Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The noble Lord’s question deals with the level of competence and probity at which the Financial Services Authority is in a position to regulate. The Treasury is not brought in at that level. We must face the prospect—which is so distant that I seek to allay all concerns and not give to rise to them in this contribution, because it would suggest elements of bad faith—that this body, which controls significant resources, fails in the most extreme circumstances to reach the objectives for which it was established. The most extreme example might be that the directors took almost every resource that they had in annual salary and fees, with nothing distributed, which is hugely unlikely. If such misbehaviour at that most extreme level occurred, it might be necessary for the Treasury to give direction about how the body should work within the original framework for which it was established. If we had no structure for enforcing compliance in that most extreme of all cases, we would be open to the charge that we were creating a body in which there was no public interest to be safeguarded.