Women: Assistance in Pregnancy

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I share the noble Earl’s great concern for children in care and take his point about the relatively much higher rate of pregnancy. I shall look closely at what we can do in that area.

[Lord German]

My Lords, there will be a moment of time between the outgoing regulations and the incoming regulations in respect of budgeting loans to which the Minister has just referred. Given that most people will be looking for low-cost, low-interest loans to buy such things as a buggy, a pram or a cot, what advice is the Minister giving to his department on exercising flexibility in this regard to ensure that the current regulations may be as widely accessible as possible so that people are not disadvantaged during the short period between the old and the new regulations?

[Lord Freud]

I thank my noble friend for reinforcing this important point. There will be a gap, probably of around nine months, before we can formally change the budgeting loans. We are making the very firm point—I made that firm point formally in the Chamber yesterday—that we are encouraging people to use the scheme to the utmost extent that they can and to apply it to slightly wider items than those around budgeting for the baby.