Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Baroness Burt of Solihull

Monday 4th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jon Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

May I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for her tenacity in pursing this issue and say that her speech was a tour de force? Equally, I commend her for getting this issue discussed on Twitter, as this must be the first new clause on a Finance Bill to have generated this much interest on that site.

I wish to make only a few brief remarks, because a lot of what I wanted to say has been covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), in particular, and by some Members on the Government Benches. Early on, I want to pick up on one point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow in her speech and at business questions last week, which is the suggestion that some funny business is going on and that the Government are deliberately delaying making a decision to help the Deputy Prime Minister at the party conference—[Hon. Members: “Rubbish!] Some hon. Members are shouting from a sedentary position, so I would be grateful if the Financial Secretary, who will, I presume, respond to the debate, could guarantee that the Deputy Prime Minister will not make an announcement on this matter in his conference speech. That would help Opposition Members—[Interruption.] I invite the Financial Secretary to make a few remarks on that point in his closing speech.

There is some consensus on this issue on both sides of the House. I was not a Member of Parliament when it was debated in February, although I have read many of the speeches. Many Members, on both sides of the House, take the issue very seriously—and rightly so. Before the general election campaign, the then Leader of the Opposition took it very seriously. When he was rebranding the Conservative party, he did not only hug hoodies and huskies. The party launched a campaign about resisting—I hope this is not unparliamentary language—your “inner tosser”, which encouraged people not to fall into the trap of personal debt that we have discussed. At the time, the current Prime Minister said that—and I paraphrase—although the campaign was provocative, we needed to do something about personal debt. The Opposition agree.

Today I visited a money advice centre in my constituency to talk about some of the issues faced by many of my constituents who are getting themselves into trouble. I was told stories about how Wonga and quickquid.com target many vulnerable people in my constituency. Members might not be aware that my constituency contains some of the most deprived estates in the country and we have had many examples of such companies targeting people such as single mothers, as in the cases mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington, when they have no choice but to sign up to such deals. Such people end up in great difficulty.

Another issue mentioned at the centre, although it does not fall within the narrow confines of the new clause, was illegal loan sharking. The problem is that many people who find themselves in deep trouble through legal loan sharking feel that they have no alternative but to turn to illegal loan sharks. I hope we will be able to debate that in future. I was told many tragic stories about people who have fallen foul of illegal loan sharking. Such people might be in work—it is not always a matter of gangs preying on vulnerable out-of-work people on estates. One example involved somebody who took out a loan from an illegal loan shark for £7,000, which soon became £70,000.

[Lorely Burt]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about illegal loan sharking, which is a scourge of this country. Does he welcome the fact that despite the cuts the Government have made in other areas, we have increased the amount of money we are using to fight illegal loan sharks?

[Jon Ashworth]

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) tells me that the Government have cut the financial inclusion grant. I always welcome action to tackle illegal loan sharking, so I would be very disappointed if the money going into those funds was cut.

This is an important issue, which particularly affects my constituents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow said, it is not just the constituents we would traditionally think of as the most vulnerable in society who are being hurt. Increasingly, the money advice centre I visited today is finding examples of people from lower and more middle income-backgrounds getting themselves into trouble and falling prey to such organisations.