Speaker's powers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/3/1910; col. 1189.].

Why did Mr Balfour hesitate? He hesitated because of the fears expressed all around the Commons of what was then called “tacking”: that is, adding on to Finance Bills or money Bills matters of policy extraneous to them in order to bypass the Lords. As Balfour put it,

“bringing forward Bills which are in form purely Money Bills for objects which are not purely money objects”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/3/1910; col. 1190.].

That concern was shared by the Liberal Herbert Gladstone.

From reading those debates and the Parliament Act, either this Bill is not a money Bill or almost all Bills, from social security to defence, are money Bills. I have taken two Tax Credits Bills through your Lordships' House and was much aided by opposition contributions and some of their amendments. In my view, those Bills had as much or as little claim to be regarded as money Bills as this Bill.

Speaker Lowther in 1914 seemed to put the matter to rest when he said:

“It is desirable ... to keep the Bill which imposes taxes upon the people separate from the Bill which proposes to expend the money derived from the imposition of those taxes”.

His assumption was that the first was a money Bill, but the second was not. Finance Bills he went on, should be confined,

“to the imposition of taxes, and arrangements for dealing with the National Debt, and so forth”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/1914; col. 1509.]

I turned to Erskine May to see how the debate had moved on. It had not. Essentially it follows Speaker Lowther's ruling. It states:

“No serious practical difficulty normally arises in deciding whether a particular bill is or is not a ‘money bill’”,

and that,

“even if the main object of a bill is to create a new charge on the Consolidated Fund or on money provided by Parliament, the bill will not be certified if it is apparent that the primary concern of the charge is not purely financial”—

a point that was established by my noble friend Lady Thornton.

Over the years, fewer and fewer Bills have been designated as money Bills. All the constitutional experts I have consulted in the past week or two do not believe this to be a money Bill. We are not talking about papal infallibility; we are talking about judgment, and I believe that a wrong call was made. During the past three years, three Bills have been certified as money Bills by the Speaker, over and beyond conventional Finance Bills: that is, the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill 2010, the Fiscal Responsibility Bill 2009 and the Industry and Exports (Financial Support) Bill 2008-09.

There was some debate as to whether today’s Superannuation Bill was a money Bill. It, too, took witnesses, and the Commons and the Speaker decided that it was not. We had its Third Reading just minutes ago. I believe that all those decisions were correct. They followed Speaker Lowther and Erskine May. I do not believe that this Bill does. Surely no one would argue that setting up, say, a child trust fund is not a money Bill when it is introduced, but is a money Bill when it is altered or scrapped. If there is social policy behind its introduction, there are social policy consequences for its abolition.

Why does it matter? Let us take child and maternal welfare, disability, foetal health and nutrition, mental health and depression, and debt and credit unions. Almost all those topics, which were explored in the Commons committee on this Bill, have been debated by your Lordships in the past. I hope that the other House would agree that this House, especially its Cross-Benchers, has expertise, experience, knowledge and practice that are unrivalled in the other place. Why is that? Because in the other place, Members represent communities of locality: their constituencies. We do not, but most of us have come from, or represent or speak for, communities of interest: that is, disabled people, pensioners, asylum seekers or perhaps, as today, children in care.

Most of us are presidents, patrons or chairs of major voluntary organisations and charities, which look to us, in a way that no MP properly can, to speak for communities of interest that are based not on place but on people perhaps scattered across the land and often barely visible or heard. That, together with the careful way in which we revise and suggest amendments, seems to me to be why this House is so valuable. Yet your Lordships have no power whatever to amend this Bill or to influence its outcome in any way. In no way can we ask the Commons to think again about the impact of this Bill on communities of interest, of which many of us may have considerable knowledge.

Of course the Commons has the final word, but surely it should not exclude from consideration our words and views on matters of such social policy. I repeat; if this ruling becomes a precedent, some of us might as well go home. If in this House we cannot affect policy on social welfare, poverty, child and maternal health, tax credits and benefits, and ask the Commons to think again, what exactly are we here for? We are redundant. We will not need Lords reform. Our purpose will have been severely curtailed ahead even of possible reforms to our membership. Surely that is not wise—that is, if we believe in a two-Chamber Parliament. More importantly, perhaps, surely it is not decent that our ability in this House to speak out for—and, I hope, to defend— some of the most voiceless and powerless in the land should be curtailed in this way. It is wrong, profoundly wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to it. We have covered a range of topics. I shall start with one or two of the wider points raised and then move on to some of the important questions of detail in the Bill.

I start where I started in opening this debate; that is, by saying that this action is necessary. We have had to make some tough choices. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Noakes for pointing that out and to my noble friend Lord Newby who pointed out that the Opposition had come forward with no alternative policies for cutting the deficit. I had rather hoped from the build-up from the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, that we would get some ideas, but there was nothing. We then had a very long build-up and an economic essay on the story of the previous Government seen from one perspective—that of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton. Even though he and I would disagree about the path that got us to the present predicament, he seemed to acknowledge the need for dealing with the economic situation. I hoped that we would get some alternative ideas, but sadly not. Of the other speeches that touched on this point, the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, put the context of this Bill in a sensitive and well considered way. I did not get any of that from the Opposition Benches. We need to acknowledge that the deficit has to be reduced and that that requires difficult choices.

I stress again that in the overall process of deficit reduction we are, as a Government, prioritising groups that need the most support. Disadvantaged children will benefit from our pupil premium and in the spending review we made sure that there will be no measurable impact on child poverty in the next two years. At the other end of income and wealth distribution, we are making sure that everybody makes a fair contribution. Those on the highest incomes will contribute more towards the entire fiscal consolidation. We are making sure that we get more tax revenue in. We are providing additional resources to combat tax avoidance to raise an estimated additional £7 billion of revenue annually by 2014. Of course, we have also introduced a bank levy that will generate £2.5 billion a year. We are making sure that we raise revenue from every source and that the pain is shared equitably.

Before I turn to some specific points on the Bill, I should say something about the question of the money Bill status of this Bill. I was somewhat surprised not by the relatively measured terms in which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, talked about this, but by one or two of his colleagues who surprised me very much, particularly former Ministers both here and in another place. They probably know the processes for money Bills: they would certainly know them better than I do. First of all, it is a certification of the Speaker that cannot be challenged. Even if football managers are getting into the habit of questioning the judgments of referees, which is not entirely a desirable thing, there are limits. I am not sure that it is appropriate for noble Lords to challenge the judgment of Mr Speaker. He is under a statutory duty to certify a Bill as a money Bill if in his view it falls within Section 1 of the Parliament Act 1911. In answer to these extraordinary suggestions that he might have been given advice or been leant on—I do not know what the suggestion is—by the Government, he takes advice from the Clerks in another place and not from the Government. The Government do not offer him any advice.

In respect of mischievous suggestions that somehow the process was different on this Bill from previous money Bills, all of the previous money Bills were certified at the end of their Commons stages. Certification cannot happen until the Bill has completed all of its stages in another place.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

To go back to the process on the money Bill, chapter 33 of Erskine May does not refer to the Clerks but says that the Speaker should call on the advice of at least two chairmen from the panel of committee chairmen in the House of Commons, and that on their advice also he should respond. There is no reference to the Clerks in Erskine May. Was that procedure followed in this case?

[Lord Sassoon]

I can give noble Lords my understanding of what the procedure is, but I certainly cannot and would not presume in any way to go into what process Mr Speaker went through. That is a matter entirely for Mr Speaker and not a matter for us in this House to question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I cannot promise today that all looked-after children will have a junior ISA opened for them and I certainly cannot provide any assurance about government funding. I have said that my honourable friend is looking into all this and, if and when there are proposals, the Government will indeed come forward with them.

I turn to some other important points on child trust funds and their effects on savings. A number of points were made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton. Have child trust funds had a positive effect on savings? There is currently no robust evidence about whether the child trust fund has increased savings for children. While some parents are using child trust funds, not all are. I have it that 22 per cent of child trust funds received contributions in 2009-10, marginally down on the 24 per cent in the previous year. In any case, we do not yet know whether any of that saving is additional or would have happened anyway. For lower-income families, only 12 per cent of CTF accounts received contributions. I take my noble friend Lord Newby’s points to heart about the untargeted and, certainly, the unproven nature of the effect of child trust funds.

Several noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised the question of the gap before the introduction of junior ISAs. I must go back to the need for us to move quickly to tackle the budget deficit. I realise that this will leave a gap before the junior ISAs are available. However, we are working hard with the industry and other stakeholders to make sure that the gap is as short as possible. We intend to publish draft secondary legislation, setting out full details of the new accounts, in the spring and for them to be up and running in the second half of 2011. We will ensure that eligibility for the new account is backdated to ensure that no child born after the end of the CTF will miss out on the chance of having one of these accounts.

Concerns were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, and others about the suitability of junior ISAs for children from families on lower incomes, and whether they would benefit only the rich. I certainly do not believe that this will be the case. These accounts are not just about offering people a tax-free option for children’s savings; they will also offer a clear and simple way of saving for children and of ensuring that the money is locked up until the child reaches adulthood. This will prove attractive to many families on lower incomes. Of course, saving issues are difficult for us all, particularly those on lower incomes, but I remind the noble Baroness and the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, that already more than 12 million people with incomes below £20,000 have an ISA. It is penetrating lower-income groups.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, for drawing attention to the annual financial health check. That was also welcomed by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. There are questions about advice turning into action but we should start somewhere. I am grateful to noble Lords for drawing attention to that important initiative.

On the question of the Bill’s equality impacts, an initial assessment of these was published on 15 September, when the Bill was introduced. Although we do not say that there are no impacts, the impact assessment shows that those that have been identified are proportionate, given the need to reduce the UK’s budget deficit.

I should say a little about the health in pregnancy grant, which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, raised first. I assure him that we have another scheme, the Healthy Start scheme, which targets and supports pregnant women on lower incomes, providing vouchers for fruit, vegetables and milk from the 10th week of pregnancy. This very much goes to the heart of the point that my noble friend Lady Browning made from an expert perspective. It did not look as though the health in pregnancy grant was achieving its original target of reducing the incidence of low birth weights. The Healthy Start scheme is much better targeted towards that.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

Does the Minister agree that the Healthy Start scheme gives something like £3 a week for, at best, around 30 weeks, which is a smaller sum than is being lost?