Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 24: 24: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause— ““Register of dormant account funds Register of dormant account funds (1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the establishment and maintenance of a register of dormant account funds (““the register””). (2) The regulations made under subsection (1) shall provide for the particulars relating to dormant accounts to be entered in the register. (3) The Secretary of State shall ensure that such arrangements are in force as he considers appropriate for allowing members of the public to inspect the register. (4) The register may be kept in any form subject to its being capable of being converted into a legible form and being used to make a legible copy or reproduction of any entry in the register. (5) In this section, ““dormant account funds”” has the same meaning as in section 5.”” The noble Lord said: We have spent virtually all the afternoon discussing how the reclaim fund will deal with the moneys that it gets and how it will subsequently reunite people with their assets. The amendment takes further yesterday’s debate, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, and some of the comments raised by other noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford. I think we agree that the ideal outcome is not that the reclaim fund will have a huge amount of money to hand on to the Big Lottery Fund but that the people who own the money will get their hands on it. The amendment seeks to make that easier. It includes provisions to create a scheme to help reunite people with what is rightfully theirs. It calls for the creation of a register that identifies unclaimed assets held by banks and building societies and allows members of the public to search for data to reclaim their lost assets. Crucially, such a scheme would allow charities, as well as relatives, to identify unclaimed assets from deceased people’s estates. For that to be possible, members of the public and charities must, in the first instance, be able to search a database with minimal information. I suggest that all that is required is the name, last known address and perhaps date of birth. No one is suggesting that any register should contain the full details of the account and certainly not details of the amount of money in it. In the case of the estates of deceased people, information about the financial institution in which the asset is held is likely to be unknown; hence the difficulty in utilising some existing schemes where it is necessary to approach an individual bank or building society. Furthermore, at the moment there is no compulsion for financial institutions to make data available to any schemes. So far as concerns the Unclaimed Assets Charity Coalition, the key to establishing a successful system is to ensure maximum participation by financial institutions and access to as much data as necessary. As currently drafted, the Bill would not compel financial institutions to make data more easily accessible to the general public; banks and building societies will simply be asked to publicise the fact that they hold unclaimed assets. But that will be of no help to people who do not know which institution is holding a lost asset and to charities which are trying to trace lost assets belonging to the estates of deceased people. The two questions most likely to be raised by noble Lords, and possibly by the Government, are as follows. First, is it possible to establish and manage such a scheme in a reasonable way and at reasonable cost? Secondly, what about confidentiality and fraud? Dealing with the first question, in many ways a prototype centralised register already exists—the Unclaimed Assets Register. This was set up in 2000 and, at the moment, companies from the life assurance, pensions and unit trust sectors supply the UAR with records of customers with whom contact has been lost. This information is held on a secure database and can be searched by anyone for a fee. If a potential match is made, the searcher is given contact details with the relevant financial company and asked to make contact, whereupon the company concerned verifies entitlement and makes direct payment. Since its inception, the UAR has helped to reunite approximately £500 million with its rightful owners. That is a substantial sum, particularly given that when the scheme was established no banks were members of it. The Charity Bank joined it in 2003 and in July 2007 HBOS announced that to help in tracing its dormant customers, it, too, was signing up to the UAR. Charity Bank believes that this model could form the basis of a national register that is easily capable of being searched by individuals, companies and charities. The Commission on Unclaimed Assets has also considered this proposal and outlined two possible models in its report entitled Unclaimed Assets: Consumer Protection and Regulation of Dormant Accounts. One is, broadly speaking, along the lines that I have just described and the lines that the Unclaimed Assets Register follows— namely, that there would be a single national register containing basic information such as name, date of birth and, possibly, last known address. The other option that the CUA looked at would be to allow an individual to interrogate databases of dormant assets held within each financial institution. Either of those two models is possible but, in terms of ease of getting an answer, the first is probably better. In terms of cost, the people running the UAR and the Commission on Unclaimed Assets believe that the cost of an electronic register, not a paper register, should not be significant and certainly should not be prohibited. If you could set up such a register at a reasonable cost and if everyone agrees that in principle it is desirable that people should be able to reunite assets with their owners as easily as possible, what about the second question about fraud and confidentiality? As a general principle, we are very bad in this country at looking at what happens elsewhere. Equivalent systems are operating around the world without huge problems in respect of fraud. The US has a number of examples of this. It is extraordinary that the US, which we tend not to consider to be at the forefront of innovative thinking in this area, has been able to manage systems like this for some time and to deal with problems as they have arisen; the systems seem robust. To take just one example, a US website called, with characteristic clarity, www.missingmoney.com, has been running for eight years and is supported by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators and participating state governments. Only minimal data are needed to run an initial search on the website; just the first name and surname. Searches are free of charge and data are refreshed monthly. A search will display the name, last known address, and the name of the banking institution. It shows also whether the amount found is more or less than $100, which helps people to decide whether it is worth taking the matter further. Exact amounts are not disclosed at that point. Apparently this website has been very popular; the payment of fraudulent claims is extremely rare and the safeguards which have been put in place to protect against fraud and identity theft have been broadly, if not entirely, successful. In principle, we are all agreed that we want to make it easy for people to find out where the dormant assets might lie. There is a feasible and relatively inexpensive electronic method of establishing a register. The concerns that people might have about confidentiality are probably overblown. There is a compelling argument for establishing such a register and I hope that the Minister will feel able to support the amendment. I beg to move.