Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

As I was saying—[Hon. Members: ““Shame!””] Members on both sides of the House want to speak in the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have been generous in giving way and I want to continue with my remarks. Through the schools pupil premium, which will be worth £2.5 billion by 2014-15, as well as by extending the provision of 15 hours a week of early-years education and care to all disadvantaged two-year-olds from 2012-13, and by maintaining funding for Sure Start in cash terms, we will provide real opportunities for disadvantaged children to move out of poverty for the long-term. We will also use some of the savings from withdrawing child benefit from families with a higher-rate taxpayer to fund significant above-indexation increases in the child tax credit, thereby ensuring that the spending review will have no measurable impact on child poverty in the next two years. Some people say that stopping Government payments to child trust funds is not fair to children, but there would be nothing fair about leaving the next generation with unsustainable debts that would mean higher taxes and poorer public services. We can fund our priorities at the same time as reducing the deficit only if we find savings elsewhere and this Bill will contribute to that. As I have said, it will end eligibility for child trust funds, repeal legislation on the saving gateway and abolish the health in pregnancy grant. These were not easy choices to make, but they were the right choices. We simply cannot afford the luxury of spending half a billion pounds a year on the child trust fund when that money is not available to people for 18 years. We simply cannot afford to introduce a new scheme like the saving gateway as we start to tackle the most challenging fiscal position for decades and we simply cannot afford to keep spending £150 million a year on the untargeted, unfocused health in pregnancy grant. The tough choices that we have made on those policies will save £370 million this year, about £700 million next year and about £800 million each year from then on. That means £800 million less in spending cuts, tax rises or borrowing, as we would have had to find that money from somewhere else. This is a timely debate as it comes on the day that a leaked Labour document acknowledges the lack of substance in Labour's economic plans. If the Opposition oppose the Bill tonight, they will have to explain how they would plug the gap. If they do not, that will be further proof that their plans lack substance. We have made our choices and they have to make theirs. The Bill puts those choices into action and I commend it to the House.