Clause 8
5:45 pm
Mark Hoban (Shadow Minister, Treasury; Fareham, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 32, in clause 8, page 4, line 31, leave out from ‘is’ to end and insert ‘50 pence’.
Clause 8 deals with the maturity payments that will be available to people who have opened savings gateway accounts and the payment that would be made at the end of two years. The familiar theme over the course of today’s scrutiny is to insert one of the key features of this, which is the amount of the maturity payment which, we are all clear, is 50p in the pound. Rather than repeat the debate about why the Government want flexibility and why it is appropriate to specify the rate in regulations, rather than in the Bill, it might help the Committee to reflect on last week’s evidence sittings, in which witnesses gave their justifications as to why the amount should be 50p. That rate appeared to be sufficiently attractive to encourage people to save, although one witness suggested that it was extremely generous.
It would help if the Minister put on record the Government’s rationale behind the 50p rate. He was not a witness last Tuesday, so this is the first chance since Second Reading that the Committee has had to probe his rationale. I sensed from last week’s witnesses, with the exception of those comments about 50p being extremely generous, that they thought it a sufficiently attractive rate to encourage people to save and to keep their money in the accounts for as long as possible. It would help if the Minister set out clearly the Treasury’s thinking behind that amount.