Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken on this amendment. As I have emphasised time and again, the important priorities of this scheme are successfully reuniting customers with their proper resources and increasing consumer awareness about such resources and what is proposed in the Bill. We consulted on these issues when preparing the Bill. The scheme’s publicity should leave account holders clear on how they can trace dormant accounts and claim their money. The noble Baroness was generous enough to refer to the announcement by the British Bankers’ Association that it is in the process of amending the Banking Code to reflect this. She is right that the code is voluntary but it covers a wide range of banks. The banks have, I think, also written to noble Lords about this matter; if not, I am sure that the letter is on its way. They understand the anxieties of the House that maximum steps should be taken to make customers aware of their assets and the implications of the scheme. In real terms, account holders will not feel any difference from this legislation with regard to their accounts. They are active in pursuing their interests with regard to their accounts; the only time when they are affected is if an account is defined as dormant. We hope that the cases when reclaim occurs will be few and far between; that is the purpose of the publicity that the banks are undertaking. The parts of the scheme dealing with reunification and customer notification are not a matter for the Government or for legislation, but I assure the Committee that the Government were at pains to emphasise to the interests concerned that such a scheme would not work to public satisfaction unless significant efforts were made on the process of reunion between the customer and their account, when the account has fallen into abeyance. We have had proof over the past two months of the work that has been done in this area, including later this month the launch of the one-stop shop for the customers searching for their lost accounts, which will enable them to initiate a free search covering banks, building societies and national savings via a single application. We are satisfied that significant efforts are being made with regard to this aspect of the scheme. In keeping with the voluntary concept of the scheme, we do not propose to put in legislation demands on the institutions about how they should increase awareness. They have agreed to notify account holders generally of the scheme’s introduction—that is, all customers—and its implications for them. When account holders are in active contact with their bank, notification will go through the existing channels, with the existing literature. If an account has been inactive for 15 years and the institution is not confident that it has the account holder’s current address, it is not likely to be very productive for the bank or building society to write to an address that has produced no response for that length of time. It is already usual practice for banks and building societies to write to customers whose accounts have been inactive over a much shorter period than the 15 years envisaged in the legislation. That is set out in the 10 pledges leaflets issued by the British Bankers’ Association and the Building Societies Association. If the institution receives no response, the account is treated differently from other live accounts. For example, the banks and building societies no longer send statements to an address when it is clearly proving to be unproductive. Therefore, a further requirement for a written notification after 15 years is likely to prove of benefit only to fraudsters engaged in identity theft. It would be burdensome on the institution, likely to produce little return, and the return that it could achieve could be quite deleterious. For that reason, the banks and building societies will instead continue their current practice of attempting to contact lost customers at a much earlier stage than 15 years and publish their policies on how they will determine their accounts eligible for the scheme at that 15 year stage. We have already had evidence of the work being done by the banks and building societies with regard to the scheme. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness, who tabled this as a probing amendment, will feel that she has a satisfactory enough answer to be able to withdraw it.