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Advice Centres (Barnsley and Sheffield)

The hon. Lady is right to make the point that it is not just about Citizens Advice. I take that on board. In considering debt advice, we want to ensure that we look across the whole piece both locally and nationally, as numerous organisations have a national locus in that area. She is also right to say that citizens advice bureaux rely on many sources of money. That is why I recently met the Minister with responsibility for civil society, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), and Ministers from other Departments with an interest in the area, such as the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice, to ensure that we take a cross-Government view of funding for the advice sector. It is critical. The hon. Lady is right to mention the cumulative impact. From the perspective of my Department, in funding Citizens Advice—and, as she was kind enough to say, in securing the financial inclusion fund for face-to-face debt advice—we believe that we are playing our part. Working with colleagues across Government, we want to consider not just the current year but the next few years to ensure that there are no unintended consequences resulting from a failure to join up the different parts of Government. Focusing on the issues raised by the hon. Lady, she spent a little time, as I have mentioned, on debt advice. She said that the Office for Budget Responsibility would see an increase in indebtedness, which is absolutely true. It is already incredibly high. We have already seen, over the past few years, a massive increase in indebtedness, which is why more money has been spent by both the previous Government and this Government in this area. That is also why we have to think carefully about how we manage the issue. Whether it is through the phone, the internet, or face to face, we need to make sure that we provide the services that people actually need. We need to go deeply into this, because there are other issues in relation to debt advice about which we need to think carefully. We need to think about mental health. People with debt problems often suffer mental health problems as well—it is a huge relationship—so we need to think about how we manage that. We need to think carefully about how we encourage people to come forward early enough to get support and advice. We need to make sure that the voluntary and charitable sectors are well known enough among people who suffer from debt, so that people who have problems do not just go to people in the private sector who provide very expensive debt advice and sometimes make the problem even worse. We need to make sure that they know that advice centres are available. I think that the hon. Lady and I have the same objective in mind. I shall not suggest that her constituency is the same as mine, because there are different levels of deprivation, but I assure her that mine, as well as those of all Members, has pockets of deprivation and people who need the services under discussion. The hon. Lady mentioned the situation in Barnsley and Sheffield. She will know, of course, that local authorities make decisions on funding local bureaux. Such decisions are not made by national Government. The previous Government took that view. There is not some sort of centralised support for individual bureaux, and I hope that she was not suggesting that we should do that.