Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

I shall speak also to Amendment 34. These amendments concern transfers under Clause 7, which allows regulations to specify when an account may be transferred. In fact, draft regulations give a complete free-for-all on transfers, which account providers have to make whenever requested and at no cost to the account holder. The Minister will be aware that this remains a source of contention with the British Bankers’ Association, acting on behalf of the banks. It has asked us to raise this issue again with the Government, despite the fact that it was discussed at length in another place. The BBA is obviously not opposed to savers having access to their money and is committed to ensuring that account holders can withdraw their money easily, but transfers to other approved providers raise particular issues of cost, which derive from the fact that the transfer process will probably not be automated and will be reliant on paper-based systems. I cannot think of anything more unsatisfactory in relation to these small-value accounts. In addition, there would be problems with the production of statements, as that would require the transfer of an account history to the new provider for the new provider to calculate the maturity payment, which requires knowledge of the account history. The BBA has also referred to identification verification of the account with the new provider, which also causes a problem. I do not believe that the problems are confined to the banking sector. In the Public Bill Committee in another place, similar concerns were expressed by building societies and credit unions or, rather, the representative bodies acting for them that gave evidence to that Committee. My Amendment 33 would allow transfers to be made only if approval of a provider was withdrawn or if the provider was within the special resolution regime set out in the Banking Act 2009, which the Minister and I had so much pleasure working on earlier this year. Regulations should be made only in this context, which is what Amendment 34 provides for. The Government should be aware that this is still a big issue, which may strike at the heart of whether there will be any voluntary participation in saving gateway accounts. That is why I have raised the matter again in Committee. I beg to move.