Clause 12
Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
Jeremy Browne (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Taunton, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point, and it is difficult to reconcile those two objectives. If one is trying to track down information, it is helpful if as few barriers as possible are put in one’s way. Confidentiality is inevitably a barrier. The Government and the Committee may think that additional safeguards need to be put in place. I gave the example of the Parkinson’s Disease Society. About 120,000 people in the United Kingdom suffer from that disease. The society has about 30,000 members, only about half of whom have the disease, thus only about one in 10 people who suffer from the disease belong to the society, and even that figure is not necessarily a good starting point to try to make an educated guess about the type of people who leave money in a legacy to a charity or a similar organisation.
It is quite hard for the charitable sector, given that it is heavily reliant on those donations, to make informed or semi-educated guesses about the people who choose to leave money to them. There may be people who are sympathetic to their cause, but who have previously shown no direct interest in the work of that charity, but choose to leave it a substantial amount in a legacy. I appreciate that there are concerns about confidentiality and practicalities, but I want to put in place a system, so that instead of a series of shots in the dark, those charitable organisations can have the information gathered together in a way that makes it easier for them to locate the money that was intended for them and which they need to carry out their duties.