Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The whole Committee is at one on the objective, which is as far as possible to reunite people with their rightful resources, so I very much welcome the motivation behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. I shall be increasingly embarrassed in this Committee if the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, continues to put forward my arguments for me, as she will render me redundant somewhat before my time. However, our concern is exactly as she articulated—namely, that the banks and building societies are concerned about confidentiality and identity fraud. Let us remember that under the amendment they would be writing after 15 years to an address which may or may not be correct. They would not know the recipient, otherwise they would be able to solve the problem of the dormant account. There are real anxieties on this score. I hear what the noble Lord said about newspaper advertisements. Being costly, that may not be practicable for the smaller building society, but it beggars belief that we would expect the major banks to produce advertisements which would make sense to anyone. The process would therefore presumably involve a letter to an address, with all the risks that that would carry. I emphasise that the banks and building societies are all too well aware that this legislation raises the question of how diligent and efficacious they are in seeking to ensure that dormant accounts are kept to an absolute minimum as they are not their property but the property of customers. Banks have a practice of pursuing dormant accounts. They have a clear definition of when an account becomes dormant in terms of a lack of activity in the account and they seek to reduce the number of such accounts. All banks recognise that, when they signed up to the agreement which underpins this legislation, effectively they were throwing a searchlight on the whole process of dormant accounts. In doing that, it behoved them to address more vigorously whether they were guaranteeing that they had made strenuous efforts to reunite owners with their resources. They made it pretty clear on 8 November that they intended to make additional efforts in this field. A one-stop shop is being established for customers searching for their lost accounts. It will be launched in January and will enable people to initiate a free search covering banks, building societies and, in this respect, National Savings & Investments via a single application. In addition, a great deal of publicity and activity will attend the development of this legislation. After all, a lot of institutions will be potential beneficiaries. The banks and building societies have entered into the agreement in the full knowledge that more effort will now be necessary to reunite owners with their money and there will be vigorous activity in that regard. The Banking Code will also identify progress on these issues. Therefore, there will be public recognition of the success of the work done in regard to dormant accounts in terms of both what it facilitates for other institutions and the effort that the banks make to ensure that these accounts are kept to a minimum. The customer is, after all, their main responsibility.