Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

A number of helpful points have emerged. On the one-stop shop argument, it is a question whether someone’s children or heirs know to go to the one-stop shop. Unless they have some positive indication that the account exists, I do not really see why they should. Whether it should be one shop, in the sense that it is not individual banks that should seek to discover the owners of the assets, or whether it should be done collectively, is something that is worth considering. In that context, given the point made by the noble Lord about the position of small building societies, it may be that they should get together in seeking the rightful owners. I do not get the impression at the moment that this problem is being tackled sufficiently proactively. If I understand it correctly, these building societies and so on are not being proactive but are sitting and waiting for the owners to come along and say that they have their account. There is a big difference between those two things. The attitude that we took was that we wanted to find these people. I do not really get the impression that that is what is happening, although I may be doing them an injustice.