Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [Lords]

May I welcome the Minister to his new position? I hope that we do not burden him too much on his first outing. I look forward to seeing him appear before the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee, and I wish him well with his joint commission. It is good to see. Like many others, I generally welcome this Bill. It will create a real opportunity to provide additional help in several areas that need greater attention, of which youth services are a particularly good example. I am happy to give it my general support, but—as the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) said—we have to get it right. The big belt will come early on, because money will be collected from dormant accounts in which it has built up over a long time, and the amount that can be expected thereafter will diminish. That is one of my concerns, and I am sure that the Economic Secretary will wish to address it later. Many of my other concerns have already been mentioned, but I hope to make some novel points. I am concerned about the administration of the scheme and its associated costs. The Bill does not help us very much with that concern, and I would like to know more. I am especially concerned about how the money will be distributed. Lack of scrutiny is also a concern. The Big Lottery Fund has come more and more under Government control, and we need to ensure that scrutiny is transparent and open to the general public. I am not sure that we have been told how that will be achieved. On the basis of the law of diminishing returns, the question is whether enough money will be available to meet the objectives laid down by the Government and to meet the promises that we might make about future funding to people who receive moneys early on. The final concern is exactly how much money is lying in dormant accounts. The Secretary of State has rightly said that estimates vary massively. The British Bankers Association estimates the value of dormant accounts at between £400 million and £500 million. The Sun—and I leave it to the Economic Secretary's discretion whether to believe its figures—says that the value is £1 billion. The spectrum seems to grow daily. I rarely congratulate the banks, but they deserve our congratulations in one respect. Since the launch of the mylostaccount.org.uk website, many people have been rightfully reunited with the money in their dormant accounts. The number of people claiming for lost accounts has trebled since the website went online, with 760 claims being made a day. To date, 140,000 people have been helped, which is a sizeable effort by the banks. A cost argument was made by the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who is no longer in his place, but that is not my point. My point is that that figure was achieved through use of a website, which is not the most costly form of distributing information. Perhaps we should ask why the banks did not do this before. The Economic Secretary might be able to tell me what conversations he has had in that respect and whether there is a case for the banks to answer. NS&I has had more than 25,000 successful traces, amounting to £41 million of restored assets, and to date Halifax Bank of Scotland has reunited people with more than £18 million of dormant funds. HSBC has also made sizeable efforts to return funds. The banks are to be commended, but their efforts will detract from the amount that will be available in future years. The success in tracing dormant accounts will have an impact on the estimates of the revenue that will be raised, and the Government have already said that money is to be earmarked primarily for youth services, among other projects. They also want to use the money for financial capability and inclusion services. My golly, if there was ever a good time to think about financial capability and inclusion, especially for bankers and the City, this is it. Given that, more money will need to be spent on the Government's objectives. I especially welcome the boost for the third sector. Incidentally, I hate calling it the third sector; it sounds like something out of ““Star Trek””. I prefer to call it the voluntary sector. We are promising a sizeable amount of money for some sizeable projects. At a fringe event at the Labour party conference, the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas), who was then Minister with responsibility for the third sector, confirmed that a financial institution to channel those funds ““is going to happen””. That will involve further sizeable cost. Under an amendment in the other place, building societies and banks with group assets of less than £7 billion would be able to distribute some of the money through their own community schemes. There are 59 building societies in the UK, many of them capable of taking up that offer, and many smaller banks will want to do the same, although pray God they survive the present conflagration of banks. The money will therefore add up to a sizeable amount. We must ask how much money will be available to meet the expectations that have been raised in the fields to which we have referred. I am also concerned about the proportion of money that will be issued by the Minister, as I understand it, to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I hope that I will be forgiven if I say that I am concerned that the Government have that matter under their control through the Minister. I am sure that the present Minister is a most honourable person; I have no doubt about that at all. However, when I consider the way in which the revenue support grant has been used for political ends and the way in which the Government have shifted money to those areas that they consider their priority—it is not unnoticeable that many of those areas are where Labour Members sit, but I would not cast any aspersions about that—it raises concerns. It is fair to ask questions about the possible creation of greater concern about the proportionality of the distribution of the money. I believe that the Government should make a statement on the issue before the Bill is passed—I hope that we will hear something tonight. I have talked about the money being considerably less than was expected, and I wonder whether the Government are not promising more than they can deliver. What percentage of the funds would be channelled into new projects such as those mentioned by many people tonight? Into what other areas might the money go? I am concerned about the differential between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I recognise the point about devolved government, but that is no reason to diminish our rights in the country of my birth and infant nurture, England. I fear that we might miss out again, and I do not think that my constituents would be overly happy about that. I could go on about many other issues, but they have been raised by other Members tonight and I would not want to test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, by referring to issues that have already been well rehearsed. My major point of concern is the Government having their hands on money on which they should not have their hands. Like many people in my home county of Northamptonshire, I have a healthy fear of the Government's ability to spend my money and their money. I therefore want perfect clarity and transparency in how that money is to be spent. I fear that when Government projects go over budget—we all know that they regularly do—there is a temptation to find ways to ease money out of other sectors from which it perhaps should not be eased and to place it into areas that are, in truth, the Government's responsibility. I do not want to dwell too much on the Olympic games, but they are a particularly good example of how moneys that were not meant to be spent on such projects are now being spent in large sums. We were originally told that the Olympic games would cost £3.4 billion with a further £738 million coming from the private sector. That has grown to £9.325 billion with only—