Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have been involved in the mutual movement for probably the whole of my adult life, so I think that I understand that movement and its ethos. A person who joins a building society, a friendly society or a credit union does so specifically as against joining a commercial bank. That is because, as they all understand, those bodies that I have just mentioned are mutual, there are no shareholders, and the operational surplus achieved—and all of them achieve it—is shared among the membership. That is very different to a commercial banking arrangement. I fear that the Government have never really full understood that fact. With a dormant building society account, members who opened that account originally made a conscious decision to put their money in a mutual society. They could have gone the other way but they did not. So they and their successors in life, who have somehow or other got lost, would want to see their money being used on the same principles for which it was originally invested and used by the charities set up by that particular building society. That is not a party-political thing at all. Certainly, given the choice between the building societies’ own charities—which all have independent trustees and are geared to what the society is interested in, by way of helping a community or the environment or whatever—and the Big Lottery, I do not believe that a single member of a building society would vote for the Big Lottery. Very few would vote for the lottery as a whole, although that would be a little better. The Big Lottery, like it or not, does not have the image today that people in the mutual world trust. I am sorry to be so blatant, but you have only to look at some of the projects that the Big Lottery has got into and the image that it has. It may be unfair but it is a fact that the image that it portrays is one of being an extension of government, excessively PC and not really understanding the local environment in which the building societies operate. In addition, cost efficiency is a criterion. This is money brought forward from a dormant situation. The existing charities, controlled by the charity commissioners, are very cost effective. While I do not have the detailed figures of the Big Lottery, I suspect that if I went into it I would find that the Big Lottery’s costs are far higher than any of the cost bases for their charities. The building societies are already regulated by the charity commissioners and they have their own auditors. I chaired a friendly society for eight years, which had a charity. At the AGM, probably our most actively discussed area was what our funds were being used for within the charity. I commend the Government for bringing forward this voluntary scheme, but they need to recognise that this minority sector, which it is, has a different outlook and the money would be better used in the existing charitable framework that is there than if it is put into the vast pot of the Big Lottery. That is why I support the noble Lord’s amendment.