Speeches by Reynolds.

“We are looking at everything in the round. If we were to put it up to that level—let us take it as a hypothetical—it would cost the Government more money because you would have more people subscribing to that product because they would know they would be able to buy a product of that value. Outside Hackney, I am sorry …”

“Indeed, yes. I represent a constituency outside of London, Wycombe. Buckinghamshire has quite high house prices, but they are nothing like you see in Hackney.”

“You would want to be quite careful about that. I do not know what was in the minds of the people who designed the policy in the first place, but I can see the logic that, if you are buying as a couple, you are not able to double the price cap. Again, that does make the product available to many more people buying much …”

“Yes, but it is much more generous—sorry, when I say “generous”, it is much more generous in terms of the level of house price.”

“It is not something that I have actively considered.”

“Some of us have even moved outside of London to get a lower house price.”

“I am sympathetic. Some of these cases are difficult, but, where you have a “what if”, all the complexity that you build in is then very difficult to police. It would be very difficult to see a scenario where you had a lot of “what if”s, I am afraid.”

“It was designed at a time when house prices were lower. That is the point that Mr Dean is making. I do not know how much lower they were in your constituency at the time, to be frank.”

“I do receive a fair amount of correspondence about the price cap, but as I said before, if we were to increase the price cap, we would have to find money from elsewhere. The question then would be, “Is that value for money for the taxpayer?””

“I am going to ask my colleague.”

“They might start to contribute in the future. People move out of employment and self-employment. If you are self-employed, this might be quite an interesting product. There are others, as I have said, to save for a pension, but this is one. As Ms Webster said, it means you get your income taxed TEE; it is taxed when yo…”

“It is better to ask Michael Johnson about this, or a member of the previous Government, but, to be fair to them, it is a midway point between when you are able to take your pension early and when you take your pension, if you see what I mean.”

“No, because you can still take some of your pension early, do not forget, so 10 years before you retire. At 60, this is a midway point between that and when you do retire.”

“It is not the only product out there for the self‑employed. If this was the only thing the Government or the previous Government were doing to help the self-employed, it would not be enough. There is a question as to what we do to help the self-employed save for a pension, because it is not as easy, is it? The w…”

“It is a flexible product. It could be for the self‑employed, but it could be for employees who have an employer that is perhaps not matching the amount they are putting in.”

“They will get advice only if they pay for it, and they get targeted support if they do not pay. Well, at the moment they do not get anything, really.”

“It is a concern about all financial products, but that is what we are trying to solve. This whole problem of that big gap is something that we are trying to solve through the advice guidance boundary review.”

“We are not here to give financial advice to people. It will depend very much on your circumstance. It will depend on your allowance. It will depend on what your employer does in terms of contributions. It will depend whether you prefer to pay tax up front and be exempt, exempt, so the TEE, which is what Michael Johnson…”

“Yes. The original intention for the basic-rate taxpayer was EEE, but you have to assess that in the round on anything else that you are doing with your money. We have to be careful here. Providers have to be careful to give advice, but I do not want to be quoted from this Committee as saying, “If you have this amount o…”

“We should dig into it more, but what I will say is that it is one savings product, right? There are lots of people between the ages of 18 and 39 who have access to different savings products. It is one of a suite of savings products, so you would not expect the take-up to be a huge percentage. I agree with you that 6% …”