Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The Committee will recognise that this is not my number one solution; that would be to have a private sector solution to the distribution of moneys. Maybe we shall debate that another time. Plenty of organisations are well experienced in dealing with the issues of education and the problems of youth. However, as a second-best solution, it is certainly a great improvement on giving Big a monopoly. The other three funds receive 16 and two-thirds of the money. That would achieve a halving of the moneys available. The other three have advantages over Big. What they are supposed to do is much clearer to the public. Everybody is pretty clear what heritage, sports and arts mean. There is no uncertainty—all three have identities and, I guess, board minutes in which they dissent from some sort of message that they have received from the department. I challenge the Minister to produce a single minute of Big’s board meetings in which it has dissented from the logic of the general policy directions given to it by the DCMS. My point is that Big is an arm of government and we should be in no doubt of that. It does not have any realistic independence. The chairman and chief executive write a joint report and there is not a single personal note in that joint report, which is very poor governance. The chairman is supposed to be independent of the chief executive when he writes reports and put his own personal view on paper. It does not happen in Big. The other three do that because they have been established longer and are not the heirs to the mixture that Big represents. They have a personality, an identity and stand up for themselves. Therefore, if at least half the money were to go to them, it would be a great improvement on the whole lot going to Big. I support the amendment.