I thank the Minister for clarifying that point, but I think that some people would struggle to save even £5 a month, let alone £50.
Let me go back to the point I was trying to make about Labour’s scheme. We did introduce a similar scheme, but it is important to note that we had not spent the previous six years eroding the disposable income of the people whom it targeted. Help to save might well look good on paper in terms of helping those on low incomes to save, but I must warn the Minister that, given the long-term effect of Government cuts and wider austerity measures, it will not have the desired impact in many cases. The cuts the Government are making to universal credit alone will cost 2.5 million families up to £1,600 a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Where will these families find even £1 a month, or up to £50 a month, to put into this savings scheme?
It appears that the Government are not expecting the measure to put rocket boosters, as it were, under savings by those on low incomes. Their costing for the policy is £70 million in 2020-21. Some 3.5 million people will be eligible for the scheme, so if my and the IFS’s calculations are correct, that works out as a Government bonus of £20 per eligible individual in 2020-21.
I was very excited to read the Government’s impact assessment in the past few hours. However, the Minister should note that it arrived at only 1 pm today, and while I am pleased that it arrived at all, she will appreciate that it is really not acceptable to provide such information at the 11th hour if the Government wish to be transparent and capable of being effectively held to account. None the less, I was interested to see that the Government’s expected take-up rate was 500,000 people in the first two years. I will be grateful if she will explain the rationale behind that figure. For example, are specific groups more likely to save than others?