Clause 7
5:15 pm
Stephen Ladyman (South Thanet, Labour)
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that the evidence given to us was that there would be a significant cost in transferring these accounts and this is one of the simplicities that the bankers were looking for. Equally, I wonder whether it occurred to the hon. Gentleman that doing so would be anti-competitive since, if one of the banks decided to offer a more generous rate of interest on one of these accounts because it wanted to nurture a client base for the future, not allowing people to transfer would prevent them from taking their money out of a provider that was not providing that generous rate of interest.