Unemployment (North-east)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) on securing this important debate. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) on being hauled in to answer it. Having heard the speeches that my hon. Friends and, indeed, Lib Dem Members have made, I can well understand why the Minister responsible for employment has chosen to leave the country rather than answer the debate.

There has been some effort today to derive optimism from the unemployment figures, but the fact is that according to the figures published today, the claimant count nationally and the number of people who are long-term unemployed have gone up. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) rightly made those particularly important points. The number of people working part-time who want to work full-time is at a record level—it has never been as high as the number announced today. Youth unemployment remains above 1 million, and, as we were reminded, unemployment in the north-east has risen.

There are not many grounds for optimism in today’s figures, except that they are slightly less bad than the figures we have seen in the past few months. I am afraid the picture will not change until the Government’s economic policies change and they think again about the strategy that they have been pursuing, which has choked off demand, crushed confidence and sent us into a double-dip recession. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool set out Labour’s alternative plan, and there is growing recognition—not in the Government yet, but certainly elsewhere—that we need to change course if we are to change the bleak picture of unemployment that we have heard about this afternoon.

In 1999, the unemployment rate in the north-east had risen to more than 10%, but successful initiatives reduced it to 6% in January 2008, before the global financial crisis hit. After the election, we were told by the Government that their policies would renew private sector confidence and that aggressively tackling the deficit would cause a surge in confidence, investments and new jobs. Instead, since the election confidence has collapsed and the number of unemployed in the north-east has risen by almost a quarter to 145,000. The unemployment rate is now 11.3%, including an increase of 0.5% in the past three months alone.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being here for the beginning of the debate, but I was in the meeting with the Dalai Lama, which was an excellent experience.

According to National Audit Office figures, the number of young people in my constituency who have been unemployed for over a year has gone up by 950% since last year. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) looks confused, but the number has gone up from 20 to 210 in a year. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that that shows how damaging the double-dip recession created in Downing street is and why we need action from Ministers to create jobs and growth in the north-east?

[Stephen Timms]

Yes, I agree completely. It is long-term youth unemployment that will have the most damaging long-term effects on the economy. We know from the last time we had a lost generation how damaging it is for the life chances of the individuals affected, and now we see it happening again. We need a change of policy and a change of course to avoid the frightening figures on the rate of growth of long-term youth unemployment to which my hon. Friend draws attention.

I imagine that the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire will tell us about the Work programme and present it to us as the panacea for the problems. It struck me that the Work programme did not get a mention in either of the speeches from coalition Back Benchers, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). I suspect that that reflects the reality of the Work programme’s impact.

The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire will not be able to tell us a great deal about the Work programme, because it is a secret. Members who have been to see the Work programme prime providers in the north-east, Avanta and Ingeus, will have found out from them that they are not allowed to provide any data at all on how they are getting on—no data or numbers about their performance. The Minister responsible for employment, who we understand has left the country, imposed a contractual ban on the publication of any data on the Work programme. He said in January, under pressure in the Chamber, that he would lift the ban and would in future allow prime providers to publish some data about their own performance, as of course they all used to do—under the flexible new deal, they published the numbers on how they were doing, because they wanted to compare how they and others were getting on.

Since then, however, the Minister of State has got cold feet, so the ban remains in place. One is bound to ask: what exactly are Ministers trying to hide? Why do they not want anybody to know what is going on in the Work programme? One consequence is that Jobcentre Plus managers do not know what is going on. If one speaks to one’s Jobcentre Plus district manager, one finds that they do not have a clue what is happening in the Work programme. Nobody has told them how many people have got jobs through it. We understand that Ministers want to avoid potentially embarrassing questions being put to them, but the consequence of the ban has been a destruction of the trust on which such initiatives depend, and a reduction in performance.

We have managed to glean very limited data from the providers’ trade association, the Employment Related Services Association, and it is no surprise that the numbers suggest that the Work programme is performing no better than the flexible new deal that went before it. That is after the Government spent more than £60 million buying out all the flexible new deal contracts to introduce it. They had not tried their programme out anywhere; they just launched into it in June last year, with no piloting or testing at all. We have seen a very disappointing performance, which we will eventually get some figures on, but we should have heard about it long before now.

Youth unemployment has been an important feature of the debate. The Government’s answer to the problem has been the youth contract, but that is smaller than the future jobs fund, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool referred, and is dependent on take-up. Given the effect on regions that suffer particularly high unemployment, I again ask the Government to reconsider their decision to put all the funding into a national pot, available on a first-come, first-served basis to those Work programme providers that ask for it. If a Work programme prime provider in an area with relatively low unemployment sees a way of getting a subsidy to push a young person who might have found a job in that area anyway into a subsidised role, it can do so, but that will be done at the expense of young people in areas such as the north-east, for whom the case for support is much stronger. Work programme providers agree. It would make much more sense to ring-fence the available youth contract funding, to ensure that it is used where it is needed, rather than squandered elsewhere.

As we have heard, we need a more active industrial strategy. That is key to reducing the problem of unemployment in the north-east. I very much agree with the tributes paid to One North East, which co-ordinated such an industrial strategy before the election. We see the benefits of it now in the announcements, which hon. Members have mentioned, on the car industry, the progress with electric vehicles and so on. That is all being lost. The RDA was scrapped in favour of the fragmented, piecemeal local enterprise partnership.

It was pleasing to hear the hon. Member for Redcar say something positive about the regional growth fund—a rare event indeed. The NAO pointed out that so far under the regional growth fund, the cost per job is more than it was with the RDAs. The whole point of the changes was supposed to be to save money; it is not working. The regional growth fund is proving to be very expensive. It is ironic that the Government accused the RDAs of being too centralised and bureaucratic, but have replaced them with one fragmented and divided scheme that does not have enough clout and another run from Whitehall, and not run very well at that.

We heard about the proposed move to regional pay bargaining, and will discuss it in on the Floor of the House this afternoon. It will certainly threaten the economy of the north-east. There have been hints of a U-turn here, and the people of the north-east would very much welcome that, if it were to be the outcome.

We need a change of course on economic policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool set out a compelling five-point plan. We need the problems in the Work programme sorted out—frankly, we need some daylight in the Work programme. It has been secretive so far and has had a blanket thrown over it. My fear is that we will not get those changes from the Government; we need a different Government to make the changes required.

Child Benefit

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) on securing this important debate and on her excellent speech. If the Minister was not already worried, he should be by now because, as anyone familiar with my hon. Friend knows, she is a tireless campaigner for her constituents and against injustice generally. I am sure that this debate will not be the last we hear from her on this issue.

I am also pleased to follow the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who gave an excellent speech. It is great to see him on the right side, even if he was not on for the poll tax. That shows that with age comes wisdom; I am pleased that the wisdom of his longevity has brought him to the right side on this issue.

We are discussing a complete mess, created by the omnishambles of a Budget, that has been allowed by Ministers to carry on for way too long. If we were being generous, we might suggest that the idea had been sitting on Whitehall shelves for some years, repeatedly pitched by numerous Sir Humphreys and batted away by successive Ministers until a particularly out-of-touch set of Ministers was easily convinced. Once the idea was out there, those same Ministers were too afraid to perform yet another 180° U-turn, so they turned only 150° instead. That would be the scenario if we were being kind.

If we were being less generous, we might wonder whether those out-of-touch Ministers were driving the idea through themselves, despite officials briefing them fully on how ludicrously complex it would be to implement and on the unfairness it would create. Perhaps the Minister will tell us which of those scenarios is the more accurate.

Either way, the high-income child benefit charge—that is what it is called—is a ridiculously complicated idea that fails the basic test of fairness. It is ridiculously complicated because the proposal is to introduce a tax in January 2013 that will not be collected until the following financial year, meaning an affected family with three children will be landed with a bill of more than £600 in additional tax during that following tax year.

If the Government are so determined to drive the charge through, why can they not at least marry up its introduction with the start of collection? The situation is ridiculously complicated; the charge will create hundreds of thousands of new self-assessed taxpayers while HMRC centres around the country, including some in my area, are being thinned out or closed entirely. Can the Minister tell us how many more staff HMRC will need to cope effectively with the increased flurry of returns over the Christmas and new year period as a result of the change? The charge is ridiculously complicated because it seeks to claw back tax from individuals for a benefit paid to other individuals who are separate in the eyes of the taxman, leaving the system open to both fraud and genuine errors.

Worse than all those complications is the fact that the measure fails the test of fairness because, for hundreds of thousands of families, it will take away a benefit that is supposed to be universal, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham; when the benefit was brought in by Eleanor Rathbone, the principle was that it should be universal.

The evidence shows overwhelmingly that the benefit is used to meet the costs of looking after children, such as ensuring that they are well fed and have the clothes and uniforms that they need for school and the bus fare that they need to get there. Such things apply to all families. The charge fails the test of fairness because it will penalise children in single-earner families, as we heard from the hon. Member for Christchurch, while many in double-earner families who are much better off will continue to receive the benefit. It fails the test of fairness because it is yet another policy from this Tory-led Government, whose leader claimed he wanted to create the most family-friendly Government in history, that will directly hurt children and families. Among many other changes, the policy comes on top of huge cuts to Sure Start and early-years provision, the scrapping of extended free school meal eligibility and child trust funds, and a hike in VAT.

In addition, the proposed measure will take even more money out of our local economies when demand for goods and services is at rock bottom. The Treasury aims to claw back £1.5 billion from 1.2 million households, or an average of more than £1,200 from every family affected, just in the first year, with more families becoming liable as incomes creep up and the threshold remains static. That is £1.5 billion a year that will not be being spent in local shops and businesses on our struggling high streets.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend’s figures are useful, but apparently the vast bulk of child benefit is spent on clothes, books and food, which shows the areas where the measure will have an effect.

[Mrs Hodgson]

As I highlighted myself, those are the findings. That money is spent on our high street—on books, clothes and food; it is not put into trust funds or saved up. The majority of people, whether in two-earner or single-earner families, will be hurt by the proposal because they use the money for daily necessities and not for luxuries. That is £1.5 billion a year that will not be put to work improving the quality of life of any of the children in the affected families or preserving and creating jobs in my constituency or the constituencies of any other hon. Members.

Children did not cause the financial and economic situation, yet the Government seem intent on making them pay for it. At the same time, high fliers in the City, who might well have played a part in that situation, are rubbing their hands together in glee at the cuts to the top rate of tax. Those are not the actions of a Government who have their policies straight, or who understand the lives of hard-working families; the more the public see of the coalition Government’s choices, the more they realise how out of touch they are.

The Government will regret this ridiculous decision, just as our country will regret voting this incompetent shower of a Government into power. Thankfully, there will be a chance to undo that decision at the next election, and policies such as the child benefit charge will ensure that this incompetent Government serve no more than one term.

Budget (North-East)

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Roger. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) on securing this important debate.

I hope that the Minister has brushed up on the geography of our region and where the north-east covers—the Government sometimes struggle with that. I will not repeat what the Minister has said, but other examples make interesting reading in Hansard. I am sure that the Minister will want to talk in her response about the recent good news of Nissan’s success. Nissan is in my constituency, and I am personally very happy about its fantastic success. The announcement was a great vote of confidence in the local work force in particular, as well as a reflection of all the hard work and sustained relationship-building with Nissan by Sunderland council over the past couple of decades.

A few other welcome gems of news in my constituency include the recent announcements by Calsonic Kansei and Rayovac. However, all those new jobs and pockets of investment in the north-east are not enough to mitigate the effects on tens of thousands of people of losing their jobs in the public sector and elsewhere in the private sector, or the reality of long-term youth unemployment in my constituency, which is up by 188%.

I want to focus my remarks on household budgets and family finances. At the start of this month, an estimated 1,400 households in my constituency were no longer eligible for child tax credits worth £545 a year. A further 355 households will lose their working tax credits, worth £3,870 a year, unless they find a way to increase their working hours by at least eight hours. Throughout the north-east, such changes will affect just short of 50,000 households—so that is 50,000 households having their budgets squeezed, spending less in local shops, pubs, restaurants and other businesses and with less money to have days out, if any, at local attractions. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that families with children will, on average, be £511 a year worse off, and that includes the token amount given back to them by increasing their personal allowances. Some parents may find, therefore, that they are better off not in work than taking up work if it does not make financial sense. What is the sense in policies that push people out of jobs?

We have yet to see the full impact of the changes, but no one believes it will be positive—certainly not our pensioners, who have worked hard and saved throughout their working lives to provide a modest pension for themselves in later life. They will be hit by the freezing of age-related allowances, the worst affected being those who retire next year. In total, Treasury figures state that the changes will take more than £3 billion out of pensioners’ pockets—again, £3 billion that will not be spent in local economies such as Sunderland’s. At the other end of the scale, however, those on more than £150,000 a year will get a tax cut; unfortunately, not many of them live in my constituency.

We needed a genuine plan for growth and real help for families; we did not get it. What we got was worse than nothing. We got measures that will deepen the north-south divide and, as usual, the lives of my constituents will suffer at the hands of this out-of-touch Tory-led Government. Has it not always been so?

Working Tax Credits

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Miss Smith]

I can confirm that that figure relates to the measures of child poverty as set out by the Child Poverty Act 2010 and by the current debate. No doubt, the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) is already rubbing her fingers with glee about that. I will come on to that in my comments as well. I wish to introduce the idea that we need to move on to tackling the causes of poverty rather than the statistical method of counting poverty.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As we realised from the autumn statement yesterday, the Chancellor seems quite fond of giving with one hand and taking away with the other. We can see what has been taken away: up to £4,000 from these families. Is there anything that these families will get in return that would help to fulfil the Government’s promise that they would be the most family-friendly Government in history? From what we have heard today so far, there is not, but could the Minister enlighten us?

Autumn Statement

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let us look at the Italian bond auction this morning—that is the sort of interest rate we might have to pay if Britain’s ability to pay its way in the world lost credibility. Was it not surprising that the shadow Chancellor did not mention the fact that there are strikes tomorrow? It is because he is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Unite union.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The giving with one hand and taking away with the other for child care is, frankly, playing with children’s lives and is disgraceful. By how much will the Chancellor increase the early intervention grant to pay for the child care pledge that he announced today? How much capital funding will he provide to local authorities so that they can expand and build nurseries? From what children’s pot will he rob that money?

[Mr Osborne]

We have introduced, for the first time, an entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds to get 15 hours of free nursery care. Such a policy was never introduced in the 13 years of a Labour Government. We have increased the figure to 40% of all children of that age and the cost is just shy of £500 million by the end of the period.

Amendment of the Law

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The Budget was billed as a Budget for growth, which my constituents wanted and the Sunderland economy needed, but it is not a Budget for growth. In fact, it is a Budget in which the Chancellor has had to admit that he is failing to create growth. What is growing after this Budget and the tax and spending announcements of the past 10 months? I will tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, what is growing: the Chancellor’s nose. It is the dole queues that will be growing, with all the projected job losses. The cost of living will be growing, with the Government’s regressive VAT hike, which hits the poorest families hardest. The number of young people not in education, employment or training will be growing, due to the scrapping of the future jobs fund and the education maintenance allowance.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Not at the moment.

John Campbell from Washington e-mailed me yesterday. He currently receives £30 a week in EMA to support his studies. He asked me what support he would now get. I cannot answer, because Ministers have not told us yet, despite repeated hints from the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). I share the disappointment that he will no doubt have felt yesterday. Students are making choices about their future now. How can they do so while this silence persists?

We heard that the Chancellor will lift the tax-free allowance by £630 in 2012. I am sure that those of my constituents who will be lucky enough still to have a job this time next year will be very grateful for the extra 92p a week they will get. Perhaps they could use it towards the increased prices of their weekly shopping and energy bills, or to offset their loss in tax credits or frozen child benefit. What this Chancellor gives with one hand, he takes away many more times over with the other.

I remember, as I am sure do my hon. Friends, the furore in 1999 when the Government of the day announced an increase in the state pension of 75p a week, which was widely decried as an insult, despite being part of a wider package of measures that included the introduction of the winter fuel allowance and free TV licences. I checked with the Library this morning and found that 75p in 1999 is equivalent to around £1.05 today, which is 14% higher than 92p. Using that reasoning, the Budget’s increase is an even bigger insult. The right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), who was shadow Minister for social security, asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) at the time whether he felt guilty about cutting taxes for business at the same time as making such a derisory offer. I wonder whether the right hon. Member for Havant feels guilty today.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and for highlighting the effect of the proposals on her constituents, but she is perhaps being a little unfair to the Government on pensions. After all, they are solving some of the problems by bringing forward proposals that will eventually mean that some people might not be able to retire until they are 80. Is that not the kind of measure they should have highlighted more yesterday, rather than the ones they chose to highlight?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Although we all acknowledge that we will have to work longer because we are living longer, I do not think that anyone in this Chamber would want still to be working when they are 80.

At the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference last week the Deputy Prime Minister referred to the 75p increase in 1999 as an indignity, so I wonder how he views the 92p increase announced yesterday. Family income is vital to our growth prospects, as squeezing household budgets means less consumer spending, which in turn means lost profits and jobs in the sectors that depend on it.

How will growth be encouraged in Sunderland and the north-east? We heard yesterday that 21 local enterprise zones will be created and that one of them will be in the north-east local enterprise partnership on Tyneside. Seeing as we have an LEP for the whole north-east, leaving aside Tees valley, which is being given its own LEP and enterprise zone, why can we not have an enterprise zone that covered a wider area or more areas within the north-east enterprise zone, such as Wearside, in which Sunderland sits, which has both the need and potential, which are two criteria?

I was interested to read today in my local paper, the Sunderland Echo, that the Chancellor may have made an error in announcing that the local enterprise zone was going to be in Tyneside, because the location of the zone has not yet been decided. The Energy Secretary spoke to the Echo on that point and said that there was going to be a zone in the north-east local enterprise partnership area, and that the north-east LEP would help to choose where it was. He may need to go back to school and re-take his English baccalaureate—perhaps he does not have one—in geography, however, because Tyneside and the north-east are two very different areas.

That aside, we all know that if the Government were serious about stimulating the private sector they would never have abolished One North East or slashed funding for regional development. The Chancellor said that he wanted his Government to be the greenest ever, and he told us that funding for the green investment bank would be increased, in turn increasing the amount that it could leverage from private sources. I will not complain about any measures to increase investment in the low-carbon sector, particularly when that investment is going to help companies to innovate and create jobs in the north-east, but the Government could and should be doing so much more. Germany and China are taking action right now to stimulate green growth, so surely it is in this country’s economic interests to do the same and attract businesses before they locate to the countries that are taking action.

I also have concerns about the much heralded renewable heat incentive. A business man with a small to medium-sized enterprise in my constituency wrote to me to make the point that, had the scheme started next month, it had the potential to provide a big boost to the solar thermal sector. As it is, it will not start until October next year, and at a much reduced level to that which was expected. So, in effect, and even with the premium payment, the whole industry is on hold for 18 months, because who would invest now when they could get an incentive to do so in the next 18 months? That does not help the renewable energy sector; it puts the industry in limbo, and it puts jobs and innovation at risk.

My constituents may be pleased that the Chancellor has taken some action on fuel duty, however—an issue that many of them have contacted me about in the past few weeks. Cutting the duty on fuel by a penny will have made for some good headlines, and we all know that he needs those, but he failed to tell my constituents watching yesterday that a 1p cut in duty will not make up for the 3p VAT increase that he introduced at the beginning of the year. Again, he gives with one hand and takes much more away with the other.

There is so much more that I wanted to raise, but I will do so another time. Like so many of this Tory-led Government’s policies, this Budget is for the few, not the many. The bottom line is that this so-called Budget for growth has caused the Office for Budget Responsibility to revise down growth predictions; it had failed before it was even printed. The Chancellor spoke for an hour yesterday, but he provided almost nothing from which my constituents could draw any comfort. So, on behalf of those constituents, in particular the young and the struggling families, I urge him and his ministerial colleagues to listen seriously to the concerns that hon. Members have raised today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Osborne]

There is the selling off of the gold at a record low and the pensions tax that destroyed our pensions system, but I have to say that, in terms of sheer cost to the British taxpayer, the system of regulation designed by the shadow Chancellor was pretty catastrophic.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Why did the Chancellor endorse the report published by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) just a few weeks before the collapse of Northern Rock, which called for the deregulation of the mortgage market? Does he still support its conclusions?

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Come on, straight answer.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The Minister says that this grant has not always been spent on what it was intended for and instead has been spent on things such as buggies—they are equally important. Would it not have been advisable then to have targeted it, by using, for example, income-related benefits, so that it went to people who really needed it and was spent on what it was intended for?

[Mr Hoban]

Of course the hon. Lady should really address that to her colleagues who were Treasury Ministers when the grant was introduced, as they could have chosen to target it more closely. Other grants that are available are targeted at women in the early stages of pregnancy and the Sure Start maternity grant is in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend has made an interesting point. We want to encourage more young people to save and to give them some assets at the age of 18. I will look into his point and write to him.

As I have said, the saving gateway and the child trust fund are not affordable given the budget deficit that we inherited, so we are taking a different approach to encouraging saving that builds on the latest research on how to influence people’s behaviour.

The coalition agreement announced the roll-out of a free, impartial national financial advice service paid for by the financial services industry. The service will be fully rolled out by spring next year, providing information and advice on money matters and helping people to understand their options.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

I am sorry, but I need to make progress.

We are prioritising fairness and social mobility, providing sustained routes out of poverty for the poorest. While encouraging some of the poorest to build up savings can be seen as meeting those goals, in the tight fiscal position that we have inherited, it is better to invest more in education and health, which will have a greater immediate impact than building up assets.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The Minister has mentioned education. The Government are introducing larger fees, so young people will leave university with up to £40,000 of debt. A small nest egg from the Government in the form of the child trust fund would have incentivised families to save to pay for that debt. Will he explain how those two concepts go hand in hand and where the fairness is?

[Mr Hoban]

The hon. Lady should have taken the opportunity to ask her colleagues that when they introduced tuition fees and the child trust fund in the previous Parliament. The situation is not new, and I am sure that she has discussed the matter with her colleagues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

May I just say three words to the hon. Gentleman: education maintenance allowance? I look forward to him voting to abolish that and to raise tuition fees—both of which he pledged not to do at the general election.

With child trust funds we are trying to help poorer people and those on lower incomes to save for their children’s future. Before the child trust fund, only 18% of children had regular long-term savings made for them. The child trust fund industry average is now 31%. Among families on incomes just above welfare dependency, 30% of the child trust fund accounts now have money saved into them every month. Families in the lowest income bracket are now saving a higher proportion of their household income for their children than those in affluent groups. Do not take it from me, Mr Deputy Speaker: parenting groups, charities, think-tanks and academics have all put their names to motions and supporting letters that say the decision to abolish the child trust fund, along with the saving gateway, is short term and misguided.

So today, as the Government prepare to take the child trust fund from our children, we need to know what they intend to replace it with. The Minister has said that there will be no substitute and no compensation for the scheme where there is a Government contribution to encourage that saving. I welcome the fact that he wants to consider a future scheme to maintain the infrastructure. We know that the annual cost of running the child trust fund was about £5 million last year. I hope the Minister will confirm and look, in the winding-up speech at least, at how we keep that infrastructure in place to ensure that parents can make voluntary contributions.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the difference between the numbers of Members present on each side of the House is interesting? As the Minister said, Governments have to make choices; indeed, I think the Chancellor said that only last week when he announced the comprehensive spending review. Some of those choices are more difficult than others and some are more shameful than others. Perhaps there is only one Lib Dem Member in the Chamber and so few Conservative Members because this is a rather shameful thing that they are doing, and a lot of them cannot face up to what is being done.

[Mr Hanson]

We shall see. I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution. When we debated the child trust fund and the reduction in funding in Committee in July, and when we had a vote on the Floor of the House, Liberal Democrat Members flooded into the Lobby to support that measure; Conservative Members flooded into the Lobby to take money away from newly born children from August of this year. That is a disgraceful position, and the strength of feeling that the Minister will face today from my right hon. and hon. Friends shows that Labour Members, who introduced the saving gateway, the child trust fund and the health in pregnancy grant, are proud to have done that and proud to defend them in the Chamber today.