Employment and Support Allowance (Blackpool South)

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I welcome the Minister to his new role.

There is a paradox, in that the reason why many people move to seaside towns—this is not only about those who have lived there all their lives—is to retire, get well, and improve their physical lives but, sadly, illness and physical circumstances do not always permit that. That is the paradox in Blackpool, where the numbers of older people and those with disabilities are larger than average. Many of the disabilities and conditions are fluctuating and transient, and such transience adds to the mental and physical issues that people face.

I want to discuss what my office and I have seen of the experience of claimants who have been transferred from incapacity benefit and other benefits to the new employment and support allowance. In particular, decisions have been made about whether people go into a support group or a work-related activity group. In recent months, we have observed a gradual build-up of people bringing cases to us. There have sometimes been between three to five a week over several months, and as that has happened, I, and people from disability groups across Blackpool, have become more worried.

The concerns have related to the nature of the medical examinations, inaccurate recording and inconsistencies of judgment. Sometimes, they have been about the overall principle of the Atos assessments and what can be described only as a tick-box culture. Only half an hour ago, Advice Link in Blackpool e-mailed me to say that it was giving out advice that the ESA50 form that the claimant receives and the scoring system used by decision makers do not add up. We have seen particular problems with people who have had their Motability taken away.

It is important that I stress the nature of the conditions faced by those who have come to us. Many have chronic illnesses or deep-rooted mental problems, and a number have had degenerative conditions that, by all modern standards, are incurable. I was alarmed and concerned that two or three of the cases involved medical professionals employed by Atos whose methods and judgment we had expressed concerns about three to four years earlier. On that occasion, the Department admitted that they were inadequate.

I want to press the Minister about Atos. Who does it employ? What balance is struck between Atos and the decision maker? Research shows that the majority of decision makers do not feel that they can question much of what has been said. A research summary from the Department for Work and Pensions said:

“Some felt that they still had the ability to reach their own decision over borderline cases”,

but others felt very limited. They

“felt they had been expressly told that they could not make a decision that ran contrary to the Atos advice without securing Atos agreement to do this”,

which they had found that Atos was unwilling or unlikely to supply. What happens when the appeals process takes place, and what happens in the meantime?

One of my constituents suffers from osteoporosis of the spine, fibromyalgia, spondylosis and partial deafness. Following a medical by Atos last November, her disability living allowance claim was disallowed, which also impacted on her husband’s claim for carer’s allowance. My constituent submitted a request for reconsideration but less than 24 hours later, the decision maker rejected it, confirming the original decision. What capacity did the decision maker have to make a considered judgment on that assessment?

I stress the problems about changes to Motability. The rules now say that the Motability component has been altered, with a movement from six months to four weeks for the removal of a vehicle. That was introduced with scant publicity. I have already referred to the swiftness with which the decision makers rejected my constituent’s request, but the real problem, right across the piece, is the time that appeals now take. My constituent was told that it could be at least six months before her appeal was heard.

Another constituent, Mr L, said that his jobcentre adviser was putting him in touch with his mental health worker, but that the process had been undermined by two consecutive medicals. My constituent says, “The adviser bangs his head on the wall. His hands are tied because of the rules that the DWP are using.”

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I recognise much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but will he clarify whether he supports the overall principle of reassessing the claims, or is he merely seeking to draw attention to inadequacies in the implementation?

[Mr Marsden]

I thank my constituency neighbour for that question. I do not think that the two questions are separate. The inadequacy with which some of these issues are treated inevitably casts light on the strength or otherwise of the process. If the hon. Gentleman is asking whether I am in favour of disabled people being given every opportunity to expand their capabilities and to work if that is proportionately possible, the answer is an unqualified yes—and that would be the case for most hon. Members—but that issue is not under discussion today.

The Minister also needs to think about the effects on the families and carers of people who are knocked back. One of my constituents, a lone parent of two sons in their teens, one of whom has Asperger’s, was knocked back last month. My constituent says, “Two days before being admitted after a series of operations on my shoulder, I received a letter to inform me of the results of the medical I had to attend with Atos, saying that I was fit for work and that my claim for ESA had ended from yesterday. Both my sons live with me, but my housing benefit will stop because my ESA claim has ended. I don’t want to be claiming benefits. I would rather be back working, but with the pain I am in, I am unable to do that.” I have already mentioned what happens to the income of the carers of partners judged fit for work.

Another claimant who was knocked back, who had had long-term depression, wrote to say, “Is there any way you could possibly have the appeal process speeded up? I have been told it could take up to eight months. I feel so lost and powerless.”

The stress falls not just on the person with a disability, but on the partner, particularly when, as a number of my constituents have told me, they were discouraged from going to the assessment because of the restrictions of the venue. That is a denial of human rights, as well as, practically, a very silly thing to do.

Another constituent with chronic pain has been through this revolving door and says, “I am now mentally preparing myself for the fact I will have to take my case to a tribunal. I have been without any payment from DWP since April and although my partner has taken on extra duties during the lunch hour, we still cannot meet our outgoings—full-time hours where she works will not be available.” That is the reality of these people’s lives in Blackpool; it is the reality of the work process there.

Ministers and officials needs to address some fundamental questions. Leaving aside the individual inadequacies of the Atos process, what are the jobs for which these people are alleged to be fit? How much will it cost the Government and the taxpayer to support them properly in those jobs and, in particular, given some of the new Government restrictions on working tax credit, will they ever be able to earn from them a living wage? I have already said that I fully support proportionate and fully rounded initiatives to enable such people to use their abilities, and I feel strongly about that, having had a mother disabled by osteoporosis for 25 years. However, there is a balance to be struck.

Yesterday, in my local newspaper, The Blackpool Gazette, in a piece written by the feature writer Jacqui Morley, the wife of one of the constituents who had come to me, who is a gentleman with a severe degenerative condition akin to motor neurone disease, said that her husband’s former bosses had moved heaven and earth to keep him until he had realised that he was taking more than he was giving. She said that unless the Government were prepared to give disabled people all the support they need—in her husband’s case, certain facilities, personal assistants, and aids and equipment that cost a fortune—this is just a tick-box exercise about integration, not real inclusion. The system also dictates that the man will have to go through the process again in three years’ time to be reassessed on that progressive degenerative condition.

Alan Reid, who manages Disability First, our Blackpool disability information service, has commented that many people in the town who are genuinely in need are being dumped by these assessments. He says, “They come to us desperate and, in some cases, suicidal.”

Some of these concerns were raised during pilots of the process—indeed, disability group representatives in the Blackpool area took part in those pilots—so it is not entirely surprising that some of the problems have come to pass. I strongly stress that there is a sense of waste and people saying, “Working for what?”

The same constituent’s wife who was quoted in the Gazette put her finger on the problem in the letter that she wrote to the decision maker at Jobcentre Plus. When talking about the test, she said that the question should be about to what end people could press a button and use a keyboard and mouse, and whether they could do so at a speed—and without the need for continued support—that would facilitate meaningful input and a financially viable outcome such that their employment could be sustained by an employer. Surely that should be one of the elements considered in the process.

I have cited all those examples in the context of Blackpool, but the truth, of course, is that this is a country-wide issue. That is why various disability groups, such as the disability benefits consortium, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Parkinson’s UK and Scope, have all raised serious doubts. The DBC has said that the work-capability assessment is poor at identifying disabled people’s needs.

Business and the Economy

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sheerman]

I believe that my hon. Friend and I voted in different Lobbies on that occasion, so I will not develop the point any further.

What are small and medium-sized enterprises in this country looking for? They are looking to the Government to promote innovation. All the research shows that we must invest in small companies, which are often in the high-tech sector. They will be the new employers; they will be the organisations carrying out the innovation. After all, our country was built on innovation and on entrepreneurs, and my town of Huddersfield was built on people who understood that. It is true that they had free energy, which, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), is extremely important in a world of automation. Although we can substantially increase the number of people working in manufacturing, it will not return to the 20% or 30% level. The fact remains that it is to the small companies that we must look for the future.

There was not enough about banks in the Queen’s Speech. Here they are, with all this taxpayers’ money, and we still cannot persuade them to lend to new businesses. What on earth is going on? The banks have all that money, but they are still reluctant to invest in new ventures. The Government should have done something about that. Let us see better finance for the productive sector from the banks, and let us also expand our manufacturing exports. We hear time and again that we are not taking advantage of the markets in China, Brazil, Russia and India.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman mention countries such as Brazil, China and Japan, and also banking. Given that the debate is about the Queen’s Speech, what piece of legislation would he seek to introduce to achieve his very sensible goals?

[Mr Sheerman]

Everyone knows that we could have had legislation that strengthened the Government’s power to force banks to lend to small businesses.

It was me, in an intervention, and not the shadow Secretary of State, who drew attention to what had been said by Lord Jones this morning. He said that the trade and industry outreach of the Foreign Office had been decimated in recent months. We need to expand our manufacturing exports, and the small and medium-sized enterprises will do that as well.

If we are to rebalance the economy, we must recognise what the Queen’s Speech does not recognise: London and the south have become totally out of proportion in terms of infrastructure investment, resources and everything else that we can think of. To those who come down here from Yorkshire, the north-west or even the midlands, this part of the world is a foreign country. There is no recession here, but there has been a recession for three years in the regions of our country. The fact that the Queen’s Speech makes no reference to that is a disgrace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this Queen’s Speech debate, although I fear that I might have stumbled into a constitutional innovation: a state of the nation debate. Of course, we do not have a state of the nation speech in this country; we have a Queen’s Speech in which Her Majesty lays out legislation for the coming year. Yet having listened to Opposition Members, I think that the debate has really been a discussion not of what was in the Queen’s Speech, but of what was left out.

I am a proud believer in limited government. I remember Queen’s Speeches under the previous Government groaning under the weight of unnecessary legislation. Barely a year went by without a criminal justice Act being added to the statute book. Did they ever look at whether those Acts had the desired impact? Of course not. They just kept on legislating because, in the end, that is what politicians on the left need to do; they need to pass laws, because otherwise, heaven forfend, people might not think they needed to exist, and we cannot have that, can we?

When I speak with local businesses in my constituency, they do not beg me for legislation. Actually, I tell a lie. It would remiss of me as a Blackpool MP not to mention one measure that was missing from the Queen’s Speech. I am sorry that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is no longer in his place, as otherwise I would congratulate him on the massive benefits he has brought to the ski lifts of Aviemore. Having accepted the principle that there should be a level playing field between different European nations, he lowered the VAT rate for ski lifts and did well by the people of Aviemore, but the hoteliers of Blackpool would like him to make a similar contribution by lowering the VAT rate on the provision of goods and services related to tourism. Many other European countries have a lower rate of VAT on such services, which means that the UK is suffering through competition. Having accepted that principle, I hope that the Government will now look at how it can be expanded to other sectors of the economy.

[Lorely Burt]

Many laws were passed under the previous Government—more than one for every single day they were in government—but what did that achieve? Unless we enact them and then ensure that people adhere to them, they are not worth the paper they are written on.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. My only surprise is that so far no Labour Member has proposed a law stating that two plus two should equal five, because that is the only way they could get their sums to add up for the policies they would introduce. What local firms in my constituency are asking for is better implementation of existing legislation. The Economist stated only last week that we are the most radical Government in the west. We have introduced fundamental reforms in welfare and education, and they need time to bed in. Good governance is different from good legislation. Public administration is about implementing what is passed, not moving on to the next big item just for the sake of giving oneself something to do. That is not how to run a country properly.

One local firm I visited only the other week is AGC Chemicals in Thornton, which makes a wonderful product called Fluon, which I had never heard of before. It is apparently very similar to Teflon. Those Members who are familiar with the Allianz arena in Munich or the Water Cube where the swimming events took place at the Beijing Olympics will be interested to know that the fancy cladding surrounding the stadiums is made of Fluon, which I am very proud is manufactured in my constituency. The company told me that what it needs is our existing legislation to bear fruit. It is delighted by the education reforms we are putting in place, because it needs better skilled employees and cannot find them in the local area, which is a tragedy for not only the firm, but for the local people on the Fylde coast who need jobs and need to acquire those skills. That is why it is vital that we welcome what the Government are doing on apprenticeships, for example. Also, the firm should not have to look two or three hours away to get the highly skilled specialists it needs, because those people will have lengthy commutes, which puts stresses and strains on our infrastructure. That cannot be the right way to go. There must be a more local approach to skills, and that is what the Government are seeking to ensure, but that does not need a Bill or legislation; it just needs us to allow the Government to get on with the business of good governance. It is that simple.

Let me give another example. We already have local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones. I welcome the enterprise zone that the Government have introduced near my constituency in Warton, where BAE Systems is based, but once again that is an evolving situation. The local enterprise partnerships are barely a year old, and certainly the one in Lancashire had something of a traumatic birth—something to which other Lancashire Members in the Chamber can no doubt bear testament. Once again, local firms in my constituency are saying that they want to be certain that the local enterprise partnership is not being hobbled or constrained and that the periphery—the Fylde coast is, after all, always a periphery because it is the coast—is not neglected when decisions are made.

In my view it is fundamentally important that as we move forward we remember the first line of the Queen’s Speech, which is that deficit reduction is at the heart of what the Government are doing. I can accept that Opposition Members might not agree with every element of the Queen’s Speech or like the general approach that the Government are taking, but I ask them to bear witness to what is happening in Athens and in France. I ask them to bear in mind the fact that we cannot make two plus two equal five, as much as they might wish us to, because two plus two will always equal four, and that has to be the basis of any sound, intellectual economic policy. We cannot keep channelling our inner Venezuelans and hoping that if we nationalise everything somehow all will be well. I realise that it is a seductive message for politicians to offer, that somehow they can offer all the gain with none of the pain, particularly when they are desperate to win elections, but the more the Labour Members go on in that manner, the more they will show that they are yet to understand fully why they lost the last election. I am quite happy for them to continue in their ignorance, for they need to look within themselves that little bit more to understand fully why they were thrown out in 2010. I was there; I remember.

First-time Buyers

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing the debate. The subject is important in a week when the Prime Minister has made two significant announcements. At a time when the Liberal Democrats are taking policies in my manifesto and planting a nice yellow flag on them as though they had always owned them, I want to ensure that we claim both those policies as having been born, brought to fruition, made aware and brought to life in the Conservative party, with a big blue sticker on them.

I am proud of what this party has done for first-time buyers, not just since I have been an MP but since I was born, and even since the party was founded. We have always been the party of the first-time buyer. I make no apology for that, and I am proud of it. I know that our critics—sadly, they could not arrive today—normally say that we are opposed to social housing and that we look down on it. Far from it; as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) pointed out, we see the importance of the tenancy escalator. We see social housing as a springboard or trampoline, not quicksand from which one should never escape.

There is a reason why that is in our party’s DNA: we are real people with lived experiences. In my family, on my mother’s side, I had relatives living in Myrtle Gardens, a modernist estate in the heart of Liverpool. It was rather like the Karl Marx-Hof in Vienna but, in that part of Liverpool, possibly more left-wing. In the 1930s, it was a model of its time, but by the 1980s and the Toxteth riots, it was a shadow of its former self. What happened? Along came Lord Heseltine, who made sure that Myrtle Gardens was rebuilt and sold off to local people at prices that they could afford, which turned that estate around. In the heart of Liverpool, the Conservative DNA flickered, and we should be proud of that as well.

Council estates should be more than just assemblages of houses where we put people for social engineering purposes, as many on the left have always sought to do. My home village of Weaverham, where many people bought their houses in the 1980s, was two-thirds council estates, mostly for people working in the local Imperial Chemical Industries plant. Looking around, I found that they built a community from within the houses that they bought; they did not rely on someone else to do it for them.

It is clear that after 13 years of Labour rule, the challenges that we face are far different. As other speakers have pointed out, numbers of first-time buyers are falling sharply, from 50% of all house buyers in May 2009 to only 20% now. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) cited the age of the average first-time buyer as 35. I heard 37. Maybe we will hear an upwards bid from the Labour spokesman, although I doubt it. That is Labour’s legacy.

Perhaps the most shocking legacy that we inherited was 50,000 statutorily homeless people. We do not mention that figure often enough, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) pointed out. Because the social housing market did not work as it should, we inherited 50,000 people trapped in temporary, substandard accommodation. That is not a legacy of which the Labour party should be proud for one second.

It is no wonder that groups such as Priced Out exist to campaign for people of my generation—20 to 35-year-olds—who are being priced out of the housing market, unable to afford a first house. I was fortunate. I bought in the last housing development in Greater London where prices were still under £100,000. I got in just in time. Another year or two and I would have been the sort of sofa surfer that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester discussed.

Why should my generation be denied opportunities that previous generations had? We should enable people, not tell them how to live their lives. It is a cultural battle as much as a political or economic one, because it is about the belief that housing policy is somehow about social engineering. It most certainly is not. It is about enabling people to choose how to live their lives. Home ownership is a natural objective for 86% of people, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government. We should not sneer at that or think that it prevents our wider dreams of creating a new Jerusalem. Far from it. True communities come from families having a stake in the society in which they live. That is the nub in terms of policy.

When those on the left criticise our NewBuy policy, I want to take them to Westminster Gardens in Bispham or Hawley Gardens in Thornton in my constituency. The criticism is that we are doing it just for the sake of the house builders. I want to take them around those new estates. Westminster Gardens was being built five years ago, when I was first elected to fight the seat. It is still being built; it is what is called a stalled development. Those who think that we are just trying to benefit house builders should speak to the residents of that estate and find out what is actually going on there.

A stalled development means that the local council will not adopt the roads, so they are left with substandard paving and road quality. They are left with dangers to small children from building sites and higher numbers of road traffic accidents and injuries. Merely to say, “Oh, you’re just doing it for the sake of the house builders” shows once again the failure of the left to engage with people’s lives as they are lived. Once again, it is only seeing the schematics, which is deeply unfair to the people investing in those estates who want them to be completed.

More concerning still is how our social housing market is blocked up, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer said. Many social tenants now are not moving through the system. That is why large numbers are stuck in temporary accommodation: there is not sufficient turnover. Labour has almost destroyed the right to buy by tweaking criteria, lowering thresholds and trying to prevent people from buying their council homes. I am sure that Labour Members pay lip service to the concept, but they do not believe in their hearts that owning one’s own home is a good thing. They look on it with suspicion, distaste and almost distrust, which angers me.

I could easily do cheap politics—

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

You have been for the past half hour.

[Paul Maynard]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will get a chance to have a go at me later, and I look forward to hearing it, but since he encourages me, I will talk about union leaders occupying social housing and the fact that here in the royal borough of Westminster, there are 2,000 social tenants who earn more than I do as a Member of Parliament. Perhaps that should give us pause for thought. Perhaps we should reconsider how we use social housing and what it is for. I do not think that it is there to give Bob Crow a pleasant place for life.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

He has the block vote.

[Paul Maynard]

I agree entirely. Perhaps we would like to see a gesture from leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers as to what he will do in future.

We need to use our social housing stock better, which is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement on enhancing the right to buy. We have to stop seeing our social housing stock as ghettos that we create. When I first moved to London, into the housing development that I mentioned, as ever, the housing developer built the required proportion of affordable housing at the end of a cul-de-sac; there were two rows of cheaper housing. It became ghettoised and stigmatised, as is always the case. We need to move beyond that and to think of social housing as a resource for the use of the community, not areas of a town or village that are regarded as somehow less worthy. That has always been my concern about the social engineering aspect of housing policy, which many Labour Members seem to want to create—communities that they can somehow control. That strategy is desperately wrong.

[Owen Smith]

I am listening with interest to—perhaps “enjoying” is the wrong word—the hon. Gentleman’s comments. In his tour de force on the history of the left and its attitude to social housing, will he return to Nye Bevan and the great period of the invention of social housing in the aftermath of the second world war, and point to who on the left, in the Labour party, thinks of social housing as just a matter of social engineering?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

With regard to first-time buyers, of course.

[Paul Maynard]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning Nye Bevan, because in the interest of brevity, I had crossed out my paragraph on him. I shall reintroduce it into my speech.

It was well known that what Nye Bevan wanted to do—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman might like to return to the subject under debate, namely, Government help for first-time buyers. Nye Bevan can wait for some other time.

[Paul Maynard]

Thank you, Mr Gray. I shall bear that advice in mind.

It is vital that the receipts from the new right-to-buy initiative are reinvested in affordable rented social housing, as I know has been made clear. The key aspect of the issue is the turnover of tenants in social housing. There needs to be an escalator. People may start off in a vulnerable situation needing full tenancies, but they need to be able to move swiftly and quickly on and escalate as high up as they wish. If that leads to home ownership, that is a good thing. However, we need to have fluidity in the social housing market, which we have not had under, I would suggest, any Government. The changes that the Government are announcing this week and those that are contained in last year’s housing Green Paper mark the start of trying to regard our housing stock as an asset for the whole community that is not geographically restricted.

Two of my favourite architects are Alison and Peter Smithson, a married couple who built many modernist buildings—probably many of them in Milton Keynes. Some of their views were bizarre, and they had a vision for housing. While they wanted to see the rubbish chute replace the village pump, somehow they believed that putting us all in high-rise blocks would enhance the bonds of community. As a Conservative—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry, but I fear that the hon. Gentleman is launching into something of a tour de force on the whole of housing policy. We have to focus. Two other hon. Members are trying to catch my eye before I call the Front Benchers. Perhaps he could focus his attention specifically on Government help for first-time buyers and possibly, out of courtesy to the two other hon. Members, wind up his remarks quite soon.

[Paul Maynard]

Thank you, Mr Gray, for your help. I shall therefore come to an end by quoting one of our predecessors, Mr David Eccles, a Member of Parliament for Chippenham, who said in 1948:

“Men are partly selfish and partly idealist, and they give their best when they believe they have a reasonable chance to put something in their pockets and to realise a fragment of their dreams.”

That is what the Government have been doing and what we need to keep on doing. I shall give way so that the two following Members have their chance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I can tell the House that Christine Lagarde will be in London on Friday. We will hear what she has to say then.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with his international counterparts on steps to reduce Government budget deficits.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

At the last G20 summit, advanced countries committed to implementing clear, credible, ambitious and growth-friendly medium-term fiscal consolidation plans, differentiated according to national circumstances. I will further discuss fiscal consolidation plans in the G7, G20 and IMF meetings later this month.

[Paul Maynard]

Does the Chancellor agree with the IMF’s most recent assessment that strong fiscal consolidation remains essential?

[Mr Osborne]

That is, of course, absolutely what the IMF said in its recent article IV assessment—and we remember the article IV assessments at the end of the previous Labour Government. It asks explicitly whether the UK Government should change their policy, and it says no. That is the advice of the IMF. Last July, the Labour party voted against Britain paying its subscriptions to the IMF. Frankly, I do not think that Labour Members should talk about the IMF in Treasury questions until they agree with paying the subs.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If a looked-after child aged 16 or 17, perhaps studying and working part time, was in a position to make a modest contribution to their own fund, that would be a good thing. Looked-after children have to be more resilient than any other people in our society, so it would be good for them to learn about the importance of managing money and planning ahead through the medium of that child ISA or a savings account to which they and others may contribute. That could make them even more resilient, and looking back to the time when I worked with such young people, the opportunity to sit down with them and work out their money management would have been a great way to do it. I think that that suggestion has great merit, and if the young person could also contribute, that would be a very good thing too.

My proposal would require the Government to open accounts for about 20,000 looked-after children each year. With additional top-ups of £100 for those who remain in care for a year or more, as I have described, we are talking about a total annual sum of some £6.6 million. We can argue about whether child trust funds are a sensible way to spend half a billion pounds, and the Government have taken a view that is different from that taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn and those of us on the Labour Benches, but I put it to the House that a scheme that would deliver a savings account for every looked-after child in the UK who had been in care for more than three months, at a cost of less than £7 million, would be a good way to spend public money. The young person would get the money when they were 18. It could be an important part of care planning, as I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, and would promote resilience. It would send a clear and strong message to the young people concerned that we owe them an obligation and are prepared to support them in a practical way.

I hope that the Minister will provide a positive response not only to the precise content of my amendments, but to the proposal in general and the need to do something, either here or in another place, that will put in the Bill something tangible for looked-after children. What I propose is modest, but it could make a real difference. If the Minister is prepared to act and make that clear, that would be good news for looked-after children. It would demonstrate that, whatever differences there are in this place over the Bill, when it comes to looked-after children we are prepared to sink those differences and do something together.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to pass comment on the Opposition’s continued attempts to retain child trust funds. I am struck, in particular, by the nature of their opposition: rather than concentrating on the effectiveness or otherwise of child trust funds as savings vehicles, they appear to have reduced their argument to one about generic usefulness. There seems to be a growing objection to abolishing child trust funds, because somehow the Opposition have inadequate confidence in the junior ISAs or child ISAs that are due to replace them. That is particularly concerning.

I remind those Members who sat on the Public Bill Committee with me, and inform those who did not, of a quote from the director general of the Building Societies Association, Mr Adrian Coles, who said:

“let us not pretend that we need to rely on the Government or the public sector to do all of this. The 49 building societies and other mutuals offer about 100 children’s savings accounts in the free market, which have been pretty successful over the years”.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 26, Q67.]

I know that in Committee concerns were expressed that the customers who take out ISAs might be the more affluent or the more elderly. It was made clear at the time that 12 million people on incomes under £20,000 have ISAs, and that 40% of them are under the age of 44, compared with just 20% who are over the age of 64, so any concerns that younger families are not sharing in ISAs are unfounded.

I was particularly concerned when I heard continued doubts about the ability of families on lower incomes to cope with the financial complexity of an ISA. We need to trust people. A great deal of work is going into financial education—an increasing amount. It is a trend initiated by the previous Government, and I congratulate them on that. We are building on it, so we can have confidence in ISAs as a potential future savings vehicle.

Another reason for opposing the abolition of the child trust fund was the impact that that could have on the needs of families with disabled children. I was shocked by one of the statements by the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), when he said that

“the proposal for providing 8,000 week-long respite breaks each year for disabled children in England . . . trivialises the nature of the child trust fund”.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 9 November 2010; c. 228.]

I found that a disquieting comment. I do not regard respite breaks for children as trivial in any way, shape or form.

[Mr Hanson]

There are two points about those discussions in Committee about which the hon. Gentleman is aware. First, the abolition of the child trust fund takes away a resource that is applicable in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales, and replaces it with a provision that is available only in England. Secondly, provision for respite care is entirely different from building a capital asset for individuals at the age of 18. That was the objective of the revised proposals from the Minister.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that effort to bring clarity. None the less, I regret the use of the word “trivialise”, if only because I have spoken to many families in my constituency with disabled children. When speaking just a fortnight ago to one family who had benefited from the family fund and had their first holiday in five years, the mother broke down in tears.

I raise the matter not to have a go at the shadow Minister, but to highlight one of the wider issues that was illuminated in Committee: the difference between the accessibility of an asset that is locked away until the young person is aged 18, and the changing needs of families with disabled children—and of looked-after children, for that matter. If we are seeking to target the child trust fund at those in the community who are the most vulnerable, who have the most chaotic lives, who are subject to the most pressures, to whom unexpected things occur, is it truly sensible to tie them into something that can be delivered only when the individual reaches the age of 18?

[Cathy Jamieson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation should not be an either/or? We should be able to give day-to-day help and support to the most vulnerable, at the same time as allowing people—for example, looked-after children and people who have disabled children—to build a capital asset that will be available to them when they enter adulthood.

[Paul Maynard]

I agree entirely, and I wish that during the evidence taking in Committee and in the debate, we had had an either/or discussion, rather than an “and, and, and, and yet another idea” discussion. We had far too many shopping lists and not enough recognition that hard choices had to be made. It is important to recognise, as Marc Bush from Scope did when he gave evidence to us, that delivering an asset at age 18 is not the solution to the problems faced by families engaging in the transition of their child from childhood to adulthood, when faced with a complex disability. That starts at age 14 and can continue to age 30. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) recognised that when I intervened on her, and that was a useful move forward.

When we are discussing the future of child ISAs, I hope it is taken into account that families who are particularly vulnerable may need access before the age of 18. Locking the ISA away until age 18 is not always the best solution.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

I will give way, for the last time.

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is right to say that if the junior ISA can offer that flexibility to disabled children, it would be a useful enhancement—I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that—but does he accept that another advantage of the child trust fund, which he and I would welcome in the junior ISA, was that it delivered extra money to more vulnerable children in the double payments that were available to children from low-income households or with disabilities, for example?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. One of the joys of the Bill is that I have learned so much from her about progressive universalism. She is right that the progressive element is being removed. However, it has struck me that it is as though I have been locked away on Moonbase Alpha for the past fortnight, because there seems to have been no recognition on the part of the Opposition that we are operating in a much more stringent financial climate. The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who is no longer in her place, dismissively said at one point in Committee, “I recognise that there has been a debate about the deficit and all that sort of thing.” I found that regrettable.

We are operating in a situation in which we have to make financial savings. Rather than having a discussion about whether the child trust fund is the most appropriate use of public money, we have continually debated why we should do this, and this, and this, and then something else, and something else again. At no point did we discuss the crux of the issue: whether the child trust fund was the best use of public money to help those most in need in our society.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is having discussions with the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). I hope something comes of that, but I remain concerned that the Opposition’s determination to try to save child trust funds is based on an outdated notion that only those savings vehicles provided by the state can provide a solution. That is not the case.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

The child trust fund has a dual purpose—not only to give the young person a lump sum, but to nurture in them a savings habit for life. Some 74% of those eligible have taken up the responsibility of the child trust fund account. It is the most successful savings product on the market; ISAs and pensions fall well behind that figure. It is simple—much simpler than opening a deposit account—and it gives people a nudge to save.

Nearly a third of parents and grandparents have added to the fund, and the poorest 20% have added a higher proportion of their income to it. However, even for young people whose families do not contribute, the practical demonstration of saving in the account is invaluable. Organisations such as the Personal Finance Education Group, which works in schools, structure their lessons around it, certain in the knowledge that all pupils will have received a statement annually on their birthday, and that all pupils have such an account.

The very universality of the scheme provides a useful and practical foundation for learning and for influencing behaviour. In addition, it is especially useful for looked-after children and children with disabilities, who receive extra premiums. For looked-after children, it is a practical example of the state acting as parent and attempting to improve their prospects at 18—an ambition that all parents have for their children—by providing a lump sum at one of the most difficult periods of their lives, a time of transition that is difficult for any teenager, but especially for those leaving care.

For children with disabilities, the scheme provides an asset that allows them to take advantage of life opportunities or to invest in whatever they see as their priority. It is unfair to remove the scheme without a full impact assessment of groups who may be disproportionately affected, such as families with disabled children and people with disabilities, especially as the Demos report showed that the emergency Budget had a substantial financial impact on families with disabled children.

It has been suggested that a junior ISA may replace the child trust fund, but I cannot believe that it will provide an adequate replacement, even if a seamless transition in January 2011were possible, which has been disputed by a number of experts in the savings field. An ISA primarily benefits taxpayers and higher-rate taxpayers in particular, so what advantage does an ISA offer to a non-taxpaying family? Equally, the simplicity of the child trust fund product has been praised.

I have worked with people to whom ISAs and other financial products have little relevance, with people who need support to open a basic bank account and with people who have no notion of opening a deposit account. I urge Members, therefore, to retain the scheme in some form—even if only for looked-after children, children with disabilities and the poorest third of families—and not to scrap it completely. I urge Members to support the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome this opportunity to express my views on the concept of saving gateways. I listened with interest to the shadow Minister expressing his desire to save them for the future, but in his defence he missed some of the key pieces of evidence that we heard in the Bill Committee. I should like to remind him of some of that evidence. Adrian Coles, director general of the Building Societies Association, told us:

“No building society had committed to offering a saving gateway”.

Eric Leenders, executive director of the British Bankers Association, said that there were

“only a couple of providers who felt that it was suitably beneficial for them to provide the account”.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 34, Q98.]

The Post Office would participate only if provided with taxpayers’ subsidy. It will cost £300 million to continue with the scheme.

There was a great deal of debate in Committee about the possibility of the fourth link in that chain being credit unions, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) for her assiduous advocacy of their cause. In a way, she was quite right. I was impressed to hear how many credit unions there were in Makerfield. I think she said that there is one at the end of almost every street, or certainly within walking distance for most of her constituents. We have a very successful one in Blackpool, too, but they would not be available for this purpose in the many parts of the country where the credit union movement has yet to implant itself fully, so we would be left with the kind of postcode lottery against which the shadow Minister was fulminating in the previous debate. We cannot have it both ways.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman describes a lack of credit unions in certain parts of the country, which is precisely why the opportunity to have the saving gateway is so important. Does he not appreciate that Government input into helping lower-income families to save is exactly what is needed to provide the necessary impetus?

[Paul Maynard]

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman’s point was not borne out by the evidence of Mark Lyonette of the Association of British Credit Unions Ltd. He was quite clear when he said of the saving gateway:

“None of the credit unions built their business plan around it, so I don’t think its withdrawal is a threat to the health of credit unions.”––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 52, Q149.]

It is important to ensure that we give credit unions what they want, and that is why we are seeing reforms to the Credit Unions Act 1979 enabling them to work with more than just individuals—they will now be able to work with interest groups, social enterprises and the like. We should not therefore allow the Opposition’s statement that credit unions have to be involved to obstruct the fact that this scheme will cost £300 million to continue. This might cause some Opposition Members to roll their eyes and shake their heads, as they did earlier in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), but we are now living in a very different fiscal situation. The shadow Minister was quite right: the Government have changed, and we now have to take tougher financial decisions. We cannot justify spending £300 million on a saving gateway that will not be universally accessible across the country because there simply are not enough commercial providers willing to provide it. This is not a debate about a group hug, or about trying to encourage everyone to save more. We all know about those things.

I have been delighted to hear the hon. Member for Makerfield talk about Brighthouse, of which there is a branch in my constituency. I almost thought that she must have sneaked into my surgeries, because her tales about her voters’ problems with Brighthouse were the same as mine. However, I do not think that the saving gateway is the answer to the problems that many poor people face in getting access to cheap credit. It is not the answer to the problems we have been discussing. It fails the test that I raised on Second Reading—a test that I call my rhododendron test. The Opposition have a tendency to fixate on a single item of legislation that they believe will somehow solve all the problems in the world, but I am afraid that the saving gateway, however popular the pilots might have been, has not been popular enough with the providers that we need to ensure its success. That is why I support the Government’s decision to remove the scheme.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I want to talk about the abolition of the saving gateway and the disappointment felt not only by the putative savers but by the credit unions, which thought that it would have a massive impact on the sector. The credit unions put a large amount of time and money into designing and introducing their product because they believed that the scheme had cross-party support. While matching the money is important in incentivising savings, it is not the only factor involved; in fact, it is not always the most important factor in influencing people to save. As we have heard, ease of access to a financial institution cannot be overstressed, and to use the existing credit unions at the heart of the community and to encourage the growth and development of the sector via this product was seen as vital. Indeed, Mark Lyonette said that encouraging people to save with credit unions was the issue. People are used to credit unions giving out loans, but the important thing is to provide them with products that encourage people to save.

The message that has been endorsed by the Government via the scheme is that even a small amount of savings matters, and that cannot be overstated. Most people do not deliberately set out to be in debt, but life events—such as the loss of a job, accidents, disability or even something as simple as the cooker breaking down—can cause debt. A small amount of money saved can act as a buffer, and people can then feel more in control and have more confidence. The value of that feeling cannot be overestimated.

It might be conventional wisdom that people should pay off all their debts before they start to save, but I take issue with that, as do people from the credit unions. As I said, events happen. The washing machine might break before someone has paid off the cooker, and if there is nothing to fall back on, the spiral of debt gets faster and deeper. That is when people turn to the legal loan sharks who charge more than 2,000%, or the actual loan sharks who prey on the vulnerable who have no resources. It is vital to provide a mechanism to remove people from the spiral of debt and make it easier to save. We know that people want to save for such events. Otherwise, why would so many people have saved with Farepak, a scheme that they believed was safe? If we could provide a trusted, easily accessible, local savings vehicle to encourage saving, we would prevent a considerable amount of human misery as well saving the health service a considerable sum for the treatment of depression and, in some cases, attempted suicide due to debt. A small amount of investment now could prevent a huge amount being spent later, and I urge the Government to reflect on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I assumed that they had all been grouped together.

Let me make a general point that links back to amendment 3 and the need to retain the grant. This is not just a matter of putting the £190 into people’s pockets so that they can spend it either on improving their diet during pregnancy or on items that they might need when the child is born. We need to bring people in so that they access professional health advice at the 25th week of pregnancy or, as we have debated, earlier in pregnancy. That is really important and there is nothing to replace it. The Government seem to have no suggestion on how to bring people in through the door and ensure that we increase the number of women who access such advice if the health in pregnancy grant is not used as a trigger mechanism. If the Government will not accept amendment 3 or any of the other amendments that call for more time and a review of how the grant works, will the Minister at least tell us how we can ensure that more women access professional advice on their health and the health of their unborn child during pregnancy? The grant was designed to tackle a serious issue and it is being abolished in its early stages. It is a shame to abandon the project at this stage.

[Paul Maynard]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak about the health in pregnancy grant, which of the three items covered by the Bill caused the most consternation in Committee and on the Opposition Benches. It certainly appeared to cause confusion in the Opposition’s arguments.

I have noted even today that there has been a slow, gradual erosion in the totalitarian position taken early on by the Opposition that the health in pregnancy grant was the most wonderful thing imaginable and could not possibly be trampled on. There has been a gradual slip back and quite a few Opposition Members have claimed that the grant was somehow misnamed and that, had they only called it something different, it would have all been all right. I must take them back to what the previous Prime Minister said when the grant was introduced. He said that he had received “powerful representations” about the

“importance of a healthy diet in the final weeks of pregnancy”.

He was very specific. He said the “final weeks of pregnancy”—not early in pregnancy, halfway through, in the 12th week, in the first week, or in the 25th week. The grant was well named, because it did precisely what the previous Prime Minister intended it to do.

The debate is not about the benefits of maternal nutrition, either. Everybody in the House agrees about the importance of proper maternal nutrition, but, clearly, we are divided on how that is best achieved. The Government do not believe that the health in pregnancy grant is the way to do it.

The debate is certainly not about timing. We have a range of alternatives: the Healthy Start vouchers, the maternity grant, and the Sure Start facilities. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) focused in particular on access to health care advice. I entirely agree with her about that, but she cannot avoid the fact that the Healthy Start vouchers are linked to attendance with a midwife.

Furthermore, the idea of the health in pregnancy grant was to provide access to health visitors, but one of the previous Government’s innovations that I wholeheartedly approve and wish to build on is the family nurse partnership schemes that operate in about 50 different councils. They specifically offer the access to advice for the most vulnerable that the hon. Lady was talking about. I simply do not understand her obsession with the health in pregnancy grant as the sole mechanism through which we can access advice. There are already multiple pathways to that advice—pathways that are more successful. I even think that there is a family nurse partnership in Bristol. Such schemes target the most vulnerable in society from the moment of conception until well past birth. This is far more expensive, I accept, but that is because it is a targeted intervention.

I do not accept the hon. Lady’s argument that we need to retain the health in pregnancy grant because it gives access to health advice. It is not the sole pathway for that.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the family intervention project, and he is right that it does some valuable work—including some valuable work in Bristol. Does he have any idea how many families receive that advice and how many have been brought within the scheme compared with how many people would have received advice through the health in pregnancy grant?

[Paul Maynard]

It is actually called the family nurse partnership, but I assume that we are talking about the same thing. I know that in Blackpool it has worked with about 200 families in the past year. The numbers are clearly far fewer than those who could access the health in pregnancy grant, but once again the hon. Lady is returning to the debate that we have had over and over again about the universal versus the targeted.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the difference with schemes such as the one in Bristol that he and the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned is that they can show tangible results, whereas the health in pregnancy grant can show no tangible evidence of how it has been beneficial?

[Paul Maynard]

I agree entirely. That is a very fair point. It was never clear whether the Opposition believed in universality or targeting. It seemed to depend on which amendment they happened to be pressing at any moment in time. It was part of the incoherent approach that they seemed to have to the debate.

The previous Government never tackled the issue of how it took up to eight weeks merely to process a health in pregnancy grant claim. The money often came through not in the 25th week but in the 33rd week—well beyond the time at which there was any hope of achieving real dietary change.

I specifically tackled the hon. Member for Bristol East on the issue of usefulness versus effectiveness. When she said in Committee that this was a useful grant, I asked her how she defined useful. She mentioned access, which I have dealt with, but never really dealt with the issue of effectiveness. That was my concern with the Opposition’s argument. At no point did they try to evaluate properly how effective the scheme was. I know that many amendments were tabled asking for such an evaluation, but all along the Opposition’s rhetoric was to use the word “useful” rather than “effective”. At no time did they argue that the scheme was effective, so we were left with not very much more than the shadow Minister trying to argue that it was nice to hand out other people’s money to other people. It might well be, but that is not a firm or solid foundation on which to build a health in pregnancy grant.

I support the abolition of the grant for the simple reason that we have a number of alternative mechanisms to support families who need assistance during pregnancy. The grant was not paid out at the right time in pregnancy, in my view, and I do not believe that it has achieved its goal. I do not believe that we would even be able to provide the evidence if that were the case. I wholly support the Government in what they are trying to do.

[Kate Green]

I am very sad that the Government have brought forward proposals to cancel the health in pregnancy grant. We have heard this evening and during the Bill’s earlier stages a number of criticisms of its structure. We have heard that it is paid at the wrong time—too late to have a significant impact on maternal nutrition and well-being—and that the money could have made more difference, even pre-conception, to low-income women of child-bearing age. We have heard that it misses the point and that women fritter it away on shoes and going to the spa. That might be true of a minority, but for many others the grant makes a crucial difference at a time when family finances become tight.

The Opposition have been asked whether we are not confused about wanting the grant to be universal or targeted at low-income and more vulnerable women. We are not confused. We are clear that we want a universal grant for all the reasons that we believe in universality: it is more effective at reaching the most disadvantaged, more cost-effective and simpler to administer, and it is easier to know when one is entitled to claim. We accept, however, that if we have to settle for a reduction in spending on pregnant women then, for a time at least, a targeted payment would have enabled us to keep the structure of the grant until it became affordable to offer it again on a universal basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sheila Gilmore]

There are, indeed, choices to be made: there is a choice about the kind of society we want to live in, and there is a choice about how we resolve economic problems. Members on the coalition Benches want the public to believe that there is only one show in town, which is that we have the worst deficit in peacetime and that we have a situation that was entirely caused by the last Government spending too much over too many years. That is the only argument they want people to believe, but let us just unwind a couple of years.—

[Paul Maynard]

rose—

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am not going to take an intervention just now.

I recall that three years ago, at the beginning of the recession, people were predicting how high unemployment would rise, how difficult things would get and how high our deficit might be. Unemployment did not rise nearly as high as predicted under the Labour Government, and I will tell hon. Members why: because we were putting in money as part of an economic stimulus. Yes, we borrowed to do that but we did so because it was the right thing to do. We were told that it was the right thing to do by the junior partner in this coalition throughout that period. I remember those debates before the election—

[Sheila Gilmore]

I was thinking about the public debates on television involving the Chancellor and the would-be Chancellors. I recall what the Liberal Democrat spokesman on finance said, and he put forward a completely different perspective from the current Chancellor. There was no agreement.

Members on the Government Benches may disagree with what I am saying, and I am happy for them to do so because that is legitimate in politics. We have a different view of how to do things, but that does not mean that our view is so unreasonable that we are not even allowed to put it. We are hearing that we are not allowed to argue any of these points and that we are not supposed to say that we would make different choices. The Minister gave this one away when he said that these measures would not really harm people; he said that the saving gateway had not even started and so nobody was being harmed, which is why it is an easy cut.

[Paul Maynard]

How does the hon. Lady respond to the point that there were no willing providers of the saving gateway? No matter how successful her party’s pilots were, no building societies were willing to make that provision. It is all very well her saying all this, but the gateway was not going to take place in reality; it was just going to take place in her own private make-believe world.

[Sheila Gilmore]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at all the evidence and the research, he will find that it is clear that this was going to take place—[Interruption.] It was going to take place because there were providers who were going to do it—[Interruption.] I do not know why he is waving his hands in the air—we could do that too. There were credit unions that wanted to get involved, as did two banks. The complaint made in Committee was that because only two banks wanted to get involved, there might not be enough access points. I have suggested other access points and I described the debate that took place when the housing association movement, with which I was involved, wanted to be one of the ones that would help people to make payments into a saving gateway scheme. That argument does not hold up.

We have heard a number of distortions of the evidence. We were told that the NCT thought that the money should go on women buying food, rather than saving, but we should recall that Belinda Phipps, the NCT’s chief executive, has written a foreword to the book that I mentioned earlier entitled “Asset Building for Children—Creating a new civic savings platform for young people”. It was written by two people, one of whom is Phillip Blond, who believes very strongly in the child trust fund; he believes that saving is very important and he suggests that we should have stuck with this arrangement. He does not say that it was without its faults—this is not a case of saying that it did not have faults—but he devotes a paragraph to saying that although it could be improved, that does not mean we should throw it out completely.

Some of the debate, particularly in Committee, was interesting and covered a lot of important material. If we want to do the best by people, we would not simply reach a point where, without looking at the wider context, we say, “Right. We have to make some savings now. Let’s just chop this, this and this.” It may be that we could have improved some of these schemes and they could have been differently focused. However, that is not the debate before us, but the stuff that has been thrown up in the course of it; the debate before us deals with the fact that either we have these schemes or we do not.

Labour Members believe that we could run our economy differently and that we do not need to cut so far and so fast. On that basis, we would be able to decide which things we wish to keep in place and which things we might want to save. I could talk about all sorts of savings that I might want to make, but I would also want to talk about the balance between savings and taxation. There are legitimate debates to be had about that.

We do not need to accept proposals that harm some of the most vulnerable in our society and the long-term view. It is astonishing that the Conservatives, in particular, whom I always understood to believe in saving, should not want to go ahead with the saving gateway. In 2003, it seems, the present Chancellor said:

“We think that having savings…gives people a stake in society, gives them independence, encourages self-reliance and bolsters the freedom of the individual against the overbearing state.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1345.]

He has clearly changed his mind.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at some of the analysis that was set out at the time of the Budget and last week’s spending review, he will see that we are taking action in both to ensure that child poverty does not deteriorate under this Government. For example, there are increases in child tax credits to families on particularly low incomes to deal with the issue of child poverty.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

Does the Minister not agree that the clue as to the purpose of the health in pregnancy grant lies in its title? It was supposed to promote health in pregnancy. Does he agree that there is no evidential base to suggest that in the seventh week of pregnancy onwards it was providing that improvement in health?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I would say that the challenge is as follows. Other schemes are in place to help families on low incomes to deal with some of the issues around childbirth. I have talked about the vouchers that are available to help with nutrition and we have the Sure Start maternity grant, too, which is designed to help low to middle-income working families and out-of-work families to cover the one-off costs associated with having a new baby. There are measures out there, but, yes, they are restricted. The Sure Start maternity grant will apply to the first child—it is a grant of up to £500—but, of course, the problem is that the previous Government left us with a huge debt that we need to tackle and to pay back. If we put off these decisions, as the hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) would want us to, it would be the poor who would pay the most. It would be those children who would be saddled with the debt that the previous Government left hanging around their necks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was my first political foe when I was just 14 and he was leader of Vale Royal borough council. In the intervening 20 years, he has only got worse. That is a sad thing to have to say.

It is important that we remember why we are here today and what we are here to discuss. We are not here to discuss whether it is a good idea for families to save, or to encourage children to save. We are not here to discuss whether it is a good idea that pregnant women should enjoy good health during pregnancy. We are here to discuss whether the specific items of legislation introduced by the previous Government achieved their goals and warrant continuation.

The Labour Government had a fondness for introducing legislation willy-nilly, volume after volume of it. At no point did they ever feel a need to investigate whether their legislation achieved its goal. I have nothing against innovation in public policy. The work of think-tanks is important, and it is a disappointment to me that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), is not in his place today to defend his creation, as I know he felt such a passion for it at the time.

What we are here to do today is to decide whether specific items of legislation were effective—not whether they were popular, whether they made Labour Members feel good about themselves, or whether they excited think-tanks, interest groups, pressure groups or campaigners. The question is whether they achieved what they set out to achieve. We cannot have such a discussion without considering the wider economic issues. Every day we are spending £120 million just paying off the debt that we inherited from Labour. I could spend that money in my constituency alone 40 times over. I am sure every Member in the House could do so. We must place the debate in the wider economic context.

There are two important tests that we should apply to any legislation. I call them the Ronseal test and the rhododendron test. The Ronseal test, for those who watch commercial television, might be a bit obvious: does it do what it says on the tin? Any piece of legislation and its effectiveness must be assessed on whether it achieves its goal.

The rhododendron test might be a little more obscure. I often find when listening to those who represent the left in British politics that they identify totemic pieces of legislation that they consider vital and which become representative of a much wider public policy area. They go on to defend that legislation to the hilt, thereby ignoring every other aspect of public policy in that area that could make a difference, just as in a parkland, where rhododendron may look beautiful but it covers so much ground that it chokes off wider growth that might be beneficial.

If we apply those two tests to the child trust fund, for example, how do they stack up? Originally, the former Prime Minister called it the baby bond. It was meant to be a nest egg, a form of what was then in vogue—asset-based welfare. Unfortunately, the fund was not much of an asset by the time the child got to 18. The scheme certainly was not what the philosophers behind the idea of asset-based welfare had in mind. Others sought to define it as progressive universalism. We have a habit in this country of trying to adopt fancy-pants names for new ideas, philosophies and ways of looking at politics, and I am not entirely clear what progressive universalism actually means.

[Kate Green]

I shall be happy to explain to the hon. Gentleman what progressive universalism means in the context of the child trust fund. It means that all children receive something but the poorest receive more. In that way, we obtain the benefit of popular support for a policy that directs more money to those who need it most.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for what I presume she thought would be a helpful contribution for idiots like me. I shall read a useful quotation from the Child Poverty Action Group in 2005, which I believe the hon. Lady chaired at the time. It is a lengthy quotation on the group’s approach to the fund, but it bears repeating:

“Although the Child Trust Fund will benefit some lower income families, we are concerned that families who are at greatest risk of living in severe and persistent poverty are the least likely to be able to contribute to the CTF, so their children will derive little or no financial benefits when they turn 18.”

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

Forgive me, I shall not give way because I have not yet finished the quotation.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

Give way!

[Paul Maynard]

If the hon. Gentleman will calm down and let me finish the quotation, I shall happily give way. Learn some manners, sir, please.

The CPAG continued:

“The very children who would benefit most from having savings and assets are likely to derive least financial advantage from the scheme.”

I shall now give way to the hon. Lady.

[Kate Green]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It is true that the CPAG, of which I was chief executive at the time to which he refers, had some misgivings about the initial design of the child trust fund. Thanks to our lobbying, I like to think, the product was improved over time and the extra payments for low-income children were then introduced. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that that was rather a good development in a policy that is certainly still ripe for improvement, as he rightly says, but not for abolition?

[Paul Maynard]

Let us rejoin the theme of progressive universalism, which the hon. Lady so kindly and patronisingly explained to me. If the fund is so universal, why in the first four years did 25% of people not apply for it? To me, that is not universal; that is rather partial.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the research by Elaine Kempson of the university of Bristol on the increased take-up of the child trust fund? Three out of every five parents now take it up automatically, and the state picks up the rest.

[Paul Maynard]

Three quarters of those accounts opened since 2005 have failed to receive additional deposits; 99% have not received the maximum funding available; and only 71% of eligible children have a child trust fund. I am not trying to argue, as Opposition Members seem to think, that the fund is a failure; I am trying to argue a more subtle point, that this piece of legislation—this policy innovation—has not achieved its goal.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

I shall give way on this one occasion.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The child trust fund has not been in existence long enough truly to reap the benefits that it would if it were kept on. In respect of deposits, the fact is that when parents have young children, their outgoings are extremely high, but if the child trust fund is in place in the future, when they have more expendable outgoings, they are able to invest more money in it. So, an awful lot of parents who might not invest when the child is a baby might do so in a few years’ time when the child has gone to school and they are not paying for child care and so on.

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for those ifs and buts. We can all hope for what might happen at some point in the future.

The shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn, set out three reasons why Labour introduced the measure. It was about inculcating a savings culture, encouraging financial education and providing a nest egg. So, rather than assessing the measure against the legislation, let us try to assess it against what the shadow Minister said was important.

There is no evidence that the fund has encouraged a savings culture. Many organisations that promote financial education come to me time and again to ask, “Why didn’t the last Government do more to promote financial education, particularly at primary level?” In the average family, a piggy bank—

[Stella Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

Sorry, I am not going to give way any further. I have been very generous in giving way, but I am afraid that I am not a bus stop.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am sorry, but I am not giving way to you, madam, so kindly take notice of that.

Having a piggy bank—[Interruption.] I am going to make the point that having a piggy bank in one’s bedroom is a much greater spur to saving and learning about the culture of savings than any attempt to lock away money until the age of 18.

The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) in her Westminster Hall debate, have raised the issue of looked-after children and how we deal with them. It is a very important issue, but the Opposition should hang their head in shame at the outcomes that looked-after children obtain after 13 years of Labour rule. The points that those Members made were an example of what I call the rhododendron test. By focusing on the tiny issue of whether such children should continue to receive child trust fund payments, they overlook the much wider public policy issues. There are many other ways in which we can and do help looked-after children.

[Diana R. Johnson]

What? By cutting the child trust fund?

[Paul Maynard]

Sorry, but if you are going to make interventions, madam, please stand up.

[Diana R. Johnson]

I should like to make two points. First, before the election in May, the Tories voted against introducing personal, social and health education—including economic and financial education—and making it a statutory subject in all schools. So, the Tory party should hang its head in shame. Secondly, on looked-after children, what are they doing as a Government—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The intervention has gone on for far too long. The hon. Gentleman is making his points, but he must return to the issue at hand.

[Paul Maynard]

Thank you for that advice, Mr Deputy Speaker.

There are other ways in which we can and do help looked-after children. In particular, for example, there is a high correlation between looked-after children and poverty. That stands to reason, particularly in terms of their geographical location, but the pupil premium, which we announced recently, will go a long way to helping those children who are in education to make it as far as university in the first place. Finally, on the child trust fund, I welcome the notion of a children’s ISA. I hope that I hear about it in a future announcement or Budget.

I should now like to apply my two tests to the health in pregnancy grant. It is what it says it is: it is about health in pregnancy. The former Prime Minister, when Chancellor, introduced the policy, saying that the Government had received “powerful representations” regarding the importance of good nutrition during the final stages of pregnancy. The grant was clearly designed to promote health in pregnancy, but, when the measure was going through its Delegated Legislation Committee, the then Health Minister, the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), accepted that the bulk of health improvements occur when changes in behaviour occur earlier in pregnancy. Waiting until the seventh month is rather like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted; it certainly does not encourage a behavioural change.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

By that very logic, would it not therefore make sense for the hon. Gentleman’s party to propose an earlier payment of the grant?

[Paul Maynard]

I could well ask why you did not think of that when you introduced the scheme in the first place. It is a bit late now—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Everything has to come through the Chair. We have to work through the Chair and not be distracted as we have been.

[Paul Maynard]

Improvements in diet are important, but the waiting times for those applying for the health in pregnancy grant have been anything up to eight weeks, by which point the money that was supposed to transform their ability to access an improved diet is simply not appearing. It would be very easy to dismiss—

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am not going to give way now—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] No, I do not want to give way—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has given way quite a lot, and if he does not wish to give way now, hon. Members must accept it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

It would be very easy to dismiss health in pregnancy grants, as some Opposition Members seem to think that we are doing. I am not doing that. My constituency has significant pockets of poverty, and if Conservative seats were ranked in order of deprivation, mine would be somewhere near the top. I spent a fascinating Friday a couple of weeks ago with our family nurse partnership, a pilot project that is working with young mothers-to-be in the most deprived quartile of the population in the most deprived areas of the constituency. They receive intensive support from the moment they become pregnant to beyond the birth. It is a fantastic project and it costs £3,000 per mother. The project also works with the father. It addresses issues such as self-esteem, improving literacy and numeracy, helping the father to get back into work and ensuring that the father feels part of the birth.

To my mind, the project achieves far more than a £190 health in pregnancy grant. One might argue that it is a significantly greater amount of money, but I would argue that it represents a different approach to policy making. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is looking at early intervention on behalf of the Government and he is a strong supporter of the family nurse partnership. I think that it makes a much greater difference to outcomes if we have evidence-based policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) was correct to pursue the Opposition about the lack of medical evidence for improvements in the health of pregnant women—

[Catherine McKinnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Maynard]

No, and the quote that I heard from the hon. Lady did not pass the quality threshold for the British Medical Journal and nor was it ever likely to do so, coming as it did from a press release.

It is also worth bearing in mind that we give other targeted interventions for pregnant women that are designed to assist them. The Minister has referred already to the Sure Start payment and the healthy start payment, and the latter is specifically designed to support women who wish to improve their dietary health by purchasing fruit, vegetables, vitamins and other things that will assist them. Interventions must be properly targeted and not just handed out. It is all very well to oppose this measure, but not to do so by reference to generalities. These proposals have to be considered in the round, and those Opposition Members who may not like this proposal need to suggest what they would do instead and how they would seek to cut the deficit that they have left behind.

This Bill is the start of something new and radical. I am a great fan of Ronald Reagan, the former President of the United States—as we all should be. He always said that he lived on the sunrise side of the mountain and I always try to do so too. Although my glass is often half empty, when I consider things I try to take an optimistic view, and I consider this to be an important measure. It says that—unlike the previous Administration —no longer will we pass legislation year after year without bothering to ascertain whether it achieves its purpose. We will pass legislation based on the evidence of whether what has gone before has worked and whether it assists in meeting the wider challenges of public policy that we face—both economic and social. I urge the House to support this Bill, not just because it will assist us in reducing the deficit, but because it introduces the concept of evidence-based, high-quality public policy making, and that is sorely needed in this country today.