Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 40: 40: Clause 10, page 6, line 34, at end insert ““, or ( ) the bank or building society in question had been put on notice by any person who appeared to the bank or building society to have a relevant interest in the account that the account was not in fact dormant.”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 40 is also a probing amendment on the meaning of ““dormant”” in relation to Clause 10. The amendment deals with an issue raised with me by an individual and concerns an account that requires instructions to be given by joint holders of account, but where one of the joint holders is either unable or unwilling to join the other account holder in giving instructions. Members of the Committee may think that that sounds fanciful, that if they reflect on the strange way in which families sometimes behave, they will see that it has a ring of truth. The joint account that was described to me is held in the name of two people who are related but who for deep and inscrutable family reasons do not communicate with each other. One of the family members absolutely refuses to discuss any transactions on the account and so the money sits there, as it has done for many years, accumulating interest, but being put to no other purpose. Remedies to such situations can involve legal process, but access to the law can often be prohibitively costly, so the situation runs on with one of the account holders hoping that the other will relent or perhaps, through natural causes, cease to be a problem. My amendment would allow one of the account holders to write to the bank saying that he is a joint account holder, he cannot currently agree instructions in respect of the account with the other account holder, but that he wishes to record that, while the account appears to the dormant, he would very much like it to return to being actively managed in due course. The amendment does not require the bank to settle any matter of law. The bank has to note that someone who may have a valid interest does not want the account to be treated as dormant, which would involve going through the dormant accounts regime and the complexities of reuniting it in due course. I cannot see that the current drafting of the Bill would help to avoid the designation of dormancy, so I hope that the Minister will look kindly on the amendment, which I reiterate was raised with us as a live example by an individual. I beg to move.