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Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My noble friend mentioned small building societies. They are very regional; there is no point in a small building society in Cumbria getting together with a small building society in the depths of Kent and then another one from Norwich getting involved. That is a hopeless situation. We should leave the individual building societies to find their own people. Those building societies are being proactive, in fact. Earlier last week I had a session with Nationwide and asked people there specifically how many dormant accounts there were—the answer was 25,000—and how long they had been trying to find the people whose accounts they were, to which the answer was ““years””. They are still very active in trying to find them. Finally, the vast majority of those dormant accounts are absolutely tiny. Of course, some are bigger. I can speak only for the mutual movement, but it is trying and has tried very hard to find the owners of those dormant accounts.