Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

The Minister must remember never to ask me to be kind. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for his contribution, although he did not support my amendment. I certainly look forward to him supporting Amendment 40 when we get to it. The Minister said that the reason why it was constitutionally proper for this to be in the Treasury and the HMRC is because it is not a social security benefit. I was trying to make the point that the DWP was just a better organisation and I would have hoped that the Treasury would have chosen the best organisation in Whitehall to carry out this project. The Minister referred to the investment by the HMRC and controls over data which, of course, we recognise that it would have to do in response to the data loss of 25 million people, but control over data is only one part of it. The main problem with the HMRC, which has been demonstrated in spades with the tax credit system, is that it finds it difficult to operate with the kind of immediacy in which the DWP has to operate. The very nature of handling benefits means that you have to be very alert to changing circumstances. That is fundamentally where the tax credit system has failed. The HMRC could not adapt to that as its culture is fixated on past years rather than on what is happening now. I regret that the Minister has not given anything more than a constitutional nicety as an argument for the HMRC. If it were objectively tested by having a market test around Whitehall, it would be difficult to find the HMRC at the top of the list as being the most appropriate organisation, especially given the number of criticisms that are not simply confined to data security. There are backlogs on PAYE, self-assessment and all kinds of other things that are not conducive to being handled in real time. I shall not press this further, although I do not think that the Minister has justified the case. I predict that leaving this to the HMRC could leave the scheme struggling as its workload starts to involve large amounts of paper and processes that have to be dealt with in real time. That is on the Government’s head. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 1 withdrawn.