Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, after ““society”” insert ““, having advertised the names and last known postcode address of dormant account holders on its books so that the holders, or their heirs, can claim them within a period of six months,”” The noble Lord said: It will be convenient to debate Amendment No. 6 along with this amendment, as in many ways it is complementary to it. Reference has already been made to the helpful way in which the Public Bill Office operates. However, I note, at the end of my Amendment No. 3, the appearance of the words, "““within a period of six months””." I have no recollection of ever having written that, and while it may be that the Public Bill Office has long suffered from being unable to read my writing, it has not yet managed to imply that I was going to write something that I actually did not. I do not wish to raise the issue of six months. I referred to this legislation in the course of the debate on the gracious Speech. Unfortunately arrangements for a funeral prevented me from being at Second Reading, but I have read the debate carefully. The Minister, and a number of others, stressed that reuniting account holders with their money must be the first priority wherever possible. I am sure that is right. On the one hand, as has been implied just now, the banks have an interest in hanging on to the money, while on the other hand the charities are saying how marvellous it would be if they could get their hands on it, but in the middle of all that are the actual account owners. We must ensure that everything possible is done to find them. When I spoke in the debate on the gracious Speech I referred to the fact that almost exactly 10 years ago I was asked by Mr Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve in America and a distinguished American public servant, to act as one of the arbitrators on what became known as the Claims Resolution Tribunal for dormant accounts in Switzerland. I took that on, and on the whole it operated well. We were successful in uniting many of the dormant account holders or their heirs with the money that was rightfully theirs. I say to my noble friend Lord Hamilton that on the whole I found the Swiss banks extremely helpful in the course of that exercise. The task we had was a much more difficult one than identifying dormant accounts in British banks will be. To start with, Swiss bank accounts, certainly in the earlier period, on the whole did not have anything by way of a signature. It was simply a numbered account—someone wandered in, opened the account and that was that. To try to find the heirs to that account 70 years later was not easy. It involved identifying individuals to see whether they were the right person at all. That ought not to be a difficulty so far as these bank accounts are concerned. Similarly, we had trouble tracing the addresses and so on. But that was a long time ago. With this legislation we are talking about an account being dormant if it has been so for more than 15 years. I suspect that many of them have been dormant for a much longer period. We are not really seeking to find the ““customer””, but probably the heir or even the heir of the heir, as the rightful owner of the account. The question then is how should one seek to find them? On the Claims Resolution Tribunal we were faced with this problem. What we did—and I am extremely grateful to the Library for digging this out—was publish in the press lists of names and addresses, as far as they were known. It will be easier in this case, because we could simply put in the last known postcode of the person. Eventually, we dealt with it on the internet, which was in its infancy. That would be a much easier way of doing this, together with an explanation of what it was all about—namely that these were dormant accounts. If you thought that the accounts belonged to you or your grandmother or whoever, then you should write in because we would be able to check. I notice from the banks’ briefing that two of the largest deposit takers have launched reunification exercises, while others are at an advanced planning stage. As I am coming a little late to this, I have not previously looked at the proposed legislation as closely as I might have. However, if two banks have launched reunification exercises, I am not aware of it, and I do not know whether many people in this room are aware of it. There is an overwhelming case for adopting a similar approach to the one we adopted on the Claims Resolution Tribunal—namely, to publish the names of the dormant accounts and the last known postcodes, inviting people to write in and apply if they think that an account is theirs or that it belonged to one of their relatives and they may be entitled to it. The individual cases can then be examined in the same way as the tribunal examined such claims. The scale of the operation would not be vastly different—some £250 million or so, and some £100 million or so in relation to building societies. We were dealing with similar amounts regarding the Swiss accounts. I never totted up how much I actually disbursed, but it was certainly tens of millions of pounds and it may have even been hundreds of millions. Therefore, such an exercise can be carried out successfully, and it would be the right approach for us to adopt. I was concerned with the Holocaust accounts, but a great many others were nothing to do with the Holocaust and were accounts that had simply gone dormant. Very often a person died and did not tell their heirs or relatives of the account. Indeed, in some remarkable cases, having given the family everything else, a person had not mentioned that they were hanging on to a dormant account, for whatever reason. It is interesting, perhaps, to speculate on that. This is a positive amendment and it would be helpful to incorporate it in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what present arrangements are being made, but it is not my impression that a great deal is being done at the moment. It is essential to hit a balance between the banks and potential beneficiaries and I would like to consider whether those who have tragically suffered regarding their pensions in the past 10 years should be recipients, rather than charities, and whether this is the right approach. I hope that this amendment is a constructive suggestion. Other questions arise, and one that I hate to raise relates to safe deposit boxes. Many safe deposit boxes may contain very large sums. Again, I say from my own experience that all kinds of different things turn up once you start to open up safe deposit boxes. In one instance, it was believed that the box contained a magical jewel that would allow a certain sect to, if not rule the world, be a lot better off. This amendment is a constructive suggestion and I hope that we have a positive response from the Minister. I beg to move.