Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

It is certainly an issue. I repeat the basic principle that the customers will be repaid the amount they would have been repaid had their accounts not been transferred to the scheme; so they will get the interest. If a particular type of account has been withdrawn, which I think is what the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, is referring to, the bank or building society will obviously need to determine what happened to equivalent non-dormant accounts which were not transferred into the scheme. If these had automatically moved on to some other terms, the interest on the transferred dormant account should be calculated in accordance with the new terms too. The noble Lord looks sceptical about what I have said. I repeat that customers will have the right to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, just as they have now, if they wish to dispute the fairness of the repayments. Ultimately—we hope that it does not come to this—customers will have recourse to the courts. That is why I said to the noble Baroness that it is impossible to say exactly how the scheme will work in every single case, but I hope that the principle is clear from what I have said. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, raised an important point. It is expected that the fund will manage money prudently. FSA regulation, too, will need to be taken into account, but the noble Lord is right that the claim fund may have to pay out more than it sometimes anticipates.