Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, has reiterated, with great consistency and with considerable force, the points he made on the Bill at Second Reading and again in Committee. I guess that I am obliged to recognise that I am not making much impression on him with my responses. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, brings an additional insight into these issues—his long association with the mutualisation movement. I want to address the issues he has brought to the House. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has spoken to the point and with her usual succinctness; she said that she agrees with the noble Lord, Lord Shutt. If these issues are put to the test I think I know the figures that might emerge. Therefore, I shall not deploy my full persuasive talents as I might be wasting them on the desert air with this amendment. Suffice it to say that, if we accept the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, we would be obliged to accept that all building societies—and the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, gave voice to the excellence of the mutualisation movement—look alike and that all have a pretty uniform relationship to local communities. The Government’s contention is that that is just not so. We recognise that—as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, confessed—of the 59 building societies, 51 are small enough, local enough and limited in their ambition enough to play their full part in local areas. We know which local areas would benefit from their work, and rightly so, because they have built themselves up on the basis of the community, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. The other eight are in an altogether different category. To which locality is a building society called Nationwide meant to be local?