I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin) for securing this debate. I agree with everything he said. I hope there can be cross-party agreement today that we need to move forward at long last.
I also pay tribute to Andrew Turner and his family—particularly his son, Mikey—for the work they have done, but I am sure Mr Turner will agree that others have played a big role, including lawyers such as Philip Warford, journalists such as Jessie Hewitson, and Martin Lewis. Financial service companies have shown leadership, and Contact, other charities and families, many of whom are here, have campaigned. Their voices have come together, and I hope that the Ministry of Justice will listen.
I should declare an interest: I have a 16-year-old son, John, who has an undiagnosed neurological problem that means he cannot really walk by himself or talk, and has serious learning disabilities. He will never be able to manage his own personal affairs, let alone financial affairs. Although my wife and I, and many wonderful professionals, work to give him as much independence as possible, there is no way, when he reaches the age of 18, that he will be able to get the money from his child trust fund. I declare an interest, but I hope I have an insight into the issues that families face and the problems they have as carers. Just looking after their children on a day-to-day basis can be quite enough, without having to worry about lots of bureaucratic forms and having to go to the court of protection.
I have been involved in this debate for some time. I met Mr Turner in 2020, and I asked a question at Prime Minister’s questions on 21 October 2020. The then Prime Minister said:
“I will do whatever I can to help”—[Official Report, 21 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 1058.]
He made that promise nearly four years ago, and we are still here. Hopefully we can do a bit better today.
After that, I met the right hon. and learned Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who was then doing the current Minister’s job but is now Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice. I think I met him three times, and we discussed all the options. We have seen the work that has been done—the waivers, the so-called simplification of the forms, the digitisation—in an attempt to make this work. Sometimes, particularly when the Ministry of Justice proposed a consultation on the small payments scheme, I supported it. I did not think it was the best solution, but I was trying to be constructive, so I went along with it to try to make it work.
However, I am afraid that all the efforts have failed, demonstratively, by the statistics that the right hon. Member for Horsham and many others have shown. To date, the Ministry of Justice has utterly failed to solve the problem, so we need action. We cannot wait much longer. The number of young people and their families, and the amount of money, will just build up over time. The problem will not go away, unless one Minister—I am sure it will be the Minister present today—actually grasps it properly.
I set out initially believing that the DWP appointee scheme was the right one. Families are aware of it, and it has worked in Government and for much larger funds. The amount of money that a loved one gets through their disability living allowance or personal independence payment far outweighs the average amount from a child trust fund, but apparently it is not possible to use that scheme because of the difference between flows of money from DWP and savings and capital. For the life of me, I have never quite understood that distinction, but perhaps there is something in it. I will come on to what I think is behind the Ministry of Justice’s objections.
In the spirit of being constructive, two solutions seem to be on the table. One is the proposal for a new, one-off order solution, which the right hon. Member for Horsham talked about. A family would still have to fill in a form, but it would be a one-pager. They would still have to go the Court of Protection, but it would be a very simple process. I think it has been well thought through by campaigners, and different fund managers have been involved. I believe that Mr Turner wrote to the Ministry of Justice before Christmas. Unfortunately, he received an email from an official in December 2023, which stated that
“we are not able to consider any proposals for an alternative process for accessing CTFs at this time.”
That is not good enough, Minister. People are working hard to come forward with practical solutions within the remit of the Ministry of Justice, and officials are not even willing to see people who are trying to be constructive.
I think that the one-off order solution would work. The Minister might not be able to answer today, but I would like to ask him: would it require a change to primary or secondary legislation to get that solution working, or would the registrar of the Court of Protection simply have to change the administrative rules? It is probably as simple as that, and it would suddenly unlock the problem both for child trust funds and junior ISAs. That is one solution, which the MOJ would be in control of.
The right hon. Member for Horsham touched on another solution: working through the financial service companies, which have shown huge flexibility and taken risk upon themselves. That would not be an MOJ responsibility; I think the MOJ would have to talk to the Treasury. I think the Government have landed this problem in the lap of the MOJ and said, “You sort it out.” If the Minister went to the Chancellor or another Treasury Minister and said, “Look, we want you to say this, and we are happy for you to say it,” all the Treasury Minister would have to say is, “We are relaxed about fund managers of child trust funds or junior ISAs taking that approach, taking the risk upon themselves if anyone objects, and marketing, giving information and promoting the idea that people with DWP appointee
status can use the funds and transact them on behalf of their loved one.” That would be what we might call a market solution, but from my insight into how government works, that would require the MOJ to give the green light to the Treasury to make that statement.
Those are two simple, zero-cost solutions to allow vulnerable people to get their own money. After four years of trying, I urge the Minister to wake up and smell the coffee. Why might the MOJ object? I will put myself in his shoes and the shoes of the officials to work out what on earth is going on. The first issue might be the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Court of Protection and their underlying principles. When officials and Departments have jurisdiction over an Act of Parliament, they can get jealous about how it has worked and not want to see any change. I get that—we have been there. However, democratically elected politicians must challenge the principle behind the Act, to test whether it has been taken too far, because in law there are other principles that apply, including proportionality and reasonableness. Surely those principles apply here. We are talking about small amounts of money for very vulnerable people whose parents and carers ain’t got the time to go to court. They may phone up one person and ask, “Can you help me?” but if the financial service company or the court says, “Well, it is a bit complicated,” they just give up, because their young person is in pain, needs medical help and needs to go to the hospital. That is the reality of their lives.