Clause 7 - Transfers
Child Trust Funds Bill
11:15 am
Ms Ruth Kelly (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Bolton West, Labour)
I sympathise with the point made by the hon. Gentleman; we want to ensure that the responsible person is contacted, and that they are able to provide consent in every conceivable circumstance. However, in certain circumstances, and in order to avoid disadvantaging the child, we may want to provide for transfers to occur without the responsible person's authority. For example, in the case mentioned by the hon. Gentleman of providers ceasing to conduct CTF business, we cannot force them to continue that business indefinitely; that cannot happen in a market economy.
If CTF accounts are to be transferred to a new provider and there is no responsible person, it is important that we see to it that the accounts are continued with that new provider. We would not want a child to be detrimentally affected by such changes. Such circumstances would of course be exceptional. Indeed, we discussed earlier the need for a duty of care and management of accounts by the Inland Revenue. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that this is precisely the sort of case in which we would like the Revenue to operate such a duty to ensure that children without a responsible parent are not disadvantaged by transfers.