Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Debate between Mark Hoban and Liz Kendall

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government have had to go through this challenging spending process with care, examining both spending and welfare decisions. We have had to take decisions that are not straightforward, not easy and not ones that we would have wanted to take, but we have had to do so because of the financial problem that we inherited from our predecessors.

Let me give another example of targeted support that is available, because the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) talked about means-tested grants. I am sure that she will be aware of the Healthy Start scheme, which is a statutory scheme providing a nutritional safety net and encouragement for breastfeeding and healthy eating to more than 500,000 pregnant women and to children under the age of four in low-income and disadvantaged families across the UK. The scheme is tied carefully because, unlike the health in pregnancy grant, it provides vouchers for people to put towards the cost of milk, fresh fruit and vegetables, and infant formula milk at 30,000 retail outlets. So measures are in place to support the groups that she is most concerned about, and it is right that that is so. The health in pregnancy grant is unfocused and untargeted.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The Healthy Start scheme is a good, targeted one, but will the Minister admit that the Government are also restricting the Sure Start maternity grant, abolishing the baby element of the tax credit and not going ahead with the toddler tax credit? Pregnancy and the first year of life is vital for a child’s development; if we can give children the best start in life, it saves us all in the long run. So will he reconsider his abolition of these schemes?