Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, will try to keep my remarks short. There are two schemes in the Bill, as has been pointed out. There is what you might call the general or public sector scheme, which is much the bigger part of the available money, and the alternative scheme. The general scheme is bureaucratic and complicated. The alternative scheme is very simple. In fact, you only have to look at the space given to the alternative scheme in the Bill to see that it must be simple, but it would come out with a much more diverse funding than the general scheme, which is constrained. The Treasury Committee report that came out in August concentrated on consultation. The Committee took a lot of evidence—from the NCVO, the Charity Bank and the British Bankers’ Association, which has been referred to, but interestingly not from the Big Lottery Fund as far as I could make out. In conclusion 15, which is on disbursement, the report states: "““We regret the Government's decision to make its choices on funding priorities without meaningful prior consultation with relevant stakeholders””." The Government's reply, which has already been given to us by the Minister, was, ““Well, we said what we were going to do in the Pre-Budget Statement of 2005. That was our decision and our minds are made up””. That is the first ““given”” in this situation. The second ““given”” is the arrival of the Big Lottery Fund. That is wrong in principle. If you are going to support the third sector, you do not come up with a public sector solution. It is the wrong way to go. That leads me to say that I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, that the alternative would give a more desirable outcome. I certainly hope that Skipton Building Society will be above the barrier rather than below. Big is also wrong for practical reasons. These moneys are too small to make much difference to its operations and likely to remain so on the figures given by the Minister. The Big Lottery’s level of activity is shrinking at the moment, which gives it a major management challenge. It paid out grants in 2005-06 of £900 million. Its income the following year was £640 million. Clearly, that will not support the continuation of £900 million of disbursements. Its commitments in 2006-07 were £400 million, which is a reflection of the fact that, whether as an intended or unintended consequence of the Olympics, the Big Lottery Fund has to reduce its operations drastically to meet the prospective funding from lottery funds. The last figure is less than half the first—£400 million and £900 million respectively. What has been happening at the same time to the Big Lottery Fund’s costs? The answer is that they have continued to rise. The Minister referred to running costs. They have risen from £72 million in 2005-06 to £77 million in 2006-07. This leads to awful ratios. Their ratios are quite out of order. If you look at the Wellcome Trust, which has been referred to, or the Gatsby, which the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, is very much involved in, the Esmée Fairbairn or any of the other big trusts, you will find that on balance the ratio of costs for administering their funds and making grants vis-à-vis the grants themselves is about half that of the Big Lottery Fund. That leads me to wonder what is the sustainable level of Big Lottery Fund grants, given its own original statement and given more recent statements. The Big Lottery Fund’s own report published in July states—in a joint introduction by the chairman and chief executive—that it, "““will receive £425 million less than we forecast in the period 2009-12””," and that, "““there will be less money available for new funding programmes after 2009””." But in fact its disbursements have already fallen. They were 900; last year they were 750. What will they be this year? Is it not risky to put another responsibility on to the Big Lottery Fund when it already has major issues to deal with? As regards my next point, I support my noble friends Lord Astor and Lord Inglewood. My noble friend Lord Inglewood would have made this point if he were present. However, he has a family commitment and the timing of this debate has meant that he is unable to be present. As noble Lords know, he was the chairman of the committee that looked into whether works of art should be exported. He has said on many occasions that if only £25 million a year had been provided over the last few years, many works of art would not have gone abroad. He wanted to draw the Minister’s attention to that as a good cause. If additional money is to be provided, could not that cause be supported. Other witnesses have suggested that there should be a much more diverse approach to deciding where the money goes as opposed to the approach of which we have heard a great deal during this short debate. The Government should think again. Are they stuck with the 2005 decision or could they be a bit more imaginative? What do they consider the original depositors would think about most of their money going into the single stream that is proposed by the Government? As regards the alternative approach, it is not difficult to raise the £7 billion ceiling; in fact, I believe that the Bill provides for a regulation to do just that. That would give us much greater scope. If the scheme were voluntary and private, I think that many more of the institutions that have potentially dormant assets would become enthusiastic about it, whereas I fear that if they think that the scheme is government controlled and that the disbursements will also be controlled by the Government through the DCMS and the lottery fund, they will not want to join it with anything like the same enthusiasm.