Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Debate between George Freeman and Kate Green

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

That is absolutely right on a number of fronts. First, as my hon. Friend says, this sort of grant is designed to help with specific expensive times in the course of people’s lives. It is important to recognise that specifying what it gets spent on is not necessary to ensure that it does good. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to show that if we give more money to parents, particularly to mothers, they will spend it on things that will help their kids.

I understand the concerns of Government Members about universal benefits, but this is a universal benefit. It goes to people who are financially better off as well as to those in greater need. As Opposition Members have repeatedly sought to explain, universal benefits are the most effective for reaching the poorest. They are the easiest to administer and the easiest to claim; there are no complicated cliff edges or recalculations. As such, I believe it is important to retain a range of universal benefits within the totality of support for families with children. I therefore think that the health in pregnancy grant has a useful role to play.

Even if we accept for a moment Government Members’ concerns that the benefit has been poorly targeted, that is hardly a case for scrapping it outright, especially when basic benefits are too low for the poorest women to be able to afford to eat healthily before their child is born. Surely, far from seeking to abolish the benefit, an ambitious Government who were keen to improve the outcomes of the poorest families and children would want to extend its scope or consider other ways of improving the adequacy of out-of-work benefits.

[George Freeman]

I am enjoying the hon. Lady’s speech and I acknowledge her expertise. In recommending the extension of the benefit, however, will she explain where she would get the money from?

[Kate Green]

There is work to be done to consider the balance of taxation versus spending cuts, as Labour Members have repeatedly pointed out. As for where the money is taken from, it is notable that the coalition Government, whether by accident or design—I suspect that it is more by accident, but I give them the benefit of the doubt—have taken more from women and children. An evening up of the way in which the spending axe fell might provide more scope.

Far from seeking to improve the financial position of some of the poorest in society—those who are reliant on safety-net benefits—some of the coalition’s measures will make matters worse: the changes to housing benefit; the VAT rise, which will reduce the spending power of the poorest; and the plans to link safety-net benefits to the consumer prices index, which will, over time, significantly reduce the value of those benefits to low-income families, and will therefore have an impact on the disposable incomes of the poorest women before conception, during pregnancy and after birth. I urge Government Members to think about how they would address that.