Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

At first blush, the amendment has quite a bit to recommend it, but the more I think about it—this was exemplified by the noble Baroness’s speech—the more I feel nervous about it for two, or possibly three, reasons. First, I see complexity beginning to emerge when one starts to work out who will be eligible even under what appears to be a simple requirement. I can see all kinds of groups benefiting who we will not really have in our minds to benefit. We should think how many middle-class students will leave university this year, and who, certainly for the first six months after leaving university, will probably have virtually nil income. If there was means eligibility here, many of them would be eligible and, as I said at Second Reading, their parents would happily enable them to save. That might be a good thing, but it is not what we are aiming for. I sense that this amendment, if it were put in the Bill and implemented, would leave us with a scheme that is not only more complex, but could also create a series of unintended consequences. The advantage of the scheme as it stands, with or without the proposed amendment of the noble Baroness, is that it has a clarity to it, and that goes very much in its favour.