Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I shall speak to Amendment No. 62 which is grouped with Amendment No. 54. This small amendment is designed to probe a matter that the Big Lottery Fund appears to have noticed may cause some conflicts of interest. The Big Lottery Fund Second Reading brief highlighted the important issues of accountability and transparency. From what has been heard from Her Majesty’s Government over the spending of the dormant accounts assets, that money will be going to similar organisations to support similar projects to those which money from the lottery currently supports and which it will continue to support. The National Lottery Act 2006 made it clear that publicising how this money is spent is a matter of some importance, not only to reassure people that the money they spend goes to worthy clauses but also to ensure that people are aware that the funding for prominent and popular projects around them comes from non-governmental sources. These issues will be equally important for dormant account money. Reassuring people that their money is being well spent is slightly less important since, I hope, the banks will have taken every step possible to ensure that no one has any claim on the money, but there will still be public concern that it is not wasted. It is still important that the public do not confuse projects that are financed by the Government and projects that are financed by this scheme. How does the Minister envisage that the Big Lottery Fund will draw the necessary distinction between government spending and the spending of dormant account money? The Big Lottery Fund quite rightly sees it as necessary to keep the identification completely separate, but how will that be done? I hope the Minister will be able to come forward with some ideas on this matter. It is of great concern to many people, not least my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom, that this money is spent in a way that will produce the most long-term benefit. A most effective safeguard against money being frittered away would be more rigorous public scrutiny of the projects the Government and the Big Lottery Fund consider it should be spent on.