Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he has made an estimate of funds that will be made available to the civil society sector under the Dormant Assets Scheme.

The dormant assets scheme has already distributed over £600m for the benefit of good causes. The Dormant Assets Commission, which reported on the feasibility of expanding the scheme in 2017, estimated that there may be up to £2bn of additional dormant assets that could be transferred into the scheme. This could significantly increase the quantity of funds available for good causes across the country.

Building on the work of the Commission, and supported by HMT and DCMS, four senior industry leaders published a blueprint in April 2019 for broadening the scheme to include assets from the insurance and pensions, investment and wealth management, and securities sectors. Quantifying dormancy was not within the scope of this work.