Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

We have had another unsatisfactory discussion. The Minister has just read out a bit of the BBA’s document that I am sure we all saw. It is clear that when its authors put it out they had not even read the Bill; they said the new body would be independent of government, but the Bill has a Treasury direction for it. So we know that the BBA were behind the pace. We do not understand how the body’s independence of the BBA and the BSA will work, because the Government will not tell us who the owners are. We have had no answers to any of those questions. However, that is not the point of the amendment, which is to ensure that the new body, whose ownership structure, management structure and governance structure are entirely shady at the moment, meets certain transparency requirements. Putting early information out about the reclaim fund is part of public accountability about what the fund is doing with the money. It is not a huge or onerous requirement, but it ensures that some information gets into the public domain before it is sneaked into Companies House with no fanfare after nine months. This asks for more early information. The more I hear the Government describe how this is meant to work, the more I realise they have no idea, which makes the process of the Bill extremely unsatisfactory. This is an area that I suspect we need to return to in due course. For now I shall withdraw the amendment, but we do not regard the issues raised as by any means dealt with.