Savings (Government Contributions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to speak briefly on Second Reading and to support two schemes that are an excellent part of what should be a wider strategy to tackle a fundamental and chronic lack of saving in all age groups and all income levels in our country. I want to say a few words about the schemes themselves and then about the scale of the problem and what more the Government might like to do in the years to come to address a chronic issue that should trouble us all, particularly the Treasury The problem is greater than many of us like to imagine; the state of saving in this country is worse than we like to kid ourselves. I remember going to visit my grandparents when I was a child and seeing on their mantelpiece a jam jar in which they used to put sixpences to save up for things such as a holiday to Blackpool and for rainy days, should things have got worse. Back then, I think they were the only people on their street who did that and who could afford the coach to Blackpool once a year. I think that my grandmother would put half a crown in a box just below the sofa, to save up for something or other every year, such as a new chair or stool for the house That seems like another country and another age—something that could never happen nowadays, when we are all so much richer and have so much greater access to spending. Of course, the statistics—we have heard some of them already—show that that is not the case at all Those experiences come from a time before the rise of hire purchase, credit cards, overdrafts and mortgages, all of which, although they have brought with them problems and difficulties that we have to cope with, have created a safety net of sorts against the real fragility that previous generations used to feel, going back as long as anyone can remember. The historian in me thinks of medieval, Georgian and Victorian times, when people used to feel that they were living fragile lives because they could fall from what were then called respectable lives into abject poverty purely as a result of ill fate, including illness, losing a job and having an unscrupulous landlord We like to think that those things could not happen today, but, of course, they can, and the statistics that we have heard from both Front Benchers show that very clearly. A quarter of households have less than £1,100 in their total financial assets, and debts of more than £3,500. One in 10 of us has available savings—rainy day money in the jam jar on the mantelpiece—of less than £100. That means less than £100 if someone happens to lose their job, if their company goes bust or if they were in the private rented sector and had an unscrupulous landlord. That should make us all very worried indeed Even beyond the poorest in society—those who should be very concerned about short-term saving—there is a crisis in long-term saving, and it looks more and more like an impending disaster for the country. We are all—rich and poor, young and old alike—simply not saving anything like enough The latest Deloitte survey shows that, by 2050, the retirement savings gap—the difference between what people will save and what they need to save, if they want to have a reasonable standard of life in retirement—will be £350 billion, which is an increase of £32 billion from five years ago, despite the many measures introduced by the previous Administration and the coalition. On average, each of us has to put away an extra £10,000 every year to avoid what we could think of as a miserable old age. Even people on middle and higher earnings—including all of us in this Chamber—would probably struggle to do that, if we want to pay our mortgages, bring up our children and enjoy a reasonable standard of living in the interim years One reason for that, among others, is that we are living much longer. Not only will future Governments struggle to maintain current levels of state pension payment, but we are spending longer in retirement and the cost of retirement income has risen. The latest BlackRock survey calculated that for a 70-year-old male to buy £1 of retirement income via an annuity would have cost £6 in 1970, but today it would cost £12. The cost of retiring is rising dramatically. We all know this, but it is worth underlining that we need a fundamental change in our cultural attitudes towards money and saving.