Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, we on this side appreciate and admire the noble Lord’s spirited attempt to ensure that the investment of dormant account funds in communities across the UK is properly recognised. It is our intention that the distribution of dormant account funds should be appropriately publicised, reflecting the unique opportunity they present to make a real difference to communities across the UK. However, the effect of the noble Lord’s amendment is to impose a UK-wide brand. I hope that the House will appreciate that, just as it is important that the devolved Administrations set their own spending areas, so it is important that the use of dormant account resources is branded in a way appropriate to each of their communities. At this early stage, it is not appropriate to take decisions about the branding and publicising of dormant account fund investments that would then stand, whether they were right or wrong. I hope that when the appropriate time comes, expert and public opinion will contribute to the consideration. There may well be a degree of consultation, particularly among young people, about what the brand should be in Scotland, Wales and England. With the greatest respect, these are matters that should be properly beyond the House. This does not need to be in the legislation. If the amendment was prompted by a desire for government reassurance yet again about the ways in which dormant account funding would be delineated from other funds distributed by Big, which I know in large measure it is, let me once again try to reassure the noble Lord and the House. Big is clear that any non-lottery funding will be accounted for and promoted independently from lottery funding. The Bill requires Big to report annually on any grants made with dormant account money, and Big has committed regularly to update its website with grant details. This will be clearly branded as distinct and separate from lottery funding. The Big Lottery Fund is fully accountable to the Secretary of State and Parliament for lottery distribution. This level of accountability will be extended to dormant account money in our reporting and in access to information on our funding. I remind the noble Lord, as I am sure he knows, that Big already runs a non-lottery funding programme, the Community Assets programme, on behalf of the Office of the Third Sector. This is an example of a programme that is clearly branded as distinct and separate from lottery funding. Big’s work on the Community Assets programme is accompanied by the following statement: "““The Big Lottery Fund is delivering the Community Assets programme on behalf of the Office of the Third Sector. This is not lottery funding””." That is one example of how Big already manages a clear separation of its funds. The Government expect that Big will similarly manage to ensure that dormant account funding remains publicly and operationally distinct. While we have great sympathy and more with the noble Lord’s intention, we think that it is too early to give a definitive name to this fund. I repeat that those who run it in other parts of the country will want to brand it in their own ways. I ask the noble Lord rhetorically, ““Is it really for us, today, while the Bill is going through Parliament, to give it a name that, once given, cannot easily be changed?””. I thank him very warmly for dealing with this issue, but I invite him to think again and perhaps to withdraw his amendment.