Financial Education
Bobby Dean Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I am not quite sure how I am supposed to follow the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince). He was extremely entertaining and informative. I wish to thank the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) for securing this debate. He spoke with passion and empathy for those who are struggling with financial literacy and made sure that this House knows how important that topic is.
All Members in this House have probably at some point come across somebody—perhaps a constituent on a doorstep, a family member or a friend—who says that people just do not get taught what they need to know in life at school. That is overdone slightly; the fundamentals of maths, science and literacy do serve us well in life, but there is truth in that statement. Some of the hard, practical, daily challenges of adulthood are often not addressed properly, at least not in an applied way, during our education. Nowhere is this more apparent than in financial literacy, which is, of course, distinct from numeracy. It is not just about adding and subtracting, or even working out percentages, but budgeting, debt management, saving for the future and investing. These are things that can empower people to make better decisions for their lives and set them up to achieve their goals. But we let people down when we view these skills as specialist rather than essential.
Let me focus on two elements in particular: investing and debt. The British seem to have a big problem with investing. There is an assumption that it is for traders or the rich, and our national conversation tends to shy away from it. Pensions is about the only arena in which it is discussed properly, but even then it is kind of pushed to the back of our minds. It is all about auto-enrolment and it is dealt with out of sight by others. I wish to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) about how few of the self-employed invest in their own pensions. That certainly happened to my parents who were self-employed all their life. I was self-employed too and, for the large bulk of my career, I did not invest in a pension.
If Brits were equipped with the knowledge and the skills to make relatively safe, sensible investments over the course of their lifetimes, the benefits to those individuals and to the economy as a whole would be enormous. Research by Moneybox reveals that two thirds of Britons are £65,000 worse off on average due to low financial confidence and knowledge. Astonishingly, it suggests that if these people were better equipped it would equate to a potential £2 trillion of extra spending power in the UK economy over their lifetimes.
Members might think that this difference merely correlates with the haves and the have nots, but Moneybox’s research found that, in most instances, the key indicator of success was financial confidence and not where people started in life. This alone should motivate us to improve the delivery of financial education in schools, but also to ensure that all adults can better equip themselves today. Although this is beyond the scope of the debate today, this is where the advice guidance boundary review could be crucial for Britain’s growth prospects. We must upskill all of Britain today and not only the citizens of the future.
Let me turn now to debt. The consequences of getting this wrong are grave. Our failure to equip people with the knowledge that they need to manage and escape debt puts the most vulnerable in our society at risk—risk of hunger, risk of ill health and risk of financial ruin. My inbox is full of emails from people who reach crisis point before seeking help. In each case, there were so many straightforward steps that they could have taken to prevent escalation, but a combination of shame and financial illiteracy leaves people stranded, helplessly watching on as their situation goes from bad to worse.
I wish to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow about people not being able to budget their way out of poverty. He is absolutely right, but we can stop people from spiralling and making things worse. This point is deeply personal to me. I have seen my family suffer from the crippling nature of debt on more than one occasion—both as a child and as an adult. I sometimes think to myself that I just wish that they had reached out to me sooner. But I have a better wish than that: I wish that our education system and society more broadly talked about debt and how to deal with it far more openly.
When I visited my local citizens advice bureau in Wallington recently, staff told me how predatory companies are offering individual voluntary arrangements to people who are totally ill-suited to them. On the face of it, the attraction is clear. Instead of struggling with debt on multiple fronts, a person can make one simple regular payment to a company and that company will deal with everything for them. The trouble is that these companies do not always act in the individual’s interest. They have an incentive to sell IVAs, as they make money from them, and they end up being sold to people who have better alternatives, such as debt management orders. This practice needs to be regulated better, but we should also empower citizens to know better.
The Liberal Democrats support a modernised curriculum—a curriculum for life that ensures that children are equipped with the skills required for adulthood, with a focus on a better understanding of personal finance and financial responsibility. Clearly, financial education needs to start early and must become a key part of the primary curriculum. Research shows that money habits are set at the age of seven, yet there is no statutory requirement to teach personal finance in primary schools in England.
Furthermore, we must support teachers to deliver that education effectively. That means providing centralised guidance, teacher training and signposting to quality resources. The Government should back the national campaign to raise awareness of financial education and its benefits, and support initiatives such as My Money Week, which promotes financial literacy in schools and communities.
But the job does not end in school, and the urgent need to address financial illiteracy cannot be overstated. As the hon. Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) outlined, today’s young people are increasingly turning to social media for financial advice. Just last week, the financial wellbeing charity Your Money found that six in 10 young people follow so-called financial influencers, or “finfluencers”, which is difficult to say, with 77% trusting their advice. Alarmingly, one in 10 said that they would act on that advice without doing further research. If we do not fill the gaps, others will.
The Liberal Democrats will continue to push for measures that address financial exclusion. That can be done by supporting banking hubs, with their crucial offer of face-to-face advice, as well as by protecting funding for citizens advice bureaux, such as the one that I visited in Wallington. The evidence is overwhelming: financial education is not a “nice to have”; it is essential for the wellbeing of our citizens and the future of our economy. I urge the Government to act decisively and ensure that every child in the UK has access to the financial education that they need and deserve.
Education
Bobby Dean Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Stephen Morgan
… Over the coming weeks and months, we will work with trusts and local authorities to confirm which schools in the programme will be in scope.
Young Carers: School Absence
The following extract is from Education Questions on 4 November 2024.
Bobby Dean
One thing that might be driving absences from schools for young carers is long-term mental health conditions. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that as many as one in five young carers could be suffering from long-term mental health conditions. Can the Minister explain what measures the Department is taking to ensure that sufficient help is in place for people suffering from those conditions?
Janet Daby
We want to ensure that we support young carers in school, as well as other children who may be suffering from mental health conditions. This Government are entirely committed to supporting young people with mental health conditions, and we are making sure that there will be mental health support in every school up and down the country. For young carers who may be experiencing increasing mental health conditions, we are expanding the attendance mentoring programme to ensure that around an extra 10,800 young carers are supported, especially in the area of mental health.
[Official Report, 4 November 2024; Vol. 756, c. 15.]
Written correction submitted by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby):
Oral Answers to Questions
Bobby Dean Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Janet Daby
We respect all our young people who are in the cadets or any other armed forces areas. The hon. Gentleman raises this point, but after 14 years of the previous Government’s failure and the £22 billion black hole, there are difficult choices to be made. We are absolutely committed to children and young people and to doing the best we can do by them.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)
The Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunities for all young people, including young carers who provide a critical role in caring for their loved ones. We now collect specific absence data for young carers through the school census, and our statutory attendance guidance seeks to ensure that they receive holistic support to overcome barriers to attendance.
Bobby Dean
One thing that might be driving absences from schools for young carers is long-term mental health conditions. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that as many as one in five young carers could be suffering from long-term mental health conditions. Can the Minister explain what measures the Department is taking to ensure that sufficient help is in place for people suffering from those conditions?
Janet Daby
We want to ensure that we support young carers in school, as well as other children who may be suffering from mental health conditions. This Government are entirely committed to supporting young people with mental health conditions, and we are making sure that there will be mental health support in every school up and down the country. For young carers who may be experiencing increasing mental health conditions, we are expanding the attendance mentoring programme to ensure that around an extra 10,800 young carers are supported, especially in the area of mental health.
Hongkongers in the UK: Visas, Security and Services
Bobby Dean Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) on securing this debate. I associate myself with his comments about how the previous Government should be congratulated on honouring the BNO scheme in the first place.
My borough of Sutton is home to more than 5,000 people on the BNO scheme. I represent the eastern half of the borough in Carshalton and Wallington, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) will talk about the west side in Sutton and Cheam later. We have had lots of constituents coming to us to share their concerns, some of which have been aired already. The one that came up most on the doorstep and in the events that I hosted was about access to jobs, and qualifications not being recognised. More specifically, in our area it was about social work. There seem to be quite a lot of Hongkonger social workers in my area. Their qualifications were not being recognised because they had not had the required conversion courses or because an unco-operative Hong Kong Government were holding back proof of their careers and qualifications.
I am also a local councillor and I was aware that Sutton council desperately needed social workers, so I reached out to my local council and asked whether there was anything we could do. I am pleased to say that next month we will be launching an innovative internship programme where we have linked up with a local university, Kingston University, which has been providing formal study for Hong Kong social workers that we have identified. They will also get the opportunity to get some in-the-field experience with social workers who are already employed by Sutton council. We hope that that will result in the necessary recognition of their qualifications by Social Work England.
I am sure that that problem is widespread across the UK and perhaps in other professions, too. I know that there are some debates about what constitutes formal study, but I would really like to work with the Minister to see whether we can find a way of scaling up this kind of initiative across the country so that we can get a lot more of these qualified Hongkongers recognised and into the work that they are skilled at.
I have a statistic that I want to share. Somebody told me that up to 98% of the Hongkongers that have arrived in recent years have a degree. They have the skills and we need those skills, so let us make sure that they can put them to good use. My next point around university admissions has already been raised a couple of times. It has been a frequent complaint that despite the fact that all the arrivals are extremely well qualified academically, as demonstrated by the figure that I just mentioned, they are worried about their children not being able to access the same level of education because of the scale of fees that international students face. They tell me that they have British national status, but that it does not feel that way when applying for university, so that is something we need to fix.
Finally, the point about security has been well made already. It is critical that Hongkongers feel safe in the United Kingdom. We all know why they fled, but they are still living in fear of surveillance and persecution here. I have mentioned the Hong Kong Government holding back qualifications so that Hongkongers cannot get the work that they need here, and there is evidence of other records that they need access to being destroyed. They have been holding on to criminal records for things that we should not recognise in this country, such as taking part in protests. Pension entitlements, which I think have already been mentioned, are also being held back.
Closer to home, for a long time there were widespread reports of some sort of secret Chinese police station operating out of Croydon, around the corner from me. I have to put it on record that the Met found no evidence out of that, but that demonstrates the fear among the Hong Kong community. We have also heard repeated concerns about Confucius institutes at universities, which have called for lecturers and others to be sacked and intimidated Hongkongers so that they feel they need to be silent.
The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) mentioned cyber-harassment. My borough council experienced that when an event we put on to welcome Hongkongers was subject to a series of threatening posts telling people that they should not attend and making up all sorts of reasons why it should not go ahead.
As a local MP, I will always stand up for my constituents’ rights. As a country, we have a duty to ensure that all our citizens feel this is a democratic, free country, full of opportunity for them. I hope we can deliver that for Hongkongers.