CHARITIES AND UNCLAIMED ASSETS IN DORMANT ACCOUNTS

That this House congratulates over 50 charities for coming together to form the Unclaimed Assets Charity Coalition; notes that legacies are increasingly important to charities and constitute almost 50 per cent. of some charities' voluntary income; further notes that evidence received by the Treasury Committee indicates that there are hundreds of millions of pounds in unclaimed assets; further notes that some legacies are incomplete because of unclaimed assets left in dormant accounts which charities find difficult to identify and access; acknowledges that a register of dormant accounts would resolve this problem in a more efficient and secure way than the online tracing scheme recently created by the banks, buildings societies and National Savings and Investment (NS&I); welcomes the fact that the well-respected law firm, Withers LLP, has provided legal advice, since shared with Ministers, on the feasibility of a register; further notes that registers work in the United States and other countries without fraud, using only publicly available information; and urges the Government to ensure people's dying wishes to leave money to charity are respected completely by the inclusion in the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill of a reserve power for the creation of a register of dormant accounts, to be used should banks', building societies' and the NS&I's efforts to reunite charities with the entirety of legacies bequeathed to them, and thus money that is rightfully theirs, continue to prove inadequate.