5 things we learned at the party conferences

By Luke Chapman, External Affairs Co-ordinator

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been out and about at the Conservative and Labour Party conferences, talking to policymakers about debt. Now that conference season is over, here are our five main takeaways.

1. Support for independent bailiff regulation in England and Wales is growing

We ran events at both Labour and Conservative conferences on bailiff reform, in collaboration with the Money Advice Trust. We were hugely grateful for the support at these events of Tracey and Nat Rogers, the mother and brother of Jerome Rogers, whose experiences of bailiffs were the subject of the BBC’s docu-drama Killed by my Debt and have resulted in tireless campaigning for reform by his family.

It’s clear that pressure on the Government to change the system is growing. Many party members raised concerns about bailiffs at events, and we saw yet more MPs from across both sides of the party divide coming out in support of change. We’ll be keeping up the pressure back at Westminster.

2. Universal Credit remains a hot topic

Lots of the press headlines were dominated by Labour’s announcement that they would significantly reform Universal Credit, with a view to scrapping it in the longer-term. Many of these changes would help people like our clients, so we’ve welcomed this — although we cautioned against scrapping it without a clear replacement.

Universal Credit was never far from discussion at the Conservative conference either, with growing consensus on the need for urgent reforms. This included changing the way debt is collected from benefits, ending the five-week wait and introducing the option for fortnightly rather than monthly payments, as has been done in Scotland.

We’ve been supporting the Trussell Trust’s 5 weeks too long campaign on Universal Credit and at their event we raised our concerns with Conservative MP, Nigel Mills, who’s been looking at what changes should be made as part of his role on the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

At Labour, our CEO Phil Andrew spoke at an event with Ruth George MP, the Chair of the All-Party-Parliamentary Group on Universal Credit, sharing the experiences of our clients receiving it and highlighting where we think changes need to be made.

3. The age of Austerity “is ending”

Austerity has been part of British politics for over 10 years now, and with the Chancellor, Sajid Javid, announcing a raft of spending commitments as part of his Spending Review in early September, we’re now seeing the beginnings of politics after Austerity. Across both Labour and Conservative Party conferences, the consensus was that Austerity as a policy was coming to an end.

The messages were obviously different. The conversation at the Conservatives conference revolved mainly around additional money being available because Austerity helped balance the books and created some headroom to spend responsibly and that it was very important to spend in order to bolster the economy ahead of Brexit. At the Labour conference, we saw calls for wider spending and more money for public services such as the NHS.

4. It’s still all about Brexit

Across both conferences, Brexit was mentioned at almost every single event we attended.

Both parties believe that there is an economic downturn as a result of Brexit on the way — even if exactly what kind, for how long and the longer term impact is hotly debated.

Given that we are already working at full tilt to up our capacity to deliver debt advice to a greater number of the people who need it, for us this looks set to mean one unsurprising thing: we can only expect to get busier.

5. Safety nets and financial resilience are on the menu

The consensus at both conferences was that the current safety nets provided by the state need to be updated to reflect the reality of the modern world. However, there is no clear picture or wide agreement on what it is that needs to change.

We hosted private roundtables on the subject of financial resilience — one of our key long-term policy themes — at both Labour and Conservative Party conferences.

John Glen MP, the minister responsible for issues relating to problem debt, highlighted that he wanted to see quicker progress towards implementing breathing space in England and Wales; committed to investing more to promote the Help to Save scheme to help people build financial resilience; and reiterated his desire to pilot a no-interest loan scheme across the UK. These are all things we have been campaigning for, so it was positive to hear the Minister being ambitious about his plans for them.

At Labour, we were joined by the Shadow Minister, Anneliese Dodds MP, to discuss what a Labour Government would do to tackle problem debt. She reiterated Labour’s support for breathing space in England and Wales. Labour’s also keen to prioritise measures to tackle financial exclusion and improve people’s resilience, and to ensure people have access to more affordable forms of credit.

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All in all, we had a productive and energising round of conference engagement, and we’ll be using what we learnt to push forward these agendas in Westminster and beyond.