Clause 8
5:45 pm
Jeremy Browne (Taunton, Liberal Democrat)
I rise to give my wholehearted support to the amendment for both reasons that the hon. Gentleman touched on. First, it is unacceptable to invite the Committee to endorse a Bill with all the numbers and details stripped out, leaving them able to be adjusted at any point by the Minister. That makes a mockery of the entire process of parliamentary scrutiny that we are sent here by our constituents to undertake. If the rate is to be 50p, and that is the amount of public money that the Government are committing, it seems reasonable that we should be able explicitly to endorse that.
I should also be interested to know how much the Economic Secretary thinks the overall scheme will cost. I appreciate that that will be an estimate, but it is necessary for us to be able to tell our constituents, and others who are interested, what the implications are for public spending, so that they can make a judgment, if they are interested in these matters, about whether the 50p rate is appropriate, not only as an incentive to savers, but in terms of cost to the taxpayer.
The hon. Gentleman’s second point about the 50p rate is whether it is the minimum level at which we can maximise incentive. Is it providing value for money, or could we persuade as many people to save if it were 40p, therefore doing so at lower cost? Would there be a noticeable bounce in the number of people who would save if it were increased to 60p? If so, the scheme could be made much more attractive without reaching much further. That territory has not been explored sufficiently.
My final point, which I shall address in more detail when we discuss my amendments to this clause, is about how the 50p is triggered. That 50p, when put against a pound in the 24th of the 24 months, provides a good return in comparison with the 50p matched against a pound in the first of the 24 months. It might be possible for the Government to devise a scheme, which would admittedly be more complicated, whereby a pound that stayed in an account for the duration of the 24 months attracted the 50p, whereas a pound that was there for a shorter period would accrue at a monthly rate and therefore would not make up the full 50p. That system might or might not have merit, but we are currently being invited to endorse a measure that contains no figure whatever. We therefore cannot discuss the merits of the Government’s proposal because they have not deemed it suitable to give us a proposal to support or vote on.