§ The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Healey)The Bank of England's Registrar's Department has conducted gilts registration services on behalf of Her Majesty's Treasury to date, but will cease to do so from March 2005. A new service provider will need to be appointed to take its place. In preparing for outsourcing this service, the Government have taken the opportunity to modernise the arrangements for the registration and transfer of gilts. The re-engineered model has now been finalised, taking into account comments received in response to a recent consultation exercise. Details of the model are being deposited in the Libraries of both Houses today.
We plan to put the gilts registration service out to tender over the summer.