Stage 1 Debate on the Financial Education and Inclusion (Wales) Bill

Janet Finch-Saunders
I would like to categorically state my 100% support and also pay tribute to Bethan Jenkins AM for bringing this Bill here today. I know the amount of work that she has put into this, and I think she knows that she has my support. Clearly, it is okay now to say, ‘Well, we can put strategies together, with measures and guidance’, but it is not happening. It is not happening out there. I have to tell you that this is an issue that affects people of all ages. I have known businesspeople commit suicide through not having the basic fundamentals and finding themselves in quite difficult circumstances, through just not having that ability to be able to plan, to be able to run their businesses. Also, I have also seen young people very frustrated, and I have seen students over the years.
I go back to the days when I was in primary school, and, in those days, you were able to buy National Savings stamps, so you chose then whether you bought National Savings stamps or sweets. I used to do a bit of both. The point was that I learned from a very early age. My parents encouraged me. Not everybody has that opportunity, and we are in the here and now. The fact that you have got so far with this—I am a bit naïve, and I actually genuinely believed, as a Member of the Assembly, that backbenchers could bring forward legislation and that it would not be squashed at the first hurdle.
I took part in a Money for Life seminar, where I actually saw some pretty hard and realistic circumstances of where people of all ages just do not always have—and it is not a class thing. It is not necessarily people in deprivation. I have seen some people who you would not believe just do not have that genuine financial nous that you need to possess to be able to know, in this day and age, about austerity, the challenges of employment and various other things. I just genuinely believe that we need to embed this, certainly in our younger people coming through, so that they do not find themselves, in any part of their lives, not really knowing the fundamental basics of how to make their money go as far they need it to go.
Earlier this year, the debt charity StepChange reported a significant year-on-year increase in the number of Welsh people falling into arrears on household bills and taking out pay-day loans. This issue is of particular importance as well in my own constituency, in Conway, because the average debt level for Conway is way above the national average. Between 2010 and 2013, StepChange recorded a 50% increase in the proportion of home-owning clients struggling with mortgage arrears in Conway. Look at the responses: 27 organisations have responded. On the number of engagement meetings, between 2010 and 2013, there was a 27% increase in demand for debt advice in Conway. Sixteen per cent of the population in Wales is now over-indebted, and this is said to be linked very strongly with financial exclusion. Forty-four per cent said that they do not know what debt solutions are available, and only 17% accessed advice.
 I strongly believe that, by improving the financial literacy skills of our young people and the financial capability of the Welsh population in general, this Bill will help to enable the lowering of the statistics that I have just mentioned. I mean, 96%—it does not get much better than that—of respondents to an Assembly outreach survey felt that financial education at school would better prepare them to make good financial decisions in later life. This Bill will not undo what is already in place, because I do not think that any of us knows what is in place. Instead, it will strengthen the status of financial education, giving it a strong legislative foundation—and that is what we are supposed to be doing here. We have devolution. Let us show again that we can lead here in Wales, and let us get behind Bethan.
This Bill plans to place obligations on schools, obligations to deliver financial education, to give statutory status to financial education’s place in the curriculum, and to impose a requirement that financial education be reported on to monitor progress. The Welsh Government must not—and nobody, really, here today should—stand in the way of this Bill. Aled Roberts was correct when he said that we can actually shape it as it goes through the various stages. We have passed other Bills in this way. Look at the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill: passed in a hurry. Look at the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Bill, and the number of amendments that came in and the hours that we spent on that. This is what we are about and this is what we should do. You have my 100% support.