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Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

I agree with the hon. Gentleman in this sense: I have great doubts about the willingness or the ability of private sector banks in the UK—what is left of them—to deliver the saving gateway programme. In addition, there may be a lack of trust in the sector among the target audience. I am not convinced, and those banks certainly do not seem to be champing at the bit to provide the product. When the Institute for Public Policy Research studied the pilot projects, it suggested that the saving gateway should be delivered exclusively by the credit union movement. I am agnostic about whether the programme should be delivered by a publicly owned national savings bank or by the credit union movement. The history of the trustee savings bank movement suggests that there is a positive role for voluntary, locally generated activity. The Government announced three ideas at the same time in 2001: the child trust fund, the saving gateway, and the universal bank, which the Post Office was meant to deliver. We never got that universal bank. The Government need to re-examine that, because clearly the market is failing when so many people are financially excluded from the mainstream, and the Government are well aware of that. However, there is only so much that they can do by way of exhortation of financial institutions and people. There is an institutional gap. There is a case for looking at new financial products and tax incentives that can be built up around them. We should consider how we can create new institutions with which people can identify, and which can mark an important new phase that we hope we will enter, as part of a national savings plan. Clearly, the Bill is targeted at a particular segment of the population. I noticed that take-up was very high—82 per cent.—in the first pilot project. If 82 per cent. of 8 million people take up the saving gateway account in the first few years, the Government's figures will be way out. The amount will be about 10 times the £130 million that the Government have put up for year one. Perhaps the Government hope that take-up will not be as high as it was in the pilot project. As hon. Members have said, we need a far wider programme and strategy. We need a national savings plan. We need to start changing the culture, by creating new institutions. People must see themselves as savers—that is fundamental to the process. People's self-concept is the key to creating behavioural changes. That change will be very difficult, as a number of hon. Members have said. Who will see themselves as a saver over the next 18 months, as people face the storm of the worst economic recession for many generations? It is an incredibly high incline on the uphill struggle that we face. Having said that, the measures are a small, important step in the right direction, and they are part of a far broader debate that we desperately need to have.