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Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

I have let the noble Baroness down because I did not introduce the crucial word ““audit”” at any stage in this discussion and, rightly, she is holding me to account on that. Perhaps I may make the most obvious point first. The fund does not need the personal details of bank accounts and therefore it does not need the safeguard contained in the amendment. The identity resource contained within the individual bank account is the responsibility of the bank or building society, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, so graphically illustrated, it is to the bank or building society that the customer will inevitably go. Those running the fund will certainly need to know how much money is in the account and the potential interest rate because they will be holding that money and a claim may come in that they have to meet. Therefore, as the noble Baroness rightly indicated, the size of the claim will dictate the level of resources that the reclaim fund has at its disposal, but it will not hold personal information. In that sense, the banks have an agency role and there will be an agreement between them and the fund on how things operate. However, the banks and building societies will retain the crucial information, the confidentiality of which is addressed by the amendment. On the question of audit, the flows of money from the banks to the fund will be independently and externally audited; thus, a crucial check on probity will take place in that respect. However, here I am referring to the flows of money and not to the data relating to individual accounts, which are the subject of the amendment.