Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I support this amendment, but I challenge the notion put forward by the noble Lord. Big charities have mechanisms for monitoring and when there is a carving up of money through the lottery fund they are likely to become beneficiaries, but there are small charities that have a local basis and it is a relatively frequent occurrence that someone who is thought to have no money dies and leaves everything to a small local charity, which was possibly the only group that ever befriended him, and it is discovered, sometimes a bit after the event, that the estate contains £1 million or so. That makes all the difference to that small charity in their running costs for the coming year or for a project that it wants to undertake. The advantage of a central register, however it is held, is that small charities would also be able to cross-check when there is just a will and no relatives and no one has any idea of where the accounts are, rather than having to trawl all the places where they might be. From the perspective of a small charity, this amendment is particularly appealing and the major charities also support it, as the right reverend Prelate said.