UK Parliament / Open data

Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I am grateful to those who have contributed to this debate. It was what I would call an ““onion-peeling”” debate, in that more and more layers came off and questions that we had not thought of previously, even if we had sat down for 10 hours to look at the Bill, suddenly emerged. I think I am right in saying that the situation is as follows. There is a dormant account on which interest will be paid, but one of two things can happen to it. It may simply be paid out to the owner, in which case I presume that interest either has been or will be added. I am a little more doubtful about fees. If the account has been dormant for 30 years, there will be little of it left if the fees that have accumulated in that period, in which nothing has happened, wipe out the whole account, which might have been quite large 30 years previously. We had that problem in Switzerland as well. Perhaps we should reconsider the fees aspect. In all events, that is the case where the money goes to the rightful owner. Alternatively—and this is a more difficult issue—the account with interest up to that point goes to the fund. The problem is what happens then. Does interest continue to be added to it and, if so, at what rate? It would be jolly difficult for the fund to track back what interest was being paid by the bank and then apply that rate of interest. Does a charity, for example, eventually get what that interest would have been? Finally, there is the question of tax—on which the noble Lord says he will write and I do not ask him to comment further today. A dormant account may hold a large amount—say, £0.5 million—which has been there for 30 years and the interest will have piled up. Will the Revenue get its hands on that?
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
697 c25GC 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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