Community Debt Advice Services

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) for securing the debate and speaking so passionately about the impact on her constituents, and indeed all our constituents.

In the last 13 years, families in Nottingham East have faced blow after blow to their finances. People lost jobs and savings in the 2008 financial crash, more than a decade of austerity has seen benefit payments brutally cut and, in the pandemic, incomes have plummeted. Throughout all of that, our community has been able to rely on St Ann’s Advice Centre, which has been a lifeline to so many people in Nottingham. Its debt advisers help to set up manageable payment plans, help people to complete financial statements and apply for certain grants, carry out benefits checks, and provide advice on budgeting decisions. More than that, from employment advice to food, furniture and clothing, the advice centre takes a holistic approach to supporting individuals. It is a one-stop shop for people facing poverty.

St Ann’s has three debt advisers funded through a MaPS contract. However, under the new proposals, it will lose all of them and, because MaPS has the monopoly on debt advice, it is unlikely to get support from anywhere else. MaPS argues that, while community-based face-to-face services are being cut, more money is being put into a centralised digital and telephone-based system. There are a number of major problems with that change, but I will outline just two. First, removing the local face-to-face element will take away an entire support system from people. When people come through the door at St Ann’s for debt advice, they can also get support with a whole range of other issues tailored for them locally—they can leave with a food parcel or a clothing parcel—which cannot be replaced on the internet or over the phone. Secondly, digital and phone advice is simply not appropriate for some of my constituents.

According to frontline debt advisers working on webchat, about 50% of all clients either disengage or need to be directed to face-to-face services to ultimately have their problems resolved. Can the Minister say what will happen to people whose problems cannot be solved by digital and phone-based services? Who will support them if community debt advice is cut? Disabled people, elderly people, those who require translation or who lack regular access to a phone or the internet due to homelessness or poverty—those people will suffer. Many of them are among the most marginalised and vulnerable in society.

Recently, St Ann’s debt helpline inbox received 455 emails in one week. That is the worst they have ever seen. These changes and cuts would be wrong at any time, but to implement them now—after a pandemic has wreaked havoc on people’s lives, as families have £20 a week cut from their universal credit payments, as national insurance contributions rise, and as bills and food prices soar—is simply inhumane.

The debt crisis will only grow. MaPS is removing some of the last genuine support my constituents have access to—the people they turn to when bailiffs are at the door; the people who will hold their hands in times of extreme personal difficulty and crisis. The Government must remember that savings made through cuts to community debt advice will have knock-on impacts on other public services, such as the benefits system, mental health provision and homelessness services.

I urge the Minister to pause this contract. He has heard today about the catastrophic impact these changes will have on people’s lives—on my constituents and on his. Go back to the drawing board and work with MPs across the House to implement the kind of debt advice system that would best serve our communities.