Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I am a great believer that if a debate ranges around the Committee the right conclusion is reached without any intervention by the Minister. I am therefore very pleased with the last two contributions, particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, because the Committee has alighted on the obvious facts of this situation. I accept what the noble Baroness says about the importance of the protection of personal information. That is why the Government are in the process of amending the Data Protection Act, through the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, to increase the penalties for wilful misuse of personal data. I can assure the Committee that these provisions will govern the data flows in this legislation. That is why it is not necessary to have, as the noble Baroness has created, a specific bespoke solution to the issue of data protection within the framework of this institution. As the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, indicated, it is expected that the banks and building societies will act as agents of the reclaim fund. They will maintain customer records and handle customer reclaims. They have the information. This will be set out in agency agreements between the fund and the individual institutions. Therefore the fund will not require or hold customer records in the normal course of business. Where it might need access to information is in exceptional circumstances where a dispute arises over a repayment claim and the reclaim fund needs to be directly involved. It will then be able to request that the relevant information is transferred to it. That applies when contention has occurred over the justification of the claim. In normal circumstances, the banks and building societies will do a great deal of the activity, as the noble Lords, Lord Howard and Lord Shutt, said. They are already doing it, although the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, said that that may be a contrast with the recent past. I pass no comment on that. I think we should welcome the banks’ and building societies’ commitment to that additional activity and to making sure that rightful account holders can repossess their money. The banks and building societies will be the agents for this work. As the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, indicated, the reclaim fund will be concerned with the distribution of the resources that flow into it as a result of the judgments of the banks about funds in dormant accounts. The reclaim fund will not be involved in those judgments. The banks and building societies will do that in the recognition that there is a public obligation, and their public accounts will reflect how much they are transferring to this fund. There will potentially be a situation where a claim is contested and the reclaim fund will have to inform itself of the justice of the case. It would need that information then. The noble Baroness does not need the great artifice of the bespoke public protection she seeks to insert into the Bill, as the Data Protection Act will already guarantee that. In any case, we are talking about a body that will have very little information about these accounts at its disposal. The banks and building societies, as agents to the reclaim fund, will be responsible for delivering accuracy.