Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

In moving this amendment, I will speak also to Amendments A16 and A17 in the group. They amend subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 3 and deal with restrictions on the passporting of child tax credit recipients. Again, I do not think that there is much in substance between us and the Government since the draft regulations give effect to the already stated intention of restricting child tax credit recipients to those on no more than the income threshold for child tax credit. That will rule out those who have considerably higher incomes because child tax credit goes up to around £60,000 of income or even higher if the £25,000 disregard comes into play. We have absolutely no problem with that policy. What we do have a problem with is that the legislation makes it optional for the Government to issue regulations restricting the right of a child tax credit recipient to gain access to the saving gateway scheme as set out in subsection (4). The effect of subsections (4) and (5) is that even if regulations are made under subsection (4), they need not contain income or similar restrictions to narrow the scope of those eligible for child tax credit also to have access to the saving gateway. We believe that the construction of child tax credit, with its extraordinarily long income taper, means that if eligibility is the passport to the saving gateway scheme, it must be accompanied by restrictions. We agree that restrictions are best set out in secondary legislation, but we are clear that there must be such secondary legislation, which is why I have tabled the three amendments in this group. I beg to move.