Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

The amendment would amend Clause 4(3). Subsection (3) states: ""Regulations may … impose a limit on the amount which may be paid into a Saving Gateway account"." I should perhaps have sought to require regulations to prescribe a limit since it should be axiomatic that there can never be an open-ended ability to pay money into a saving gateway account and thereby qualify for maturity payment. We support the imposition of a maximum. Indeed, a maximum should definitely be imposed. On the other hand, my amendment suggests that a minimum amount could also be specified. Draft Regulation 10(2)(d) says that the account provider must permit payments into the account by various means but does not specify anything related to the amount. It must surely be uneconomic for the account provider to handle very small amounts, given that providers are not allowed to make charges. I should have thought that a de minimis amount would be reasonable from that perspective. In addition, a savings habit will not be worth while unless it is for a meaningful sum. Unless savings can accumulate to a sum that is itself worth while in terms of the kind of things for which savings are kept back, it can hardly qualify as genuine saving. I should have thought that a minimum of something like £5 would be reasonable because if that were all that was contributed to a savings account over the two years that is proposed, it would add up to only £120 before the maturity payment. I should have thought that anything less was not really saving at all. The purpose of my amendment is not to prescribe the minimum but merely to propose that a minimum should be prescribed. I beg to move.