Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak about the health in pregnancy grant, which of the three items covered by the Bill caused the most consternation in Committee and on the Opposition Benches. It certainly appeared to cause confusion in the Opposition's arguments. I noted even today that there has been a slow, gradual erosion in the totalitarian position taken early on by the Opposition that the health in pregnancy grant was the most wonderful thing imaginable and could not possibly be trampled on. There has been a gradual slip back and quite a few Opposition Members have claimed that the grant was somehow misnamed and that, had they only called it something different, it would have all been all right. I must take them back to what the previous Prime Minister said when the grant was introduced. He said that he had received ““powerful representations”” about the"““importance of a healthy diet in the final weeks of pregnancy””." He was very specific. He said the ““final weeks of pregnancy””—not early in pregnancy, halfway through, in the 12th week, in the first week, or in the 25th week. The grant was well named, because it did precisely what the previous Prime Minister intended it to do. The debate is not about the benefits of maternal nutrition, either. Everybody in the House agrees about the importance of proper maternal nutrition, but, clearly, we are divided on how that is best achieved. The Government do not believe that the health in pregnancy grant is the way to do it. The debate is certainly not about timing. We have a range of alternatives: the Healthy Start vouchers; the maternity grant; and the Sure Start facilities. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) focused in particular on access to health care advice. I entirely agree with her about that, but she cannot avoid the fact that the Healthy Start vouchers are linked to attendance with a midwife. Furthermore, the idea of the health in pregnancy grant was to provide access to health visitors, but one of the previous Government's innovations of which I wholeheartedly approve and wish to build on is the family nurse partnership schemes that operate in about 50 different councils. They specifically offer the access to advice for the most vulnerable that the hon. Lady was talking about. I simply do not understand her obsession with the health in pregnancy grant as the sole mechanism through which we can access advice. There are already multiple pathways to that advice—pathways that are more successful. I even think that there is a family nurse partnership in Bristol. Such schemes target the most vulnerable in society from the moment of conception until well past birth. It is far more expensive, I accept, but that is because it is a targeted intervention. I do not accept the hon. Lady's argument that we need to retain the health in pregnancy grant because it gives access to health advice. It is not the sole pathway for that.