Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I am sure the Committee is aware that a coalition of 53 charities is sympathetic to this amendment on exactly the grounds that have been suggested—namely, that the task is to reunite accounts with those who lawfully own them, including of course the beneficiaries of wills and the estates of deceased people. Charities are increasingly dependent on these gifts in their funds and Oxfam, Canterbury Cathedral, the Diocese of Chichester and Methodist Homes are all singing from the same hymn book. Whatever the technicalities of how we achieve it, I hope the Government will take on board that we need to address this task. Whether we have got it entirely right in the amendment is for future discussion, but the sympathy is with the idea of a publicly accessible register which is secure and protected from fraud. On a personal note, due to the incompetence of a bank, we nearly lost a large sum of money recently; had we not been persistent, we would have lost it. Some people would not be persistent and their estates would lose it. However, a register would eventually bring names to the surface. In my case the bank had got the number of the account wrong and therefore could not find the money. It said that we had transferred the money to another account but we had not done so. Something like this register would ensure that at some future point such an error would come to the surface and those who had rightful access to the funds would get them.