Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 1, page 1, line 15, at end insert— ““(3) A charity in receipt of a legacy may make a claim against the reclaim fund if it has reason to believe that the testator may have a dormant account.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, during the course of our debates we had a number of discussions about the role of charities, and it emerged that there was something of a division of interest between different kinds of charities. There were those, generally large charities, which hoped that as a result of the dormant accounts being sent to the reclaim fund they would receive some benefit, whereas other charities which depended very largely on legacies rather than anything else—sometimes small charities with large legacies—thought that it would be better if the proceeds were divided in that way rather than by putting everything in a pot and handing it out through the lottery fund. The amendment addresses a situation in which a charity believes that it has a testator who will give it a legacy and that it should have the right to go back to the reclaim fund and ask it to decide whether there is such an account. We now discover that in those circumstances the reclaim fund would go back to the banks and ask them. That raises the question of a one-stop shop. Quite clearly, a charity may believe that someone has died and left it some money but it is not sure with which bank the deceased had an account. In that case it would be better if, as the noble Lord said, there was a one-stop shop approach. None the less, given that there is this division of opinion between different types of charities, such a charity should have the right, if it believes the circumstances are such that it has a legitimate claim against a particular account, to go to the reclaim fund about that claim. I beg to move.