Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, as I understand it, we are debating Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4 as well as Amendment No. 1. I will concentrate my remarks on Amendment No. 2. When we discussed these matters in Committee and on Report, it became clear that charities, which are clearly concerned about these issues, could gain in one of two ways that are, to some extent, competitive. On the one hand, it could be that the rightful owners of the assets were not found, and that the assets then ended up in the so-called reclaim fund with the proceeds—or what remained in that fund—being distributed, unfortunately in my view, by the National Lottery to various deserving causes. So the charities could benefit in that way. Alternatively, it could be that they found that they were entitled to a legacy—as I understand it, that is very important in the case of small charities— and they would make a direct claim on a particular asset that had laid dormant in the bank. Obviously, if this second group made a successful claim, the first group would lose out, although in fact they might all be part of the same charity. The other problem that arose was with regard to confidentiality. I have some experience in these matters, because I was asked some 10 years ago by Mr Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, to become an arbitrator with regard to the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland. I had not fully appreciated from that experience that that was a very unusual circumstance because the Swiss Government had legislated so that the names of the account holders could be revealed. I understand that that is not true except for accounts that have been dormant since World War 2. Therefore the situation in Switzerland and here is that bank confidentiality is regarded as very important and my understanding is that the banks are not prepared to release the names of the people concerned so that, for example, charities could discover whether they had a legacy or not. Amendment No. 2 gets around that to a considerable extent but involves the establishment of a register, which would be a sensible development. The register could remain confidential, but under paragraph (b) of new subsection (3B) of Amendment No. 2, it would be possible for a charity which believed that it had a legacy in a dormant account to go to the registrar and ask him whether that was so. As the noble Baroness pointed out, that is an extremely difficult process at present because you do not know which bank might have the account, whereas if there was a register all the accounts would be coalesced. This is the right approach; it would maintain confidentiality but enable the charities to ascertain whether in a particular case they were entitled to obtain what was rightfully theirs. It has been pointed out that this is a modest amendment; we can see how the scheme operates for three years before there is a report, but at least at that stage it will be sensible to consider the establishment of a register, and we can review the whole thing in the light of the experience of the charities in the mean time. We certainly do not want to come back to primary legislation at that stage and, therefore, it is right that we support the amendments.