Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

I wish to speak in the debate tonight because of my deep concern that these proposals will ensure a bleaker future for many young people and their families in our country. In particular, I am deeply concerned that cutting the measures that promote savings and financial stability for many of the poorest families in our society saves comparatively little for the public purse but will have a massive long-term impact on social mobility. I want to make my remarks in three stages: first, my concern that we need to do more to help families to manage their finances and plan for the future, which measures such as the saving gateway and the child trust fund help support; secondly, the evidence that those products were achieving the aims that they set out to achieve; and, finally, the wider social consequences of failing to support action on social mobility. Members may know of my concerns about affordable credit and the financial hardships of many of the families in my local community. My concern that the Government should act to support measures that will help to tackle the causes of debt and improve access to affordable credit are expressed in the ten-minute Bill that I will table in the House next week. I fear that the forthcoming cuts to public services, which have already impacted on the incomes of families in Walthamstow, will make such problems worse, given the high number of local residents who work in the public sector. To give some flavour of the financial planning problems that families in areas such as mine are facing, I want to refer to a survey recently undertaken by the Children's Mutual society on the impact of the credit crunch on family finances. It found that one in four families in this country claim their household income is not enough to pay their bills each month. Given many people's fears about redundancy and the impact of the cuts that the Government plan to their livelihoods, it will not surprise many Opposition Members to learn that one in 10 families fear that the main breadwinner will be made redundant in the next six months. Three quarters of them have debts in the shape of credit cards, loans and overdrafts, and a quarter of them have borrowed money from their parents in the past year. Without intervention, those cycles of debt will continue and deepen as these cuts bite. Helping parents to plan for the financial future of their families is not just about a stable economic platform in Britain, but about the quality of life itself. Some 29% of British families admit that they are already arguing over their family's finances. A third of parents are suffering from sleepless nights because they are worried about money. There is therefore a deep irony that the Chancellor makes comparisons between household debt and national debt, and then scraps the measures that help to address the former in the name of addressing the latter. Thinking of the future when the present is so fragile is tough at the best of times for such families. Taking away the mechanisms by which the Government can help them indeed makes the worst of times, but that is exactly what the Government are doing with the Bill to families such as those in Walthamstow whom I represent. Abolishing the child trust fund and the savings gateway will do nothing to secure the culture that the Chancellor said he wished to see in this country just 18 months ago in a speech to Reform about a nation that supports savers. He is not the only member of the Government who wanted to support a savings culture in the UK; even after the election, when we know that many pledges have been broken, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury argued that the Government"““is committed to curbing unsustainable lending and helping individuals manage their finances better””." Those are laudable aims. They are aims that I share and that also motivate my ten-minute Bill, but that is why I find this legislation all the more heartbreaking: it stops in their track programmes that we know have a proven track record in improving savings for some of the poorest families in our nation, including many in my own constituency of Walthamstow.