Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

The amendment would add an extra subsection to Clause 10, which deals with accounts ceasing to be saving gateway accounts. In fact, Clause 10 is merely a regulation-making power and contains no substance. My amendment, which is probing, says that an account will cease to be a saving gateway account if the account holder sells it, transfers it or charges it as security. My aim is to prevent a saving gateway account holder from cashing in on the maturity bonus by selling it for cash or borrowing against it. I do not think that the Government want to encourage a secondary market in saving gateway accounts, since that would go against the spirit of trying to encourage savings. I drafted transferring the account into the amendment, but, in hindsight, I do not think that that is what I meant to do, because I did not intend to cover transfers to an alternative provider, which we covered in an earlier amendment. However, I wanted to cover other kinds of transfer such as sales or possibly gifts. My concern is that the kinds of organisation that facilitate pay-day borrowing, for example, and other uneconomic forms of lending should not be allowed to manipulate saving gateway account holders. It would be all too easy for a person with a saving gateway account, perhaps 18 months in and wanting some ready cash, to borrow against the account or to sell the account, with the lender cashing in the maturity amount. I could not find anything in the regulations that dealt with this and so, as I said, my amendment is probing to find out the Government’s approach to saving gateway account holders using their account as a way of raising money prior to maturity. The Child Trust Funds Act 2004, which is from the same stable as the saving gateway account, contains specific provisions about inalienability. I should perhaps have used that as a template for this amendment, but I rediscovered it too late in the day. If a bar on alienability is good enough for child trust funds, we should have some similar restriction for saving gateway accounts. I beg to move.