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Saving Gateway Accounts Bill

The amendment concerns the penalty chargeable on an account holder whose declaration made at the point of opening a saving gateway account was incorrect. As noble Lords may be aware from the draft regulations that we have published, we intend that this declaration will include confirmation from the account applicant that they meet the "connection with the UK" conditions, set out in regulations made under Clause 3(1)(b), and that they have not previously opened a saving gateway account, other than an account closed within a "cooling-off" period offered by the account provider. Where HMRC becomes aware that a person has made an incorrect declaration at account opening and is not eligible for a saving gateway account, action will be taken to withdraw the saving gateway status of their account and any right to match payment. We do not therefore propose that a person should be permitted to benefit as a result of an incorrect declaration. In certain circumstances, where an incorrect declaration was made deliberately, HMRC can also impose a fixed penalty of £300. The noble Baroness’s amendment would go further, by extending the circumstances in which the penalty would be applied to include those cases in which an account-opening declaration had been made incorrectly through carelessness. We intend that this penalty, which can be imposed only on individual account holders rather than financial institutions, should be reserved only for the most serious cases in which a person has deliberately sought to exploit the system. That is reflected in the amount charged and the fact that this penalty cannot be mitigated or reduced when chargeable. We do not consider that it would be proportionate or appropriate to apply this penalty to any mistakes that might have been made simply through carelessness. In the context of people with little experience of mainstream financial services, who may be concerned about the account-opening process anyway, the threat of a wide-ranging penalty could easily be a deterrent to applications to the scheme. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.