Financial Education

Debate between Lyn Brown and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on the work that they put into the report. However, before this turns into a complete love-in in which we all congratulate each other on our efforts, I should observe that I see financial education as being about 20% of the solution to the problem with debt in this country. We also need to look carefully and quite quickly at regulating certain parts of the industry, especially payday loans and the high-cost lending sector. I would also like to improve advice services and secure advice services that are under threat at the moment. I would look at advertising, too. I think that it is at the root of some of the severe problems that people get themselves into with debt. On loans, some very dodgy products are made to look commonplace, and young people are encouraged to take out short-term loans for things such as going to a music festival, which sends completely the wrong message. We need to do something about that fairly urgently.

As a nation, many of us lack the knowledge we need to properly manage our finances. About two thirds of people in the UK say that they feel too confused to make the right choices about their money and more than a third say that they do not have the right skills to properly manage their cash. Only 36% of people understand that the term APR relates to payments. Within families, about 19% of parents have never discussed how to spend money with their teenagers and 32% have yet to discuss how to budget or even describe what one is. Research has shown that 43% of parents do not know what basic financial terms such as APR or PPI mean. On Tuesday, I was in a financial education class in a women’s prison and I was quite impressed by how well informed some of the inmates were, but there was quite a long discussion about PPI, which seems to be a huge issue on which many people feel they have been misled. They say they would have benefited from clear information at a young age.

Frighteningly, about three quarters of us say that a lack of basic financial understanding is to blame for our debts. The gaps in our national financial knowledge are worrying but are made all the more troubling in these times of austerity. The citizens advice bureau in my constituency tells me that in the past 12 months it has dealt with just under £9.5 million of debt. Between 2004 and 2010, individual insolvency levels rose sharply. Apparently, in the 12 months ending in quarter 3 of 2011, about one in 361 people became insolvent, which is significantly higher than the annual average of one in 1,655.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed, as I have, even more people coming to her surgery with financial issues than previously? Is she as worried as I am that they are coming to us at a time when even less independent financial advice is available for them to access?

[Mrs Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. She tempts me to break a promise that I made to myself when I came into the debate not to have a rant about the economy and make a wider political point, because I thought that that probably would not be what this occasion demanded. However, she makes that point for me and I thank her for it.

Education is the armour against being misled and I believe that advertising is misleading us. I refer the House to my ten-minute rule Bill of about a year ago, which I am sure all hon. Members have followed closely, which would curb some of the advertising on financial products. Financial education provides protection against some of the most traumatic circumstances a person can find themselves in, from paying an additional fee on an unauthorised overdraft because one is not aware of how the charges work, to losing one’s home or having one’s belongings repossessed and being declared bankrupt. Many of us have been able to learn from our mistakes because either the economy has been in a good state or we have been able to rely on family or friends. We have been lucky but young people now, as the hon. Member for North Swindon said, are in danger of financial mismanagement having a much longer-term effect on their lives. On finishing education, young people immediately face tough monetary decisions. At 17, they are already in debt and tied into contracts that they did not fully understand for things such as mobile phones. I take the slack given to me by the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) who made a good point about gambling. If that is an issue at primary level, which I had not appreciated, it is right that that be included in the curriculum. Therefore, we need to be properly prepared to deal with these decisions. Put simply, an informed borrower is a safer borrower.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Chapman]

I agree with that to a point. I have A-level maths and I am very glad that I studied that. One does not have to be a maths expert to deliver good financial education, but one does need to have confidence in the subject, have a good grasp of the knowledge and be a good teacher. A good teacher who can get the ideas across can probably teach the things that we discuss in the report quite well.

[Lyn Brown]

Given that I could not tempt my hon. Friend to have a rant on the economy, perhaps I can tempt her one more time to deviate on to the Government’s record on this matter. In November 2011, applications for training courses for secondary maths teachers fell by more than a quarter on last year. Is she as concerned as I am about the implications of that?

[Mrs Chapman]

I am very concerned about that. I am not only concerned about mathematics. My region has seen a drop of about 20% in higher education applications. We are assured that there will be a last-minute surge in applications. If that is not the case, I fear that we will face a serious problem.