Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

This is increasingly unsatisfactory. We are being asked to pass a Bill without knowing much about what kind of body is being created. We are debating this in the context of a company being created, but we are not being told what kind of company. We are told that it is to have a power of direction from the Treasury, which is extremely unusual. We are then told that its articles have to have a provision about reasonableness of expenditure, which, as far as I am aware, has never been included in the articles of a limited company. Certainly I have never come across one. We are trying to find out how this will work in practice. The Minister said that that is a matter for the directors and members. We asked about the directors and members and got no answers. We do not know who the directors or the members are because the Minister is not sharing any of that with us. Again, we hit the issue of whether this body is public or private. The Minister said that it is a private body but that it would be in the full glare of public accountability. We know that this body is not really private; it is carrying out a public function—as I have already argued—and the Minister expects high standards. He will not tell us how this will work out in practice. What is the balance of rights and responsibilities as between the owners of the shares, the Treasury and the management? These are important issues for the practical working of this body. I am coming to the conclusion that a Companies Act company is the wrong model for this body. It is sitting very uneasily on it and the Minister is not able to answer any of our detailed questions about how it will work in practice. If the Minister had tried to set up a reclaim fund in a normal Bill, he would have had to specify who appointed the directors, who the directors are and what are the powers and responsibilities of the people who interact with the body. But the Government seem to think that they can set up a definition of a reclaim fund with no detail around it; the banks can then go away and produce something with no involvement from Parliament as to its practical outworking—and the Minister thinks that this is satisfactory. I have to record now that we do not regard this as satisfactory in any sense. The more we get into the detail the more we find that this scheme is so lacking in detail and substance that we might want to think much further about it on Report rather than in these detailed amendments. For now I will withdraw the amendment but the Minister should be aware that he raised more questions than he answered. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.