Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 71: 71: Clause 17, page 9, line 9, at end insert ““and the community”” The noble Lord said: I want three words to be added to the clause, a simple task: ““and the community”” at line 9 of page 9, so that it reads ““young people and the community””. To backtrack a little, the Labour manifesto on this issue referred to channelling the funds back into the community. The word ““community”” in those terms means all 55 million or so of us. Then we got the Bill, the Long Title of which talks about ““social or environmental purposes””, which is referred to in Clause 15. Clause 17 starts to define what happens in England. I do not, for example, see the word ““environmental”” anywhere in Clause 17(1)(a), (b) or (c), but on the other hand it may well be that in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland the environment is the issue they want to get hold of. Let us come, then, to England. I spoke days ago about other opportunities, and I still want to return to that, but substantial money from these sources being used for young people is difficult to gainsay. I am happy that that is a major feature. Let us look at the wording. Clause 17(1) says: "““A distribution of dormant account money for meeting English expenditure must be””—" I emphasise the ““must””. It then goes on to talk about young people, financial deprivation and the social investment wholesaler. My concern at this point is to add the words ““and the community””. We are looking at facilities for young people, but young people are in schools, apprenticeships, colleges or whatever. I am not certain of the precise definition of ““young people””. Compared with the bulk of noble Lords, there are a lot of people in this land who could be described as ““young people””, but does the definition stop at 18, 21 or 25? I do not know. Some of that money will be for capital expenditure. There is something wrong if facilities are being made available—if, say, one is building a youth centre—but they exclude other people. It may well be that a youth centre cannot function before 6 pm most days of the week, so if there are other places where other activities ought to be able to take place, whether in rural or urban areas, multiuse is therefore surely right and proper. That is why we should include the words ““and the community””. When I was a member of a local education authority we had a youth and community committee because we had youth and community centres. There is a danger of being too prescriptive about ““youth”” here. When you bear in mind ““must”” prior to that, surely it is right to be just that little bit more flexible in the use of these resources. I beg to move.