Clause 22
Saving Gateway Accounts Bill
9:15 am
Jeremy Browne (Taunton, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment 13, in clause 22, page 10, line 24, leave out ‘issued’ and insert ‘received’.
This amendment is more likely to affect our constituents than the one that I have just tried, unsuccessfully, to make to the Bill. Subsection (7) states:
“A penalty must be paid within 30 days beginning with the date on which the notice of the penalty was issued.”
The amendment would replace “issued” with “received”. I accept that that change would not make much difference in most cases. However, I am told that I will struggle to get back to my constituency later, because the west country is covered in snow, and although I accept that it is unlikely that snow will continue to lie deep on the ground for the next month, one could imagine how an extreme weather event, as BBC meteorologists have started to call them, or a postal strike could mean that the 30-day period would be considerably reduced by the time someone received the notice. Similarly, someone who lives in two places or who works away from home for a period or who comes back from a two-week holiday to find that a notice was issued in their absence will have a reduced period in which to pay. In such cases, the period of 30 days, which sounds generous, might be less generous if taken from the date of issue, rather than the date of receipt. I suspect that the Economy Secretary will say that it will be difficult to measure the date on which a notice is received, but, nevertheless, my purpose is to try to ensure that no one is unfairly penalised, because of factors outside their control.