Savings (Government Contributions) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Maria Caulfield

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Caulfield]

Q Is it not better that they have a savings scheme rather than not save at all?

Tom McPhail: We need to get them into the auto-enrolment system. That is the way to help them save for the longer term. If we want to address their short-term savings, there are other ways to do that.

[Dr Whiteford]

Q I can see why lifetime ISAs are a very attractive savings option for the very wealthy, high-earning young people, and those who have maxed out their pensions allowance, but to my mind, the real challenge has been encouraging people on low and middle incomes to save for retirement purposes. From what I have heard in evidence so far, you seem to agree that auto-enrolment is an important step forward. Reflecting back on the questions I asked the earlier panel, would you agree that most people on low and middle incomes would be better advised to invest in pension schemes?

Tom McPhail: The numbers overwhelmingly point to the fact that, if you have any kind of employer contribution, you are almost invariably better off going through the auto-enrolment system at work and saving in a pension than going into a lifetime ISA. Separately, we think that there is more we can do with the incentives to save in a pension that would improve that equation even further. Yes, absolutely, for most people most of the time, for long-term savings, the pension should be, and is, a better answer.

Savings (Government Contributions) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Maria Caulfield

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Caulfield]

Yes, on the lifetime ISA.

Ed Boyd: We have not done the research on the ISA, so we do not have a view. I can probably only help with the Help to Save side of things.

Joseph Surtees: On that point, I would say—and this is applicable to both—that a lot of the behavioural research in this area talks about a process called hyperbolic discounting, which is to do with the fact that the further away something is, the less appealing it will be. So, any mechanisms we can have in any of these products that allow people to access them before two years, in the case of Help to Save, or before much further in the future, in terms of the LISA, will appeal and widen the eligibility a lot more.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Q Some of the evidence we have taken this morning has already been more about long-term savings. In the evidence you presented just now, you emphasised the issue of accessibility and the need for people to be able to access their savings quickly to deal with external shocks. What kind of products do you think would be beneficial for people on low and average incomes for longer-term saving?

Ed Boyd: On the flexibility point in terms of accessibility of savings, there is a question. We produced a short paper on Help to Save off the back of a round table of experts in this area. One of the questions that kept coming up was whether there should be some friction for people taking out the money. For example, if someone starts to save for two years with the best intentions to make sure they get their Government bonus, but has one day of giving up on that plan, it would completely undermine it and they would not get the Government bonus. Potential frictions can be put in such as a 24-hour delay in taking out the money. I think that would be completely reasonable.

Where appropriate, someone could name a third party—a family member, husband, wife, carer or whoever—and when they say, “I want to bring it down in 24 hours”, that person is texted to make sure that there is enough friction to ensure that when the money is drawn down as a rainy-day fund, it is used for rainy-day activities and things that they really need the money for, rather than just for general expenditure. This would encourage people to save and make sure the money is used to help stop them getting into problem debt.

Joseph Surtees: I think there are two interesting points here, one of which is on Help to Save. There is a system in the UK that has proved very good at encouraging low-income people to save over a long period, and that is pensions auto-enrolment. So far, the opt-out rate for that is far lower than anticipated. It is only 10% when it was anticipated to be a quarter. People who are enrolled and have not opted out are those just above the enrolment limits.

That sort of approach is incredibly useful in this area, particularly for low-income people. When you look at products such as Help to Save, such as LISA, perhaps, if you can look at how to incorporate an auto-enrolment element into that—with Help to Save, you can in particular do it through the universal credit system. Universal credit has personal budgeting support which helps you to do that. Those sorts of little behavioural incentives will help to make it appeal and work better for these lower-income individuals.

Tax Credits

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Maria Caulfield

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Let there be no mistake: this statutory instrument will mean drastic cuts in the incomes of families with parents in low-paid work. Across the UK, about 7.5 million children live in about 4 million families that are in receipt of tax credits, and the vast majority of those families are in work. The key impact of the measure will be to reduce the incomes of more than 3 million working families by an average of more than £1,000 a year. We have a very short time today to debate a statutory instrument that will, at a stroke, make dramatic cuts to the incomes and life chances of millions of our citizens, and it deserves a lot more scrutiny then we are giving it today.

The Government have tried to argue this afternoon that their changes to benefits and tax credits are part of a plan to encourage people into work, but this measure overwhelmingly affects people who are already in work. Far from providing incentives for parents to enter the workforce, it actively reduces work incentives and makes it harder than ever for parents in low-paid work to support their families.

This is a hugely regressive measure. Our poorest working families are set to lose a dramatic proportion of their income. If we pass the regulations today, tax credits will start to be withdrawn from any family earning more than £3,850 a year rather than from those earning more than £6,420 a year, as is currently the case. More than half a million families earning less than £6,420 a year will lose out disproportionately because of these cuts to work allowances. That is a massive reduction in the amount that families can earn before tax credits start be withdrawn. Combined with the lower level at which universal credit will be withdrawn it means that, for example, a single parent earning £6,410 a year—roughly 20 hours’ work a week on the minimum wage—will lose 48p in tax credits for every pound they earn above the new threshold, which will leave them about £1,200 worse off a year.

One hundred pounds a month probably does not sound like a lot to Conservative Members—[Interruption.] It might not be a lot to them, but for those on low incomes a drop in income of that magnitude will almost certainly mean very difficult choices about very basic things, such as the quality and quantity of the food they eat and how to heat their home. Many poorer families already struggle with heating costs in winter, especially in my part of the world, but it is not only people’s health that is affected by living in cold and damp conditions. This is also about whether children have an adequately heated place to study and do their homework and the long-term consequences if they do not.

I recognise that disadvantage takes many forms, and we have heard a lot of rhetoric lately about social mobility, but the harsh fact is that income poverty is the single biggest driver of long-term disparities in children’s outcomes. Children who grow up in income-poor households are likely to have poorer health throughout their lives. They attain fewer qualifications at school, end up in lower-paid jobs and die younger than their peer group.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

The hon. Lady says that income-poor families have much poorer physical and mental health as well as educational attainment, but is that the case? The fact is that someone on benefits or welfare has poorer outcomes, so the route out is by gaining work and earning a decent wage.

[Dr Whiteford]

The hon. Lady is making a ridiculous argument and once again trying to pretend that there are people on welfare and people in work whereas in reality—as illustrated by the tax credit system—many thousands and millions of working people are dependent on benefits because of low pay. That is the key issue in this debate. The Government are attacking low-paid workers, just as they have over the last Parliament, while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our society. The deep cuts to the incomes of the poorest families that the Government are trying to enact today will only exacerbate the inequalities we already have in our society and push opportunities even further out of the reach of those who already lag behind.

The most bizarre claim that has been made for the Government’s austerity measures is that they will encourage people to work harder. I think that we should reject the rather insidious implication that people in low-paid jobs somehow do not work as hard as people in better paid jobs, because that is simply not the case. We must remember that those low-paid jobs are often far more physically demanding, and many people who are set to see their incomes cut under this measure are already working very long hours in exhausting and often pretty unrewarding roles.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Maria Caulfield

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

Scotland has already shown the progress we are making towards a high-skill economy. I was interested to hear yesterday’s announcement on improving the apprenticeship scheme in England. I hope the Government will aspire to do what the Scottish Government have already done. The uptake has been phenomenal and we are well on course to reaching 30,000 apprenticeships a year, which is far more proportionately per head of population than the current number in England. The Opportunities for All scheme guarantees a place in education or training for every single young person. It has been a phenomenal success, with more than 90% of our young people going into sustained employment afterwards. Instead of waiting until people have been unemployed for a year before intervening, we are intervening early so that every school leaver gets those opportunities. The approach is much more carrot than stick. The scale of the uptake shows that in Scotland we are committed to having a more successful economy and to growing it to meet the needs of our population.

I want to return to tax credits and not be distracted from them. Today the Resolution Foundation, which has done so much to promote the living wage and highlight the issue of in-work poverty, has said that the living wage would need to be £10 an hour by 2020—not the £9 announced yesterday—to keep pace with the cost of living under the new tax and benefits regime. Let us be clear: we are not going to get out of the poverty trap with this rebranded minimum wage. We need to bring it up to the level of a living wage if we are going to take away the support currently provided through tax credits.

The huge cuts in tax credits will make the gap between the minimum wage and the living wage even greater and it will leave the earnings of low-paid workers even further below the actual cost of living. At present, a family with two children where both parents work and who live in a house with average rent will be below the breadline, and the changes announced yesterday will not change that. Such families will still struggle to keep their heads above water and their children will still grow up disadvantaged.

We need to recognise that bringing up children is expensive—for everyone, in all income groups—but children are not some sort of luxury lifestyle accessory. Having children and encouraging family life is an essential, necessary and natural part of the human life cycle. For some years, however, we have made it really difficult for younger adults to even contemplate starting a family, simply because of the pernicious combination of low pay, job insecurity and exorbitant housing costs.

That brings me to the differential impact of this Budget on women, because, in spite of the progress that has been made, women are still heavily concentrated in low-paid work. We are far more likely to be working part-time or in zero-hours jobs, and we are more likely to be the primary carer of children or, indeed, frail or disabled relatives. Too many women end up in low-paid, part-time work such as cashiering or cleaning simply because they can work their hours around their family responsibilities. While I welcome the increase in the personal allowance, we need to recognise that many of those women working part time in low-paid jobs will not see the full benefit of it. Indeed, the key beneficiaries are, of course, higher-rate tax payers like ourselves, and 80% of the benefit of the increase will fall in the upper half of the income spectrum.

I have a number of questions for the Government about limiting tax credits to two children. I am not sure why they would do this—certainly in Scotland, we have a worryingly low birth rate so we should not be trying to deter people from having more children. I ask Ministers for clarification about the basis on which the number of children eligible for support through tax credits will be determined. Will it be a couple’s first two children together, or will children from a previous relationship be counted in the total? What will happen, for example, if a woman has her first child with a partner who already has two children from previous relationship or if a mother’s third child is the father’s first? As anyone who ever runs a constituency surgery will know, these are not abstract questions, and I hope Ministers will address them this afternoon.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is absolutely right for those on benefits to make the same choices as hard-working taxpayers, including choices about how large their families should be?