Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 73: 73: Clause 17, page 9, line 15, leave out paragraph (c) The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 73 is a probing amendment. It deletes paragraph (c) of Clause 17(1) and removes the avenue of distribution labelled ““social investment wholesaler””. That is a perfectly ludicrous term, correctly described by my noble friend Lord Astor at Second Reading as gobbledygook. The word ““wholesaler”” is inappropriate in the context in which it is used. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a wholesaler as the seller of goods in large quantities to be retailed by others. The word ““investment”” also has a clear meaning in the dictionary as the action or process of investing or a thing worth buying because it may be profitable or useful in the future. Subsection (2) of Clause 17 defines what is meant by ““social investment wholesaler”” but that definition has no sense of buying and selling and no sense at all of buying something that might be profitable or useful. Rather, it gives the definition of a body which exists to assist or enable other bodies to give financial or other support to third sector organisations. Put simply, this wholesaler is there to give money away. We should not allow the Government to violate the English language by using ““wholesaler”” and ““investment””, which have precise meanings, in order to convey wholly different meanings. I hope the Minister will explain to the Committee why the Government have chosen to abuse the English language in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom has other amendments in this group which are infinitely more sensible than the formulation in the Bill. I shall leave it to him to speak to his amendments, which we generally support. Before I do so, I have another reason for tabling the removal of the paragraph which applies equally to my noble friend’s amendments. The Bill has job creation and bureaucracy as one of its by-products. Jobs and procedures cost money, and that reduces the amount of money available to flow through to enrich the social and environmental life of the country. First, the money flows into a reclaim fund, so there will be jobs and procedures to absorb some money there. Before the money reaches the Big Lottery Fund, the Secretary of State can put his hand in the till and take some expenses out to cover his involvement, and so, too, can the devolved Administrations. I shall bring forward amendments on this topic later. The money then gets to the Big Lottery Fund, which we know will have jobs, procedures, committees and costs galore, as my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising pointed out in debates earlier today. Lastly, if the money is going to support social investment, it has to flow through one or more so-called social investment wholesalers, which will be staffed up to operate whatever bureaucratic procedures they devise. It is difficult to see how a more inefficient, wasteful and bureaucratic scheme could have been developed. Each layer will subtract from the underlying aims of the Bill. If the Government wish to distribute money for social investment purposes, they could completely by-pass the Big Lottery Fund and send the money straight from the reclaim fund to a social investment bank, to use the better terminology in my noble friend’s amendments. This would also avoid the problem which appears to emerge from the Bill that only English money will flow into the social investment bank, though doubtless the intention is that it would be available to benefit the whole of the UK. Can the Minister explain why they have chosen such a wasteful and bureaucratic solution? With that, I shall hand over to my noble friend to speak to his amendments. I beg to move.