Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Newby, for his support. The Minister was almost not addressing the amendment before him, but addressing the question whether ““15”” years is a good figure to put in the Bill. We have said that it is, based on such evidence as there is. I think that the British Bankers' Association presented no evidence as such; it presented assertions to the Treasury Select Committee. I do not think that the committee carried out any independent analysis of the impact of maturity or lapse of time on dormancy. However, that was not my point. It is not fruitful to get into the question whether 15 years is better than 10 years—we will accept the judgment that 15 years is right for now. The point of the amendment was that over time we can reasonably anticipate that the conclusion that 15 years was the right figure would not necessarily hold over time. It is entirely plausible, for the reasons that I outlined earlier, that that figure might come down. The British Bankers’ Association did not portray it as one of the universal truths of banking that it existed for all time or was likely to do so; it merely presented it as a figure based on current circumstances. The point of the amendment is to allow for flexibility to be built in so that the reclaim fund, which will have access to all this information and be able to track patterns of reuniting—because that information will not just be held in the banks—will be able to advise the Treasury on those patterns. Then it will be appropriate for the Treasury to take action to enable the banks to release further resources at an earlier time for the good causes that the Government are so keen on supporting. I fail to understand—and the Minister has not addressed—why the Government would not take flexibility to deal with those matters as they might emerge. I struggle to understand what the Government’s real position is on this amendment, because the Minister just said that 15 years was good now and did not address how the figure would be changed to release further money for good causes if it were proved to be wrong in future.