Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

We absolutely support the noble Lord in his view that one of the main aims of the legislation should not simply be that the dormant assets end up in a reclaim fund; they should end up where they should properly be—namely, with the people whose accounts they are, or their heirs and successors. The amendment would be one way in which to begin to improve the proportion of people who reclaim their own assets. My query is whether it goes far enough. We have tabled our own amendment, Amendment No. 24, which seeks to do something slightly more comprehensive. One problem is that if heirs are unaware that there may be such a dormant account, having to trawl around a number of banks and building societies to find it is quite a business. How you do that is also a challenge. I do not think that for the clearing banks and big building societies you could do it by advertising in the newspapers because that would involve too many names. Using the internet would mean that you would not need a paper-based approach. Our approach is a slightly different one but would achieve the same aim as this amendment, and I shall be interested to hear how the Minister responds.