Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has advocated a universal advice service to help address the UK's lack of financial education.
Speaking at the Tax Incentivised Savings Association conference in London today (21 November), the former business secretary said the issue of financial education was an important one for the British economy.
He said: "There are some very good courses now coming into the curriculum.
"It is an area where governments have promised and not delivered in the past.
"I was involved several years ago in attempts to give universal access to financial advice, the idea of GP-type consultations.
"But all if that has rather fallen by the way side."
He said that at that moment the UK has a "regulated arrangement which touches only a handful of people" and contrasted this with the idea of a "mass scheme which would be more helpful But would clearly be more expensive".
Sir Vince said: "I would like to see that happening because we are way behind in terms if basic financial literacy."
Doubts are growing about the effectiveness of financial education taught in schools.
From September 2013, teaching financial education in secondary schools became mandatory following national campaigns.
The change was implemented by all state schools in September 2014, with financial education included in maths and citizenship lessons.
The research by Young Money, which examined the views of teaching professionals, found they wanted better levels of support for financial education and criticised the lack of consistency around how this is taught as well as the limited access to resources.
The teachers called for exam boards to incorporate financial education into their assessment criteria.
At The True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance conference last week, Jonquil Lowe, lecturer in personal finance at the Open University Business School, said she was sceptical about teaching financial education to young children and said teaching finance in schools had “little impact”.
Speaking ahead of tomorrow's Budget, Sir Vince also predicted that higher rate pension tax relief would find itself in the targets of the Government.
He said: "There will be a growing hunt for things which save the government money and can be described as fairness.
"Pension tax relief is an obvious area to go for.
"I find it personally difficult to justify the higher rate of tax relief on pensions."
The Lib Dem leader also revealed a policy he was considering was a learning account which would incentivise all young people to save for their education or training, regardless of whether then went to university.
He said: "There would need to be advice as to how to make best use of it and how to invest it when it is not being drawn down and I would be interested in talking to people in your industry about how this could be organised."
