Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

It is a pleasure to start our Committee consideration of the Saving Gateway Accounts Bill. As I said at Second Reading, fundamentally, this is not a contentious Bill, but one which we must scrutinise in the customary way before we return it to the other place. I thank the Minister for writing promptly after Second Reading dealing with the points that arose during that debate. It is generally a welcome feature of his modus operandi that we receive letters in good time, but the his letter in respect of the government amendments tabled last week, while dated 30 March, arrived only this morning. While I was in the Chamber, a further letter, dated yesterday, arrived. I was going to give him full marks, but I am afraid that I will have to dock a few penalty points in this regard. Amendment 1 would, on a probing basis, delete Clause 1(2). This subsection requires saving gateway accounts to be managed by the HMRC. I have deleted this subsection in order to find out why the Government consider the HMRC is best qualified to carry out the management of the scheme. The other obvious contender is the Department for Work and Pensions, since that department manages five of the seven benefits listed in Clause 3 as creating eligibility for a saving gateway account. I have searched the background documents for the saving gateway scheme, starting with the 2001 White Paper and ending with the 2008 summary of responses. The scheme seems to have evolved from one which was jointly in the care of the Treasury and, for no reason I can really discern, the Department for Education and Skills, as it then was, to one which is now led by the Treasury and the HMRC, without any discussion, as far as I can see, en route about the best way for the project to be led. The DWP was involved in the pilots, but it seems to have been allowed to play only a supporting role. The HMRC is not everyone’s idea of an ideal body to lead a new project. It is the organisation which lost the data relating to around 25 million people and the report carried out by Mr Poynter was damning about the management and organisation skills within the HMRC. Subsequently, it has had to have a major change of personnel at the top. I would be surprised if anyone could claim that the internal failings which were highlighted have yet been solved. The HMRC is also the body which has introduced the disastrous tax credit system, which continues to attract criticism from Select Committees in another place, the latest being a report from the Public Accounts Committee. That report highlighted the huge problem of over and underpayments that still beset the scheme even after the extraordinary £25,000 disregard, which covers up the fact that the scheme is not fit for purpose. The report also covered income tax and was less than complimentary about the HMRC’s handling of self-assessment and PAYE returns. Other failings in the HMRC are often associated with the introduction of new IT systems, which, presumably, the saving gateway scheme will require. It is hard not to conclude that the Treasury has placed the saving gateway scheme with the HMRC simply because, in effect, it belongs to Treasury Ministers and possibly because it occupies the same building. A much more logical case could be made for DWP based on the number of benefits and likely number of people qualifying for a saving gateway account. The main reason for saying that the DWP would be more appropriate is that the benefits system works in real time and the tax credits system is still struggling to graft a real-time focus on to a tax system that is fundamentally based on a retrospective look at fiscal years. Put simply, the DWP is used to dealing with individuals’ changing circumstances while the HMRC is not. I look forward to hearing the Government’s rationale for using the HMRC. I beg to move.