Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

First, the selection of evidence we have heard from the Committee sittings is very limited, particularly from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming). Other people giving evidence explained exactly how helpful the saving gateway scheme had been in its pilot phases and could be in the future. Mark Lyonette of the credit union movement said how important saving was not only because of the money actually saved, but because of"““what it does to people's confidence that they have… a few hundred pounds built up over a year or two. It gives them some sense that they are more in control. They will have credit commitments ""at the same time, but it is really important to feel that there is something of a buffer. Whether through the savings gateway or some other initiative, we think that the Government can encourage—and needs to encourage—more people to get that better balance between what savings they have, however small, and their credit.””––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 49, Q143.]" Yes, he also said that the saving gateway was not the only way to generate savings for the credit unions, but when asked whether it would make an important contribution he said ““Yes, absolutely””, it would. I did not quite understand the rhododendrons reference of the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), but he seemed to suggest that we believed that a scheme like this was ““the answer”” to deprivation and poverty. That is obviously nonsense. We are not suggesting that and we never have suggested it. It is one part of a whole jigsaw of provision that has to be put in place. It is that part of the jigsaw that needs to look forward to two things: first, questions of asset inequality; and, secondly, long-term solutions where people begin to change their behaviour and build up some assets for themselves. It is important that we start looking to the long term. What worries me about the response from the coalition Government to this Bill is that it is very short term. The response is in effect, ““Let's get rid of this now. We'll make some savings. We'll destroy some schemes.”” Both this group and the earlier group of amendments are about looking at issues in the longer term. If we do not start doing that, we are never going to get to the point where we properly tackle poverty and deprivation. It is not that saving gateways are suddenly the answer to everything; they are simply one mechanism that would assist in tackling the problem. The important part of assisting is not just to give people advice. There is a great deal of advice out there, and there needs to be more of it—I certainly would not disagree with that—but this scheme, because of the matching in it, is about giving people practical help and incentives. It is qualitatively different from giving people advice at school or through an annual health check on their finances, when they can tell the financial adviser that there is no money. That would not be particularly fruitful for a lot of families. This is a practical scheme. It is about matching saving; it is about incentivising saving.