Dormant Assets Bill [HL]

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, we now come to the group consisting of Amendment 50.

Amendment 50

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

For these reasons, I am not able to accept your Lordships’ amendments, and therefore would be grateful if they are withdrawn or not pressed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has asked to speak after the Minister.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I hear what my noble friend the Minister has said—that she was speaking to my amendment and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, which both rely on the loans to reduce the amount of reserving. That is not what my amendment said at all. Mine was based on more explicitly recognising that the Treasury de facto now stands behind the company and that anything else is a complete fiction.

My noble friend talked about industry needing confidence in the scheme being independent of government. Frankly, the whole world has changed: the Treasury now owns 100% of the capital and it has been reclassified as public sector. The fact of life is that this is a public body and its “separate legal entity” nature is just a fiction.

If the Treasury wanted to release more for good causes, it could. That is at the heart of the issue; anything else is some form of dissembling. So I personally am not satisfied with the Minister’s response today. I do not think meeting the chief executive of the Reclaim Fund Ltd will get us any closer to the heart of the matter. The issue is: why will the Treasury not step up to the plate and recognise that it now carries responsibility for the amounts released, and that in public sector terms there is no good reason to withhold significant sums for tail risk?