Speeches by Reynolds.

“You could not design a policy with so many get-out clauses. You could not say, “You will not have a withdrawal charge if your car or your washing machine breaks down”. You could not have that. You have to have some rules around withdrawals that are not in line with the intended purpose. You cannot have a savings produc…”

“I will just say that it is a voluntary savings product. People do not have to save into the LISA. They could be saving into a cash ISA and not have a penalty for withdrawing, but then they would not get the bonus. The bonus is the thing that attracts people into the LISA from the evidence that we have seen.”

“The pandemic brought some very difficult financial circumstances for people. We were not in government, but I can absolutely appreciate why the Government at the time chose to reduce the penalty charge. Going back to the beginning, Mr Grady said, “If you reform this product, it will cost the Government money, and there…”

“I will go back to something that my colleague said. There are other saving products out there for a rainy day. This product was not designed for rainy day savings. If you need to be able to get hold of some cash for a rainy day, you could look at a cash ISA or something similar. That is what I would say in this case.”

“Yes, indeed. If they could save a little bit more, they might want to put it into the LISA. As a Minister, I am not going to give people financial advice. I am just saying that the intended purpose of this savings product is not to be the financial buffer that other cash savings could provide for people.”

“What I will say is that the house price cap is relatively high. If you look at the difference between the house price caps in the LISA and the help to buy ISA, it is a 200 grand uplift from the help to buy ISA. From February this year, the average first-time buyer house price was £240,000.”

“That would be very difficult to police. I go back to the point—I am sorry to sound like a Treasury Minister on repeat—that, if we were to reform that, it would cost money. Is that money you would want to spend in this case? You would have to take money from elsewhere. It goes to Dr Sandher’s point. Do you want to targe…”

“We are considering everything in the round, but it would cost us money. We would have to find the money from elsewhere.”

“Not doing that would cost the Government money and it is a strong incentive not to withdraw. If you were going to reduce it to 20% or less, you would have to look at what impact that would have and whether that is really the desired outcome.”

“Indeed, yes.”

“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.”