Clause 4
12:30 pm
Mark Hoban (Shadow Minister, Treasury; Fareham, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 29, in clause 4, page 3, line 21, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
‘( ) The limit on the amount which may be paid into the Saving Gateway account in a month (excluding any interest or other sums paid by the account provider under the terms of the account) shall be £25.’.
This amendment has been tabled in a similar probing spirit. There is no reference in the Bill to the maximum monthly amount that can be saved, which the amendment would remedy. The explanatory notes suggests that the amount will be £25, and I suspect that that is in the regulations that were circulated to us earlier. For many people, £25 will sound like not very much to save, but it was interesting that Teresa Perchard from the CAB described it as
“a huge amount for many to find”.——[Official Report, Saving Gateway Accounts Public Bill Committee, 27 January 2009; c. 10, Q20.]
There is a balance to be struck. Clearly, for many people, that would be a huge amount to find, as it might be a significant part of their family income, and they will need to make sacrifices to save anyway near that amount. However, there are others, as we touched on earlier, who might, through contributions-based JSA, have a reasonable amount of money and who would be quite happy to pay £25 a month, and perhaps transfer money from other savings to the saving gateway account to benefit from the 50p in the pound match. Has the Economic Secretary given any thought to whether £25 is too generous a limit, given the potential loss to the Exchequer from people who are more than capable of saving that amount, who do so already, and who just want to take advantage of the great returns that the saving gateway account will offer them?