Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

My Lords, in moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments 5, 6 and 8 in this group. These are repeat amendments of those that we debated in Grand Committee. They concern areas in the saving gateway scheme that caused particular concern to the British Bankers’ Association. There have been continuing discussions since Committee stage between the Government and the BBA. The Minister in another place subsequently wrote to colleagues in another place and I am grateful to him for copying that letter to me. Those discussions have not resulted in government amendments, so I have tabled my amendments again largely as a vehicle to ensure that the commitments that the Government have made to the British Bankers’ Association in connection with the topics covered by the amendments are clearly on the record. It has been clear that, while there is good will towards the saving gateway scheme among potential providers—principally the banks, the building societies and the Post Office—there has been great concern about the cost of operating saving gateway accounts. Suffice it to say that it would not be difficult for a potential account provider to conclude that participation was not economic. One issue is that the draft regulations allowed complete freedom to account holders to transfer their accounts to other providers, which potentially imposed significant costs on account providers. While we would normally support the freedom to transfer, we could see that the cost implications were so considerable that transferability might kill off the scheme. My Amendments 5 and 6 allow transferability in only limited circumstances. The draft regulations were satisfactory in two other respects—in not requiring the payment of interest and in not requiring statements to be sent more frequently than six-monthly. These matters are crucial to the economics of participation in the scheme. The BBA wanted to see them dealt with in the Bill, because regulations can be changed by the Government pretty much at will, subject only to the inconvenience of pushing through statutory instruments. Hence the economics of saving gateway accounts could be wrecked at the stroke of a pen. Amendment 2 deals with interest and Amendment 9 deals with statement frequency. As the Minister pointed out in Grand Committee, my Amendment 5, dealing with transfers, did not quite do the trick technically. I have not chosen to table a more perfect version for today, since the purpose of my tabling these amendments is to give the Minister an opportunity to place the Government’s position on the record. I beg to move.