Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

I shall speak strongly in support of amendments 51 and 52, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has tabled. As he says, Members from all parties share a deep concern about the continuing very poor outcomes that we, as corporate parents, deliver for children in the care of the state. Those children suffer difficult childhoods, often arriving in care in traumatic and traumatising circumstances. They are therefore significantly unsettled and disadvantaged in their childhoods, and that disadvantage continues, to our shame, into their adult lives. Such children all too often achieve poorer outcomes in education and health; in adult life they are less likely to move into sustainable employment or further or higher education; and they are more at risk of poverty. I know all hon. Members feel deeply that that is wrong, so I shall speak strongly in support of my right hon. Friend's amendments, because they open-mindedly ask us to address that endemic disadvantage. If Opposition Members are offered assurances that other financial instruments can meet those concerns, we will of course consider them, but we are clear about what those alternative instruments must deliver if they are to receive our approval tonight. They must deliver some of the advantages that the child trust fund was able to deliver for looked-after children—advantages that sought to some degree to adjust and compensate for the disadvantages that such children face as they embark on adult life. The first important thing about a payment mechanism specifically designated to meet the needs of looked-after children is that it represents a signal from us as a community that we care about such children—that they are valued, and as precious as any child living with his or her family is to his or her parents. Too often, looked-after children feel that our society does not value or recognise them and that nobody has an interest in them, so a financial contribution to a savings fund for them is one of a number of steps that we can take to show that those children and their futures are important and matter to us all. The child trust fund, in its design, also delivered much more hard-edged benefits to looked-after children. As Members have said, it put extra money aside for children through double payments, and in responding to my right hon. Friend's questions it is important that the Minister address how we ensure that those children do not suffer further financial disadvantage and inequality in adulthood by embarking on adult life with a significantly smaller asset than many other children. Adjusting wealth and asset inequality was one of the intended bonuses of the child trust fund—one that was particularly important for looked-after children and one that I hope the Minister will address. My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out that the fund sought to meet costs at a time of transition, and reaching 18 is a particularly difficult time for children leaving care, because we throw them at the mercy of adult life as no familial parent would with her or his child. No mum or dad would throw their child out of the family home without so much as a kettle or an offer to underwrite the gas bill if they struggle as they set up home, but that is what we do to too many children who leave the state's care. By providing those children with a financial asset, the child trust fund helped to smooth some of the extra costs that they faced at transition points, with which no other family member might have been available to help them. The fund therefore enabled those young people to embark on their adult life with the confidence, certainty and stability that other young people often draw from family support. I hope the Minister will reassure me that any alternative financial model will replicate two other in-built advantages of the fund, one of which is the product's relative simplicity. It was fairly clear what sums were going in, and it was fairly clear when they could be drawn out. Junior ISAs might offer more flexibility and allow more contributions and different points of withdrawal, and that might bring some advantages, but we must not set up a product that is too complex for corporate parents and others who might wish to donate to the funds of looked-after children to access readily and save within. I look forward, therefore, to the Minister's assurances about how the product will prove accessible to anyone who wishes to save for a looked-after child or young person, and in particular how a corporate parent will be able, without unnecessary bureaucracy and expense, to make contributions for children in their care. Right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned how the child trust fund offered consistency throughout the country, between local authorities and in all four parts of the United Kingdom, ensuring that every looked-after child left care with the same opportunity of an asset with which to start adult life. Can the Minister assure us that the alternative mechanisms and products that he might bring forward will deliver such consistency? We do not need to perpetrate inequalities among children leaving care as we do between children leaving care and other young people as they start out on adult life. My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield rightly pointed out that the junior ISA offers little that is intrinsically attractive to savers who do not benefit from a tax break. By definition, that includes corporate savers who invest for the future of children leaving care. I very much want to hear how the Minister will at least incentivise, more than that exhort, and—preferably—insist that corporate parents save adequately and equally for every child who falls within their care. If those assurances are forthcoming this evening, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, I will be able to look again at his amendments. If we do not receive satisfactory assurances, however, every young person and every child who has been in care will expect the House to support the amendments, and I for one certainly will.