Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Andrew Percy

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

We have modelled the effect on foreign direct investment. One does not have to believe that people currently in the UK would leave. All one has to consider in relation to the detrimental impact on the UK is what will happen to foreign direct investment in the future. There are many good reasons to invest in Britain, but we know that 72% of firms that invest in this country say that our membership of the European Union is a key factor.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Alongside genocide and war, we hear all about the threat to jobs of leaving the European Union. Will my hon. Friend tell me what will be done if we vote to stay in and continue to have unlimited immigration from 27 foreign countries? What will be done to protect my constituents, low-paid workers who have seen their wages flatline because of unlimited immigration?

[Damian Hinds]

We have already taken steps to ensure that people cannot just come here and claim benefits from day one. The renegotiation the Prime Minister secured addressed the unnatural draw of our in-work benefits system. I should also say that one should not assume that the effect on immigration would be quite as great as is sometimes supposed, particularly when we look at the other models of agreements with the European Union, a number of which include free movement.

Tax Credits

Debate between Damian Hinds and Andrew Percy

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

The harsh reality that we face is that we have a budget deficit equivalent to £3,300 for every household in the country. We need to take firm action on that now. It is right, as I said earlier, that the burden is spread right throughout society, but it is also right to shift the burden towards the upper end, which is what has happened with the tax burden.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

The Minister will know that many Conservative Members, including me, are concerned about these changes. I will not, however, vote with the Opposition because of the nature of the vote and its non-binding effect. However, further to the reference point—[Interruption.] If a few more Labour Members had turned up at the original vote, we might have won. Let me take the Minister back to the point made by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). Will he confirm that the autumn statement offers the opportunity for the Government to mitigate some of these effects, whether it be through a change to the order or through other tax changes? Can he confirm to me and many others on the Government side who are concerned that the Treasury is looking at other things that can be done to help this group of people?

[Damian Hinds]

There are a number of mitigating elements involved in the package. We have been talking about the national living wage, and there are major—[Interruption.] These things are all new. There are major extensions to childcare provision. We have reductions in social rents, and increases in the income tax personal allowance.

Financial Education

Debate between Damian Hinds and Andrew Percy

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) has just said, it is difficult to think of anything original to say at this stage of the proceedings, so I shall be mercifully brief. I must start with the obligatory fawning to my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for the genuinely outstanding work they have done on the all-party group. The way that group has grown is not just impressive but phenomenal. In double-quick time it has brought to the British Parliament an issue that matters so much and about which so many people are genuinely bothered. The report and the depth of the analysis and work the group has done are already helping to stimulate debate here and more widely—and will do so further.

Today’s debate is not about approving every line in the report. I would have loved to remind the shadow Minister, if he were here, that the motion does not say that there should be compulsory financial education in free schools and academies or that it should be part of the national curriculum in primary schools. The key phrase in the motion is:

“That this House…believes that the country has a duty to equip its young people properly through education to make informed financial decisions”.

I could not agree more.

I shall not go into examples of the problems that we have all seen when people have come into our surgeries or when we have met people. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) has mentioned that some people, astonishingly, think that a high APR must be better than a low APR because it is a bigger number. These things would be funny if they were not so tragic. When we hear about them, our natural reaction is to say, “If we get them young and educate them, we will sort out all these problems.” There is, of course, as it says in the motion, a great advantage to equipping people with the capability to make smart financial decisions. There can also be a more immediate benefit, to which the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) alluded. If teachers get kids to bring in material—junk mail—that they have received at home, and they discuss it, messages can then get back to home, so there will be a beneficial impact even in the shorter term.

Even better than telling, of course, is doing, through schemes such as junior savers clubs. I was a member of the Abbey National junior savers. It used to have gold, silver and bronze; I only ever made bronze, but there you are. We have savings clubs in schools, and I pay tribute to credit unions in particular, although others do this as well, which run schemes in schools, often with parent volunteers and schoolchildren helping to manage them. That is another great way to pick up experience.

I have an issue with PSHE, however. It sometimes feels as though the answer to any social problem in this country is another module in PSHE. That is true whether the problem is that people are too fat or that people are too thin, or whether it is teenage pregnancy. Whatever it might be, we do it in PSHE. There are limitations to PSHE. When one mentions it to teachers, their response is not one that can be written down because it is just a groan. As a general rule, teachers do not like doing PSHE lessons. Although the report of the all-party group says “only 45%” of teachers in the survey had taught personal financial education, I have to say that that struck me as an extraordinarily large number. Almost half the teaching population has taken on the teaching of that subject. I think it unlikely that they are all experts in that area.

In PSHE in general, and this applies also to financial education, there is naturally a reliance on off-the-shelf—or more likely, these days, off-the-net—lesson plans and on input from third parties. Although I accept that the banks and building societies who take part do so with responsibility and do not use it as a way to ram home their brands, there is an element of indirect marketing. It certainly gets the message out there that there is a massive range of financial products, including ones that can get people into debt.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend’s points are exactly those that we identified during the inquiry and support the argument for putting financial education into PSHE to support maths and raise the profile of PSHE. He is quite right: a lot of the stuff that is used is photocopied hand-outs. That is not teaching a subject properly. If we link PSHE with maths, we can raise its profile and the standards of the teaching and lesson plans.

[Damian Hinds]

I recognise the point, and the report stimulates such debates, but I do not agree.

People mean different things when they talk about financial education. There is a whole continuum. If we talk about pure financial education, as opposed to a mathematical way of approaching it, there are two key dangers. The first I call the redundancy danger, and the second is the ubiquity danger. None of us did financial education at school, and although some people have great financial problems, not everybody does, and it is perfectly possible for somebody to get through life without the benefit of that education. Had we done financial education, we would have learned about cheques, clearing houses and endowment mortgages, and, spreading it out to the wider economy, the public sector borrowing requirement and sterling M3. None of that would be of particular relevance today. We would not have learned about debit cards and payday loans because, to all intents and purposes, they did not exist at that time. There is a real danger that although we think we are equipping people with skills, by focusing too much on financial services, as opposed to the underpinning principles, that education may become redundant.

[Andrew Percy]

It is true that the world does not stand still, but does my hon. Friend agree that if we give young people the ability to understand what is available now, we give them the skills to be able to understand products as they develop and move on into the future?

[Damian Hinds]

I cannot do geometry in a written speech without slides. I would be more tempted to go for the underlying principles, which could enable people to understand the things that used to be there and the things that will be there tomorrow.

The second danger is ubiquity. Already, on the television and the internet, when kids are at home or out, everywhere there are messages about debt. There is a danger that introducing discussion of specific financial services too early in schools might contribute to that feeling by normalising and legitimising the idea that everyone uses such products.

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, the key things are the tools, and I think that we agree on that but perhaps differ on how best to use them. To my mind, the key tools and principles that help inform financial decisions are mathematics, but not mathematics on its own. There is also a big element of personal responsibility, common sense and some of the maxims to which my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) referred. Make no mistake: young people do not learn common sense, wisdom and personal responsibility simply by turning up to PSHE. It is a much wider issue. I would welcome more emphasis on practical mathematics at GCSE, especially at foundation level, although it applies to both levels.

I am pleased to say that I have an original point to make. We also now have an opportunity post-16, because raising the participation age to 18 means that more young people who have perhaps not passed GCSE maths could, if we are to follow the guidance in the Wolf report, be encouraged to keep up maths and English. We need new, innovative, creative and engaging ways of taking on maths, and this would certainly be one of those. I thought that the sample questions that my hon. Friends who constructed the report included in it illustrated very well the practical ways we could use the maths curriculum.

The introduction of these concepts into mathematics is no panacea. The hon. Member for Makerfield and I agree on many things related to debt and personal finance, but I completely disagreed with her today when she implied that there was no element of personal irresponsibility in being over-indebted. There are of course times when it is purely a matter of a change in circumstances and completely unpredictable, but there is also a major issue of responsibility. She was right to say that there are broader concerns about regulation and too-easy access to credit that we must also address. The reason we need to address those concerns, even if we did financial education perfectly, is that in that market, alarmingly, the basic laws of economics, such as the way competition works and the assumption that consumers will be rational, frequently do not apply.

I congratulate the members of the all-party group again on the report that stimulated the debate. My view is that I would say no to adding more to PSHE and specifying exactly how these things should be done at a younger and younger age, but I would say yes on the need to refocus GCSE maths and to find new and creative ways to teach practical maths at 16-plus. I would also say yes to not being afraid to say that people must take responsibility, which is also a good thing to teach in school.