Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

I would not, perhaps, put it that strongly, but, absolutely, that is broadly what I am saying. One of the reasons for our current problems is that we have lost the saving habit. The Prime Minister has made that point in recent weeks when he has spoken about people saving prior to taking out a mortgage and about whether or not it is a good thing that people have 100 per cent.—or 100 per cent.-plus—mortgages, so never developing any saving habit or any notion of thrift prior to taking on the obligations of a mortgage. My understanding from contributions from Members in all parts of the House is that what we want the gateway saving accounts to encourage those people who would otherwise not have developed a saving habit to see the merit of doing so. Given our society’s current problems as a result of the banks’ activities, I would have thought that it would be absolutely on point for them to say, ““Okay, we now accept that we need to do more to help people get that saving habit. We accept it is our job to get people to think about thrift. It is now our job to make people think they can’t always come to the bank and get 100 per cent. or 120 per cent. mortgages, and that they will actually have to put a bit of their hard-earned cash aside each week and save up for some things prior to borrowing the balance of the money.”” When we were taking evidence, the banks should have come to us and said, ““We don’t see that there are huge amounts of profit in this, but we do see that it is absolutely our duty to provide these accounts. It is absolutely our duty to be providing financial education and training and support to people who need it, and it is absolutely our job, whether or not these things make money for us, to provide them and to do so willingly and to provide a good service.”” To that extent, I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), but I do not want credit unions and the Post Office to be excluded from providing such accounts. I do not think that is the intention of the hon. Gentleman’s amendments—indeed, he has made it clear that they are probing amendments—but the Post Office and credit unions can play a role. Credit unions tend to be small and to provide a good, almost pastoral, service to some of their customers. They are in a position to say to people, ““Let’s sit down and talk about your budget. Let’s talk about where you’ve got some extra money, and about the benefits of saving.”” The gateway saving account represents a big opportunity for credit unions and the Post Office, and I do not want anything to be done that would exclude them. I am happy to note that the hon. Gentleman has confirmed that that is not the intention of his amendments, and I think we have all-party support for how we want those accounts to operate. I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman should propose in his amendment 6 to ““leave out paragraph (e)””—I assume, again, that it is a probing amendment. I would have thought that making an option for electronic filing was a way of reducing costs for those who provide these accounts. If the effect of the amendment would be to prevent the Government from allowing people to file their returns electronically, we might be inadvertently increasing costs. I suspect that is not the hon. Gentleman’s intention, and I agree with him that our objective must be to keep the administrative costs as low as possible so that there is a plurality of providers, who are willing to provide the broad range of services that we want those who take out a gateway saving account to have.