Consumer Credit Regulation

Debate between Derek Twigg and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy]

I would be interested if the hon. Gentleman could produce evidence for that, as opposed to making a supposition. It is easy to claim that working tax credit put people into such dependency, but let us consider what the loan sharks themselves have said about the comprehensive spending review. They have argued that it will increase the number of people coming to them because those people will not have money to help their families grow. That is where I look for evidence.

Considering the evidence on how we tackle legal loan sharking in and of itself is not enough to help these families. We need to stop the exploitation of low-income households in the credit market and legislate on the cost of borrowing. As Labour Members will understand—they know these problems well because they have had to deal with them—we also need to increase access to affordable credit. Those two issues go hand in hand. We cannot expand access to affordable credit while millions of people are trapped in relationships of credit dependency.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on a powerful and excellent speech. When considering help for such families, we also need to think about credit and money advice. The previous Government provided significant amounts of extra money to deal with the consequences of the recession. Clearly, we must do that if we are to deal with the problems that have arisen as a result of the CSR. An important part of this process is to have more money advice. People need proper advice about how to manage their money, how to avoid getting into debt, and how to make the right decision on loans.

[Stella Creasy]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an incredibly practical and important point on these issues, which I shall come back to at the end of my comments when I consider the third component of the action that we can take to protect the poorest consumers in Britain.

I shall quickly return to my point about access to affordable credit. We must learn lessons and consider how to increase affordable credit access through the existing UK market. We know that that can be done, because people are already doing it. Credit unions and social enterprises such as Fair Finance are demonstrating that it is possible to lend at reasonable rates, to provide money advice services, and to help people to make credit work for them.