Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

This second group of amendments deals with two particular points. Let me deal with amendment 5 first. The seven lines of clause 5 are designed to deal with the fact that account providers need to be approved. Subsection (1) refers to the conditions that might be imposed on ““an approved account provider””, but there is no further description in the Bill—much of it gives enabling powers—or the explanatory notes of the conditions that a provider might be required to fulfil. We had some debate in Committee about the type of providers that we should encourage—or discourage—to take part. I am not going any further down that road, although the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) might want to enter the debate on this group to make those points again. It is important, however, that published guidelines are available to provide some clarity to providers about the conditions and their application. Pilots have already taken place, so it might be possible to draw out three conditions, which the Government might like to reflect on for approving providers. One point that came out of the evaluation was the importance of the branch network. The take-up of saving gateway accounts in the pilot increased in relation to the closeness of people to a branch of HBOS—the organisation involved in the pilot. If we are to encourage take-up, we need to think about an account provider’s branch network. So far, the only group that has expressed a clear intention to participate is the Post Office, which has a strong, if diminishing, branch network. It would fit the bill as a good provider. Access should be easy; people should be able to take their certificate somewhere close to where they live. The more barriers we put in the way of access to the provider, the harder it will be to get a decent take-up of the saving gateway account.