Saving Gateway Accounts Regulations 2009

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this short debate. As he said, the draft instrument contains no surprises. In one respect, I am sorry that it does not, because one point that I made, no doubt at laborious length, as the Bill was going through was that, uniquely among all the areas where the Government are encouraging people to save through the tax system, in this case there is a very tight time limit of 24 months. That principle does not apply to pensions or child trust funds and it is a pity that it applies here. I think that the argument that if people have saved for up to 24 months they will carry on saving when the benefit is withdrawn is seriously flawed. However, I realise that this is not an issue on which we can make much progress today. The only substantive point that I want to make beyond that is to pick up on what the noble Baroness said about providers. The Minister said that he was confident that there would be sufficient providers, including a number of the major retail banks. Like the noble Baroness, I should be grateful if he could say a bit more about that. When the Bill was going through, the only organisation that expressed any public willingness to participate in the scheme was the Post Office, and then only with very heavy qualifications in terms of the economics. Given everything else that is going on at the moment, it is unlikely that Mr Crozier is spending much time worrying about whether he can introduce saving gateway accounts. At some point in our debate on credit unions last week, or possibly the previous week, there was a throwaway reference—and I apologise for not having it to hand—about credit unions possibly being able to offer this product. I found that rather surprising, because credit unions are very small and I should have thought that the bureaucracy involved for them in setting up the scheme might be too much of a burden. However, I should be grateful if the Minister could say whether credit unions form part of the discussions that he is having with potential providers.