We Are Debt Advisers

Let's create a better 'breathing space'

In May 2021 the Government introduced a new ‘breathing space’ scheme for people in debt in England & Wales.

We are front-line debt advisers, and we are worried it won’t work.

We all want ‘breathing space’ to work.

But Government isn’t listening. Its proposals for the scheme haven’t changed since the Covid outbreak.
The world we all live in has. With millions more of us struggling to make ends meet.
As debt advisers, we need to be given the time to do our jobs properly. And people in debt need real solutions.
Government needs to listen to the front-line.

We need more time to help people claim the benefits they are entitled to and people who have lost their jobs need more time and support to get back into work.
The sixty days ‘breathing space’, which has been introduced, just isn’t long enough. Especially when unemployment is forecast to increase by a further million in the next year.
We also want action to prevent debt problems from turning into long-term poverty. People in debt need to be able to live with dignity and many will need a ‘fresh start’.
Let’s give people in debt a real chance for a better future.

Why it is time to lobby MPs

The Money and Pensions Service is proposing to radically reshape the provision of debt advice. And to cut community based services by 50%.

Its proposals threaten the future of face to face debt advice. In particular, the prioritisation of digital advice channels over face to face provision will leave many more vulnerable debtors unable to get the support they need. It is unacceptable that MaPS only issued a call for evidence in respect concerning the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to debt advice on 28th September. We organised a response to this in which over 380 debt advisers supported our call for the procurement exercise to be suspended to allow for full and proper consultation regarding the future balance between community based services and national, digital and phone, provision.

We met with MaPS expressing our concerns on 17th November, and have called for the tender process to be halted pending a full and proper consultation. Despite promising transparency about the allocation of funding for community based services, we have received no further information from them. However, following a Parliamentary debate on 1st December, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen MP, has promised that his officials will look at the case for the procurement exercise to be suspended.

We need supporters to maintain the pressure and to ask their MPs to contract the Economic Secretary's office raising their concerns. A full briefing to send to MPs can be downloaded here.

We need to act together!

We wrote to every single MP on 24th September to warn them about the implications of the MaPS contracts for debt advice, and to ask for their support. But we must do more to get their attention.

We are pleased that we do already have some cross-party support amongst MPs with the Treasury Committee also engaged in correspondence with MaPS.

But we need as many people as possible to write to their MP and press the Economic Secretary to the Treasury to intervene.

Here is what we are now asking you to do:

If you are on Twitter, then send out a tweet to invite your MPs. Here is an example from our Twitter site from the Leeds Debt Advice Network. Please use the hashtag #SaveDebtAdvice, where you can also see other examples of the tweets sent to MPs..

You can also e-mail your MPs. It helps if you can add local concerns about the impacts of the MaPS contracts, but if you do not have time to do this or do not know yet what these are likely to be, then a simple e-mail along the following lines will do:

"Dear (name) MP,

I am a debt adviser serving people in your constituency, and am writing to bring your attention to the risks posed by the current tendering for debt advice contracts being conducted by the Money and Pensions Service. These are likely to result in a considerable reduction in face to face debt advice services at a time when both the demand for, and complexity of, debt advice is increasing and could lead to job losses within debt advice in your area.

A full briefing concerning the problems likely to be caused by the proposed new contracts for debt advice is being organised for MPs by the We are Debt Advisers group at 3pm on Thursday 4th November, and I would be grateful if you could attend this, to agree a Parliamentary strategy.

Please register on Eventbrite here

Yours sincerely etc."