Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Representing, as I do, a constituency in Northern Ireland where there is considerable dependency on benefit and high levels of deprivation in urban areas, I am particularly opposed, as are my colleagues in the Social Democratic and Labour party, to the abolition of the child trust fund, the saving gateway account and the health in pregnancy grant. We are therefore opposed to the Bill. The current Government seem to think, as the Minister has shown, that the child trust fund, the saving gateway account and the health in pregnancy grant would contribute to deepening the deficit and are therefore unaffordable. It is extremely unfair that the disadvantaged and vulnerable should be penalised when efforts should be made to help to support them, and I find it shameful and unacceptable. As a former Minister in Northern Ireland, I, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), have been responsible for the Department for Social Development and, therefore, for social security benefits, community development and housing. I note, with some alarm, that Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive have not been consulted or asked for their opinion of the Bill's content or its possible impact on the most disadvantaged and their communities. It is worth noting that 36 neighbourhood renewal areas in Northern Ireland are defined statistically by the Noble statistics on deprivation as having acute levels of poverty. The withdrawal of these funds, combined with the coming changes to the benefit system, will simply deepen poverty levels and plunge people into further depths of despair. The measures might push people who are already suffering undue financial burdens into the arms of loan sharks and, in certain parts of Northern Ireland, they could enable those with paramilitary control to have a tighter grip on people. But no cognisance has been taken of any of that and there has been no consultation. The Government should step back from the brink and avoid implementing the measures. They should think of Northern Ireland as a place that is coming out of the legacy of conflict. We are trying to mitigate the influence of poverty and conflict and we are trying to underpin devolutionary arrangements. I ask the Government to please abandon the Bill tonight; we will be voting against it.