Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman makes two important points, the second of which I shall deal with first. NS&I has made some progress in reuniting customers with their assets—that is an important step for it to take. We put pressure on banks and building societies to do that, so we want NS&I to undertake the same process of ensuring that customers to whom this money belongs are reunited with their assets. The hon. Gentleman's first point was about the Bill's scope, which is narrow; it focuses primarily on banks and building societies. The Treasury Committee put forward a clear argument for including NS&I in the Bill, and I was not entirely convinced by the Treasury's arguments as to why NS&I should be excluded from its scope. The suggestion was almost made that NS&I customers should not take their money out of NS&I savings products at all because that would force the Government to find new customers for those products. I did not think that it was the most robust argument that we have heard from the Government as to why NS&I should be excluded from this process. Clearly, NS&I customers are entitled to the same degree of support in identifying their assets as customers of banks and building societies. We would expect a public body to be as good as, if not better than, banks and building societies in that respect. The Chief Secretary made an argument about the exclusion of large building societies from the scope of the Bill. Many of them have strong local ties, but they are also mutuals. We are not talking only about money from their customers, but about money from their members. Some of the larger institutions feel that the Government have overlooked that element of their mutuality in trying to reverse the amendment made in the House of Lords. Account holders have a different relationship to their building societies from that which bank account customers have with commercial banks. I expect that we will have a long and healthy debate about whether that approach is appropriate. Once money from large banks has been transferred to the reclaim fund, and reserves have been put to one side for reclaims, the Big Lottery Fund will be the distributor to the three causes identified in England—youth services, financial inclusion capability and social investment—and the devolved Administrations will decide their own priorities for their share. We welcome the priorities set for England, but the Bill is silent on how those priorities will be ranked. I would be grateful if the Economic Secretary, when he winds up, could explain a little more about how the money from the reclaim fund will be used and how the priorities will be set. Will a fixed proportion of the funds go to each of the three causes? Does the order in the Bill reflect the order of priorities? Will a fixed monetary sum, rather than a proportion, be allocated to each cause? Who will determine the allocation between the various priorities? The Bill makes frequent reference to the Secretary of State, but given that the priorities cover three Departments—the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office—and the Big Lottery Fund itself is accountable to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to which Secretary of State does the Bill refer? We need some clarity—[Interruption.] The Economic Secretary says that the DCSF is the lead Department, but how can people who are operating in the area of financial inclusion, or social investment wholesalers, be sure that their priorities are getting a proper hearing from the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families? We need to bear in mind that co-ordination issue, and it is odd that a Secretary of State with a particular interest in one of the priorities should take the lead. We will need to explore that. On the issue of the causes, we must express some sympathy for Sir Ronald Cohen and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets. It must have thought that when Sir Ronald, the chairman of commission, who was so close to the then Chancellor—now Prime Minister—suggested that money from unclaimed assets should go to a social investment bank, the recommendation would have been accepted. However, that was until the then Economic Secretary—now Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and an even closer ally of the Prime Minister—pulled rank and put two of his own pet projects in the list of priorities. He added youth services, in a nod to his future job, and financial inclusion, which was one of his priorities as Economic Secretary. That means that it is not clear whether sufficient funds will be available from this exercise to provide the sort of contribution to a social investment bank that the commission thought was necessary. It said, in its initial report, that there should be initial capital of £250 million and an annual income of £20 million for the next four years. Given the way in which the funds available for distribution appear to have been scaled down over time, it is not clear whether that ambition can be met.