Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I have a sense of déjà vu. I should have looked up my earlier speeches on the FAS and read them out verbatim to show how much ““I told you so”” was a justifiable comment on this occasion. Like my noble friend, who has done a splendid job on this subject since I left the Front Bench, I was surprised by the comments in the weekend press—those are the ones I saw, rather than the comments today—with regard to the funding of the FAS. It was also suggested somewhere yesterday that the administrative costs of the FAS have amounted to more than it has succeeded in paying out. No doubt the Minister will tell us whether that is so. At all events, it was clear from the beginning, when the FAS was introduced to quell a rebellion in another place, that the amounts involved were totally inadequate. They were sufficient to buy off the rebellion in the other place, but they certainly were not sufficient to meet the needs of the group of people who are on the wrong side of the deadline. If you got the other side of the PPF being set up, it was all right; but if you have to rely on the financial assistance scheme, it has proved totally inadequate. The ombudsman’s report seems to have been totally disregarded by the Government. This is becoming something of a pattern with independent reports. The reports spell out the problems arising as a result of government policy and maladministration, and then the action for which they call is not taken. Given that this is a deserving group of people who have been grossly misled about what was being done to help them, there is an argument for saying, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, that this is indeed a charitable enterprise, albeit one which ought to be financed quite straightforwardly by the Treasury.