Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). Unsurprisingly, I shall speak against the Bill. As mentioned earlier, the Bill contains three main provisions: the abolition of the £190 health in pregnancy grant and the phasing out of the child trust fund and the saving gateway provisions.

The £190 pregnancy grant should be uncontroversial in its effect. It is a simple measure to ensure that, at this important time of their lives, women who face a huge physiological upheaval in their bodies as they nurture a new life, receive this additional money. They need it. We become deficient in many things—calcium and iron, to name but two—and this simple grant enables women to put back these vital foods to enable the proper growth of their unborn child and to ensure that they remain healthy when their baby is born. I have heard many Government Members, mostly men, say that we do not require decent food throughout the nine months, but in fact we do, because soon after that we have to feed growing children. The provision can be seen as an attack on women at their most vulnerable. As if that was not enough, the attack is on children as well.

By all accounts, the child trust fund has been a successful savings scheme, and I believe it will teach children to be fiscally responsible. The beauty of it is that every child, irrespective of the circumstances of their birth, has a trust fund. The facts are these: £2 billion is held in child trust fund accounts; 74% of parents have opened an account—sadly, in my constituency, the figure is down to 64%—and almost £470 million is paid in by grandparents. No one can touch that money except the beneficiaries, when they are 18. The money is there for them whatever their circumstances—whether they are looked-after children, the children of two-parent families, or the children of single parents—and no stigma is attached. It is not, as the Deputy Prime Minister said in 2009, a few hundred pounds in the hands of 18-year-olds; it is a solid account of savings over 18 years.

We want our children to grow up to be independent, fiscally aware and responsible. How much does the child trust fund cost? The answer is £524 million. In contrast, during four months in 2009, £2.3 billion was levied through the one-off tax on bankers’ bonuses. The new levy coming into effect will raise £2.5 billion. As the slogan goes, Mr Speaker, you do the maths.

Above all, the child trust fund fosters a savings culture in which children know that something has been put aside for them. In my view, that will make them better citizens. To paraphrase a slogan that is used, we can say to them, “This is what the state has done for you. What can you do for the state?”

My biggest concern is that the proposal was not put before the electorate, and the people did not have a say. Our children are our future. Let us give them a future, for the good of the country. I urge all hon. Members to vote against the Bill.