Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I should perhaps outline our position. Although we have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, we recognise that it has been a long and rocky road—a point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, alluded—to get to where we have got. This is an uneasy truce, or a fragile agreement, but it is where we are at. Our general principles would indicate that if a voluntary scheme can work then it should be allowed to work and we should not go to compulsion as our first port of call. So to that extent we are comfortable with a voluntary scheme as the first port of call. However, if that does not work—and we have tabled amendments on a review to probe whether it is working—then compulsion will be necessary. But a voluntary scheme would be better: it is a lighter touch and avoids a heavy regulatory hand and bureaucratic overlays. If it can work, that has to be the better way. That is why we are just about content to go along with the scheme in the Bill.