Clause 5 - Drawdown requirements for SaRA schemes
Rights of Savers Bill
3:15 pm
Stephen Timms (Minister for pensions, Department for Work and Pensions; East Ham, Labour)
It remains very important, because that framework would encourage people to save for retirement. That is the purpose of the vehicle; it has extra flexibility to encourage people to save. However, the purposes need to be tightly defined. I presume that the reason for the three purposes is that the Government already use the tax system to encourage people to save for such purposes. Although it is true that the tax benefits would be lost if the loan was not repaid in a particular time, it is still a tax advantage saving vehicle for these purposes. I suggest that it is very difficult to argue that the tax advantage character of that vehicle should be available for the purpose in paragraph (b) unamended, let alone amended.