Financial Education

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Let me be clear. Everyone has individual circumstances, priorities and challenges, and what one member of the public thinks is the right thing to do might be different to what the next person thinks. For me, the driving force is the idea that we have a duty to equip people to make informed decisions so that they can understand the implications of what they are doing and therefore do the very best according to their own priorities and circumstances. As we find in our debates, however, all too often people are not in a position to do that. MPs often end up referring to our casework because time and again we see people who have made wrong decisions not necessarily through any fault of their own, but because they did not have the skills to make the right decisions. Indeed, Citizens Advice has highlighted that 60% of its work is finance-related.

We have a competitive market and the Government have been encouraging people to take advantage of competition within the energy market. We say to people, “Go and shop around and look at energy tariffs,” but the market is incredibly complex and people need to be clued up if they are to be savvy consumers. I recently attempted to look at energy tariffs, but they are not all like for like, so consumers need a good level of skills to unravel that complicated market and seek out the best deal.

Another reason why I am passionate about this subject is that my generation could be pretty rubbish at handling money. We could go to university, drum up huge amounts of debt, including expensive debt on credit cards, and then secure our first graduate jobs—in my time that was relatively easy to do—get on to the housing ladder with a 100% or 100%-plus mortgage and watch house prices increase. When we had learned the error of our ways, we could reconsolidate our mortgage, pay off all our expensive debts and carry on, but that option will not be available to the next generation. As things stand, it is very difficult to get into the housing market and there is no guarantee that house prices will rise so that one could take advantage of that should one get on to the housing ladder. It is harder for young people to get credit and harder for people to correct any mistakes they may have made.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend, who is a near neighbour, and all the MPs involved in this issue—this is the House of Commons working at its best. Does he agree that this is a big issue for women and girls, who are often the particular target of very expensive consumer demands, such as, “You must have this big handbag,” or “You must buy these incredible clothes”? I think we do our young women and girls a real disservice in this area. Not only do we not educate them about finance but we encourage them to borrow and spend as much as possible.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. This is part of the problem. We want people to be equipped to make informed choices and also to be savvy consumers who understand how to get the best for their money.

I want to say a little about how we got to today’s debate. Just over a year ago, I innocently asked a parliamentary question calling for greater financial education within our schools. I was then contacted by the national charity, the Personal Finance Education Group, which told me when we met that it had been campaigning on this subject for 10 years. Its representatives said, “That was a very good question. Would you like another 30 to ask?” for which I was very grateful. I submitted those questions, which made me look very intelligent. I was then contacted by Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com, who said, “Can I come and meet you? I’m very impressed by the 31 questions you’ve now asked on this subject. You sound very knowledgeable and I’d like to get behind you.” We decided between us that I alone could not champion this cause and that we should launch an all-party parliamentary group. Following a little gentle persuasion from the 6 million subscribers to MoneySavingExpert.com, MPs keenly queued into a very busy Jubilee room. We clocked up a staggering 225 Members from different parties, making us the largest such group.

At that point, we were tempted to go and knock on the Minister’s door, offer him a cup of tea and some biscuits and talk about how overwhelmingly we were supported by people, but we knew that the Minister is often contacted by people championing worthy causes. I have called for basic cookery and life-saving skills to be taught in schools so I have been guilty of making lots of requests of the national curriculum. We thought that instead we would be patient and launch a constructive and positive eight-month inquiry so that when we met the Minister and said, “This is our worthy cause,” we would have answers to all the questions that could be raised.

The inquiry was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole who, despite having been called a supply teacher by the Prime Minister, has an extensive knowledge of a variety of roles within schools. We conducted a significant amount of research. More than 900 teachers responded, telling us what is happening, and what they think could and should happen. More than 50 relevant organisations met us, face to face, in oral sessions. We set ourselves up as a mini-Select Committee. We heard from organisations from the banking sector, financial institutions, teachers unions, financial education providers, the Financial Services Authority and the Money Advice Service. We heard from mathematicians so intelligent that the lights in the room started to flicker. We are extremely grateful for the support given by Carol Vorderman, who had previously been commissioned by the Conservative party when it was in opposition to look into mathematics standards. She was ably supported by Roger Porkess and Stella Dudzic, who wrote the mathematical example questions in our report.

We met representatives of the personal, social and health education sector, and we also talked to young people themselves because if we championed this cause but young people did not wish to engage, it would be a flawed campaign. We were overwhelmed by their support. In particular, I thank Katie Emms and Alex Harman, who took part in the oral sessions, but who on Monday, promoting our launch, got banned by Twitter for tweeting rather too enthusiastically about how good our 52-page report is.