Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

The hon. Lady has not participated in the debate today, but we have thought carefully about how to provide support during pregnancy to those on low incomes. There are vouchers under the Healthy Start scheme, and the Sure Start maternity grant, which we believe are more effective in providing targeted, better-timed and more-focused support to expectant mothers. There is a choice. We could spend £120 million on the health in pregnancy scheme or we could scrap it and save the money so that we do not have to increase taxes or borrow so much. The latter is the right action to tackle the deficit. There are better ways to support maternal health, such as the Healthy Start scheme, which provides vouchers to enable pregnant women to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. The Department of Health is consulting on whether to extend that to plain frozen fruit and vegetables. Vouchers are also available for vitamin supplements, including folic acid, to provide a daily dose of vitamins B and C. The Healthy Start scheme is effectively targeted at pregnant women and children living in low-income households, and is focused on supporting health and well-being, because it pays support in the form of vouchers rather than in cash. It is delivered at the earliest stage of pregnancy when dietary intervention is much more effective. That means that we can focus our resources better, but at the same time make some real savings—about £150 million a year. That is a vital contribution to tackling the deficit and ensuring that people are not burdened with the debt that we inherited from the previous Government. That is the key point of the Bill. The changes that we are making to child trust funds, the decision not to introduce the saving gateway and the abolition of the health in pregnancy grant will save more than £3 billion over the spending review period. That is an important part of our plan to reduce the deficit and put our finances back on a stable footing. As I said, this has involved some tough choices, but I believe that we have made the right ones. We found areas of spending, such as the child trust fund, which does not support people for up to 18 years, the saving gateway, which has not yet been introduced, so its removal will be less directly felt, and the health in pregnancy grant, which is untargeted and unfocused. We have confronted the questions, which I outlined earlier, of whether we could really afford to continue with those policies and whether they would represent the best use of taxpayers' limited resources. The questions for anyone who wants to oppose this Bill and to continue with the policies are how they would find the money and what they would do instead. This is an important Bill. It is part of our work to tackle the unprecedented deficits that we inherited, and it will help us to put our public finances back in order. I commend it to the House.