Clause 6
4:45 pm
Ian Pearson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Economic and Business), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Dudley South, Labour)
Clause 6 concerns the rules and processes at account opening, and is designed to ensure a consistent and simple process for applicants while providing for some basic checks on an applicant’s eligibility for the saving gateway. I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that eligible people should not be unreasonably deterred from opening an account with their preferred account provider, the phrase he uses in his amendment. However, I would be surprised if, having opted to offer saving gateway accounts, an account provider chose to decline to offer accounts to eligible people unreasonably, many of whom would be potential new customers.
I assure hon. Members that we will work closely with potential account providers and others in the run-up to the launch of the scheme, to explore how eligible people can most easily access accounts, consistent with the account providers’ normal account-opening checks. However, to put the position beyond doubt, subsection (3) requires account providers to open a saving gateway account for all eligible applicants, as long as the application is made in accordance with the rules set out in the Bill and in regulations. Moreover, we intend to make it a condition of approval to offer saving gateway accounts that a provider undertakes to accept properly completed applications from eligible people who have received a notice of eligibility. That is in the draft regulations. However, those requirements are subject to certain limited and necessary exceptions, to be specified in the regulations.
I hope that hon. Members will agree that it is reasonable that account providers should not be required to open an account when they have reason to believe that the notice of eligibility presented is, or may not be, genuine, that a declaration or application contains matters that are, or might be, untrue, or when they are unable to satisfy any requirements of money laundering legislation. As hon. Members can see from the draft regulations,those are the circumstances in which we propose that account providers can refuse to open an account for an eligible person who is prepared to agree to the terms and conditions under which the account is offered. We would expect them to vary to some extent between providers. However, I wish to stress that we will continue to discuss that in detail with potential account providers and others, and that we recognise that concerns have been expressed.