Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

We have had an interesting first debate. I notice that the Minister did not ask me to withdraw my amendment. Perhaps he will accept it—or perhaps not. I wish he had read the amendment, because he spent most of his response telling me how difficult it was to deal with other categories of asset. I recognised that in my opening remarks. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, rightly reminded us of how hard it has been to get to this stage. I do not dispute that, and I pay tribute to all those who have worked to get us to this stage. The point of the amendment, however, was simply to ask the Government to report on the operation of the scheme and—importantly, as I pointed out—on the desirability of establishing schemes in respect of other providers of financial services, and to ask that the drafting be reviewed. I also said to the Minister that one year was not the right period and that I would consider a longer period. As he said, the amendment would not require an annual report. We have never said that moving into other categories of asset was easy. The Minister tried to say that the Opposition do not understand how difficult everything is. We fully understand how difficult it is, which is why we wanted to draft a broad order-making power. We also recognise that the Government want to concentrate in this Bill only on banks and building societies, which is why we want to ensure that other categories of asset are not lost sight of. That is why we drafted a very modest amendment that asked for a report. As I said, one year is almost certainly too short and the definition of what that report should cover certainly needs to be worked on, but we should be in no doubt that we should not lose sight of those other categories of asset. There is a great danger that when the Minister says, ““We’ve fulfilled the commitment in our manifesto””, people will breathe a sigh of relief at the Bill’s passage and think that the job of collecting in large amounts of value which could be put to better use has been done. Despite the fact that the Minister did not ask me to withdraw the amendment, I shall withdraw it.