Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), who began in the style of someone making a winding-up speech, to the extent that I suddenly wondered whether I was going to be called to speak at all. She told us that someone who is dead is someone who is not alive but, in what was a good and consensual speech, she made the important point that this is our one chance to get the legislation right. We will not revisit this issue through primary legislation because the Labour Government of 2011 will be too busy, and we owe it to everyone involved, whether bankers or the communities who will benefit from this, to get the legislation right first time. There are a number of issues about that which I shall address later. I take, rather than declare, an interest in this issue as chair of both the Community Development Foundation and the all-party group on the community and voluntary sector. Until this Bill came along, I had not realised that in one important respect the banking industry is part of the voluntary sector, and I will return to the issue of whether the banks will volunteer to take part in the dormant accounts proposals. I was interested to think about the nature of the funding that will come out of this legislation—as well as the quantity, which is also important. Is what we are talking about a windfall, or will there be an ongoing stream of funds as more and more current live accounts become dormant in the future? My guess is that, in the future, as awareness of dormant accounts rises increasingly through the reunite process and other means, there will be fewer dormant accounts reaching maturity. Also, as people have more control over their accounts, through internet banking and so forth, there might be less chance of them losing control of those accounts in the future. Therefore, there is a worry that what we are talking about might, in effect, be a windfall—that it might be a source of income that peaks over the first two or three years as the backlog of dormant accounts gets cleared but that then rapidly falls. If we believe the British Bankers Association, we are talking about the sum of £500 million. That is a lot of money in some respects, but over how many years will it be spent, and will it get topped up as the years pass? As the Chief Secretary told us at the beginning of the debate, that £500 million equates to 0.07 per cent. of banks' assets. In other words, the size and impact of this scheme, were it to be taken up 100 per cent. by the banks, is a pinprick. It will not make a difference to the stability of the banks, and while I understand the sensitivity in the current circumstances—which could not have been predicted weeks ago, let alone months ago or when this issue was prioritised—we should enact the legislation. We possibly should talk later on in Committee about implementation dates, but, even in these circumstances it is right only to tolerate months of delay, not years of delay. We need to know how much money we are talking about and, as has been said, the BBA estimate is at the bottom end of the estimates. Regardless of whether we end up with a voluntary or a mandatory scheme, we need to find a way of being clear about how much money is involved and the time scale governing that money. I agree with what has been said about the reunite process. It is absolutely right that people should be reunited with what are, after all, their own possessions. Like other Members, I have had the e-mail from Halifax Bank of Scotland telling me how it is getting on, with £18 million of dormant funds already allocated and £29 million still to be allocated. It also told me that 83 per cent. of accounts left to be reunited hold less than £100. For that reason, I would be wary of the suggestion reported to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones) that there should be a £100 de minimis sum, because if we are talking about 83 per cent. of all these accounts, lots of those £100s make up a lot of money, and they should be included. HBOS went on to tell me that 244 dormant accounts had been identified in my constituency. I found that a bit odd, because either it is extrapolating, in which case on average there should be 244 accounts per constituency, or it knows the postcodes of the people who own these accounts and who it is seeking to reunite with them. I would be interested to know from HBOS whether those 244 accounts are an extrapolation or that is the right figure.