Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to pass comment on the Opposition's continued attempts to retain child trust funds. I am struck, in particular, by the nature of their opposition: rather than concentrating on the effectiveness or otherwise of child trust funds as savings vehicles, they appear to have reduced their argument to one about generic usefulness. There seems to be a growing objection to abolishing child trust funds, because somehow the Opposition have inadequate confidence in the junior ISAs or child ISAs that are due to replace them. That is particularly concerning. I remind those Members who sat on the Public Bill Committee with me, and inform those who did not, of a quote from the director general of the Building Societies Association, Mr Adrian Coles, who said:"““let us not pretend that we need to rely on the Government or the public sector to do all of this. The 49 building societies and other mutuals offer about 100 children's savings accounts in the free market, which have been pretty successful over the years””.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 26, Q67.]" I know that in Committee concerns were expressed that the customers who take out ISAs might be the more affluent or the more elderly. It was made clear at the time that 12 million people on incomes under £20,000 have ISAs, and that 40% of them are under the age of 44, compared with just 20% who are over the age of 64, so any concerns that younger families are not sharing in ISAs are unfounded. I was particularly concerned when I heard continued doubts about the ability of families on lower incomes to cope with the financial complexity of an ISA. We need to trust people. A great deal of work is going into financial education—an increasing amount. It is a trend initiated by the previous Government, and I congratulate them on that. We are building on it, so we can have confidence in ISAs as a potential future savings vehicle. Another reason for opposing the abolition of the child trust fund was the impact that that could have on the needs of families with disabled children. I was shocked by one of the statements by the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), when he said that"““the proposal for providing 8,000 week-long respite breaks each year for disabled children in England . . . trivialises the nature of the child trust fund””.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 9 November 2010; c. 228.]" I found that a disquieting comment. I do not regard respite breaks for children as trivial in any way, shape or form.