Clause 12 - Subscription limits
Child Trust Funds Bill
9:30 am
Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 131, in
clause 12, page 6, line 34, leave out subsection (1).
I welcome you, Mr. Benton, to the Chair. It is good to be back in Committee. Clause 12 deals with the amount of money that parents, friends and guardians, and even the children, will be able to put into child trust funds each year. I suspect that much of our time this morning will be spent debating this clause, as a number of amendments to it have been tabled.
This amendment is straightforward; it would remove subsection (1), which states:
''No subscription may be made to a child trust fund otherwise than by way of a monetary payment.''
That seems unnecessarily restrictive, a point raised on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). One must assume that the vast majority of payments into child trust funds will be monetary. Indeed, the Minister has said repeatedly that she envisages parents or relatives paying in £5 a month. We shall debate later what is allowed, but one imagines that in most cases cash will be taken to a building society, money will be transferred from a bank account or, as suggested in an earlier Liberal Democrat amendment, a portion of the child benefit will be paid directly into the fund.
I do not, therefore, suggest that the vast majority of payments will not be monetary. However, one can envisage parents, relatives or others wanting to make donations in other forms, such as shares or gilts. I am more interested in shares. It seems strange, and unnecessary, to require that they be turned into cash—with commission paid in the process—and then the cash paid into the child trust fund, where it is used to buy shares.