Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 67: 67: Clause 16, page 8, line 38, after ““State”” insert ““in charge of Lottery matters”” The noble Lord said: These amendments are designed to explore an extremely surprising sentence in the memorandum by Her Majesty’s Treasury to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published in the first report of that committee. Paragraph 13 of that memorandum states: "““It is envisaged that the functions of the Secretary of State set out in this Bill will be exercised by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families””." It is not normal to specify to which Secretary of State a Bill refers, not only because it is generally obvious which department will handle the provisions, but because a Secretary of State’s duties and job title can, and often do, change over time. However, we are in Grand Committee and this is a probing amendment. We appear to be debating a Treasury Bill extracting money from the financial sector, spending it through an independent body under the control of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and giving power to the Secretary of State in charge of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This is a very muddled way in which to proceed. Of course, it is quite correct that this is a Treasury Bill; the collection of dormant account assets has been a sensitive issue ever since it was first mooted, and highlighted by the number and precision of the amendments my noble friend Lady Noakes and other noble Lords have moved. The Government appear to agree on this point, since they have taken care to keep the schemes voluntary, consulted widely on the collection and have made every attempt to reassure people that there is no danger of account holders losing their money. The inappropriateness of these matters being handled by anyone other than the Chancellor has clearly been noted in Clause 3, where subsection (4) specifies ““the Treasury”” rather than the Secretary of State, as the order-making body. This unprecedented care—I always believed that it was not accepted practice to specify departmental names in primary legislation—is clearly not taken in Part 2. There we see several powers being given to the Secretary of State relating to the Big Lottery Fund, as well as the power to identify a different body to the Big Lottery Fund as the most appropriate distributor. As stated before, these powers are remarkably similar to those given to the Secretary of State in the National Lottery Act 2006. The Secretary of State empowered by that Bill was the Secretary of State in the DCMS. Do the Government envisage the Big Lottery Fund not only reporting to two different departments but being directed from two different sources on matters regarding its employment of staff, how it should keep its accounts, and how the grants that they decide upon should be paid to the recipient? The Big Lottery Fund has made much of its existing infrastructure and claims that it already has the necessary structures and procedures in place to handle the dormant account money. The Government’s intentions, expressed to the Treasury Select Committee, to place all of these matters under the control of the Department for Children, Schools and Families would suggest that that existing infrastructure will be duplicated. Will the Big Lottery Fund have to set up parallel institutions and procedures to handle this money because of the possibility, indeed likelihood, of differing instructions from the Government on these matters? Will the Big Lottery Fund need to produce two reports, and in them explain how successfully it has operated against two different sets of expectations? Will it hire two different staffs with two different sets of accounting practices, and so on? Essentially, this money will not be handled by the same organisation that handles 50 per cent of the lottery distribution fund but will be an entirely parallel organisation. Does the Minister really consider this a satisfactory state of affairs? Why have the Government even mentioned the lottery fund at all? Why have they not just established another completely separate organisation, accountable to the Department for Children, Schools and Families to distribute this money? I notice that this confusion also applies to the devolved Administrations. The Government appear to intend Ed Balls to be the appropriate person to consult the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel and the Welsh and Scottish Ministers, even if they choose not to spend their percentage of the funds on young people's services. Can the Minister confirm whether this is correct? What if a devolved Administration choose to spend the money in a completely different way? What will then be the case? The questions raised by this issue are almost endless. I look forward the Minister's response and hope he can shed some light on the Government’s intentions.