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Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The answer to the noble Lord is definitively yes. Instructions would have been given and the bank would therefore operate under them. Those instructions would obtain, until, for some reason which would have to be justifiable in terms of law, the bank was able to show that the claimant no longer had a claim on those assets. Others potentially would, and the bank would therefore not be able to put such resources into the reclaim fund. I say in response to the more specific point raised by the noble Baroness that circumstances where the bank is under instruction to pay interest accrued on the account to another person or to another account are already covered by subsection (1)(b), as whenever interest is paid from one account to another account, that is a transaction on the instructions of the holder of the account. It is a live transaction, until it is countermanded by the person who has so instructed the bank. It is therefore clear that the account could not move into dormancy while such a requirement obtained against it. We think that that is covered by the legislation.