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Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

My Lords, we shall not object to Amendments Nos. 11 and 12, but I regret the Government’s removal of the more extensive review and report to Parliament that was contained in the Bill when it left your Lordships' House and its replacement by the new clause in Amendment No. 12. The Minister described it as a comprehensive review, but it is less comprehensive than that which we inserted into the Bill. In particular, it does not look at the desirability and practicality of establishing similar schemes for other categories of asset, which arose throughout our consideration of the Bill. That is to be regretted. The original review and report would have been triennial, which with the benefit of hindsight I think was a fatal flaw in the formulation, but the three-year review that we are offered instead is once-only. Somewhere between the two would have been a better outcome. Nevertheless, it would have been open to the Government simply to strip out the review and not to have made any statutory provision for it, so we are grateful that a statutory provision is reinstated in the Bill. However, we regret that it did not go as far as the review proposed by your Lordships' House.