Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

Amendment 37 would amend Clause 9 so that the regulations about statements have to provide that hard-copy statements are available unless account holders consent to receiving them electronically. Clause 10 is silent on how statements are to be made available to account holders and so, too, are the draft regulations. In another place, my honourable friend Mr Ed Timpson moved an amendment that was permissive on electronic statements. The Minister said in response that the Government, ""do not intend to specify the form that statements have to take, but simply that they must be issued. This would permit them to be issued electronically and it would be a matter for the account provider to decide".—[Official Report, Commons, Saving Gateway Account Bill Committee, 3/2/09; col. 114.]" That rang alarm bells because I do not think that this issue should be left to the account provider. The cost advantages of doing away with paper, printing, postage and so on are so overwhelming that, left to their own devices, account providers would rush to electronic provision as rapidly as possible. I am normally one to argue for sensitivity to the costs of business, but this is one area where I think that business would like to go further than most consumers actually want. Let us take the parallel case of the Companies Act 2006, which allows companies to move to electronic delivery of notices of meetings and documents such as annual reports. Once companies have changed their articles to permit it, they are still not allowed to implement it and force electronic delivery on their shareholder base. Each shareholder has to be asked if he wants to stick with hard copy or default to electronic delivery, but there is no similar protection in these regulations. I am a great enthusiast of the internet, but I still tend to opt for a hard copy of annual reports. Indeed, I have refused the blandishment of my bank to take soft-copy bank statements. In each case, I am given the choice. I wish to preserve choice for those who are drawn into the saving gateway and I think that the Government ought to share that ambition. I beg to move.