Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I have not given great consideration to a laying of orders timetable for the Bill. I have enough to cope with in getting the Bill through the House at the present time. The noble Lord is right—the concept of fairness will require adjustment over time. Populations will change and, as he indicated, levels of deprivation will also change. I do not think there will be any difficulty for the Big distributor to adjust to the changing areas of deprivation for the reason I gave earlier. When schemes are proposed, it will be able to assess their likely beneficial impact on communities and, all things being equal, the same schemes are likely to be of a greater benefit to deprived areas than they are to wealthy ones. That is within the framework of the scheme. On the broad issue of whether we intend to follow the census and make decennial orders in line with population shifts, I hope we will have a more flexible concept within the operation of Big to enable us not to impose such rigidities. However, if it looks as if the distributor has not been taking account of such changes, that will be reflected in the accounts of the scheme. There would not be the slightest doubt about parliamentary and ministerial pressure to ensure that the distributors recognised the anxiety about them keeping up with necessary change. We are involved with considerable consultation with devolved Assemblies before we produce orders. We are in early consultation with the Welsh Assembly in respect of such orders, although we have great experience regarding aspects of Scotland. I assure the noble Lord that we will be involved in full consultation before we can lay any such order.