Clause 6
4:45 pm
Ian Pearson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Economic and Business), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Dudley South, Labour)
From my discussions with the banks, I do not recognise the hint that my hon. Friend mentions. One of the objectives of the legislation is to encourage people to start the savings habit. We do not want to see people who have already been saving simply transferring savings into a gateway account. People might have bank accounts in which they have not been saving, and they might then start to save for the first time. We would want to encourage that, but one of the purposes of the legislation is to encourage more people to save for the first time, whether through a saving gateway account offered by a bank or through one offered by another financial institution. A variety of provision is important.