Not so. There are other means of bringing pressure to bear rather than the proposal favoured by the noble Lord. I noticed the word ““diktat””—not a concept that would ever cross my lips so far as a Labour Government are concerned. I also hope he will recognise that failure to distribute fairly will be made abundantly clear to the distributors. It may be that we reach the stage where the Secretary of State says, ““This distributor seems to be failing on the most basic of criteria. It has not taken account of significant population changes with regard to the distribution of grants””. The organisation would then be guilty of a range of flaws if it got itself into that position and would lose confidence.
It has to be recognised that the principle is according to population. If the noble Lord is saying he would like a 10-year commitment in the Bill to take that population change into account as a result of the census, I cannot promise him that. If he is saying that changes happen more rapidly than that and Big should be aware of them, I say to him that if Big perpetrates a manifest injustice on a large area of population that has developed and is not a beneficiary of any of Big’s activities, that will become abundantly clear.
Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Davies of Oldham
(Labour)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 15 January 2008.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee proceeding on Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL].
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
697 c476GC 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
Subjects
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Timestamp
2023-12-16 02:36:22 +0000
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