Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

I welcome the fact that the Front-Bench spokesmen of both main Opposition parties appear to welcome the amendments, and I hope they will support them. I think that the only point I need to come back to is the reason why the maturity period in the Bill is not less than 12 months and the rest is in regulations. As I have said, we believe that less than 12 months would not represent saving, and that is why we are stating that minimum in the Bill. We want to leave flexibility for regulations to set the minimum period. Leaving that in secondary legislation provides the flexibility to alter that feature of the accounts if, for example, the experience of operating the national scheme suggested a different account length would better achieve the aims of the saving gateway. That is why we want to put that in regulations. Under Lords amendment 8, the maturity period would be subject to the affirmative procedure and to parliamentary scrutiny in this House. Lords amendment 3 agreed to. Lords amendments 4, 5 and 6 agreed to.