Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I shall not forgive him for jousting about interest rates. It is interesting that his Government have so mismanaged the economy that we now have interest rates that are negative in real terms and, as such, a great disincentive to saving. Current rates will make it very difficult to convince people, once they have stopped qualifying for the Government’s generous top-up in the saving gateway, to continue to be savers. It would have been better if the Government’s management of the economy had not required the Bank of England to reduce rates to such catastrophically low levels for savers. I would also like to place on record—since the Minister got a little carried away with himself, as he does from time to time—that I did not accuse the banks of mendacity. I hope that when the British Bankers’ Association reads Hansard, it will have the assurance that I do not believe that banks are guilty of that. However, I do believe that banks do not necessarily treat their customers as we would always prefer them to be treated. The Minister has given me a number of reasons why the Government do not want to regulate and it is always a rather curious thing when on these Benches we stand up and ask for regulatory powers and the Government say they do not want to regulate. In this instance, we will probably have to agree to differ. I believe having a reserve power may well be useful, even if it can only be used at the point of rollover because of the way that inertia applies to accounts. The Government have set their minds against it and so, if there are problems and savers find that they are not being treated as well as they might by the saving gateway providers, they will know who to blame and they can add it to the long list of things that they have to blame this Government for. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 13 withdrawn.