Dormant Assets Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-11-16
Topic: Social Welfare
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have my name down in support of this amendment, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, builds on one that we debated in Committee. As is always the case, when you come back to the subject, there is a risk of a great deal of repetition, and I do not wish to try the patience of the House with a long exposé. During the debate in Committee, the Minister’s predecessor, my noble friend Lady Barran, raised some significant concerns that the Government had about the way that this might operate. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has very neatly—if I may say so without sounding patronising—answered some of the points made then I will repeat, in four sentences, four reasons why I am attracted to community wealth funds. They are very local and can reflect the often highly idiosyncratic needs of a particular local community. They can provide a physical space—a building—as a focus for presenting and answering those particular needs. Thirdly, they can provide an element of professional help, without which a purely voluntary organisation can struggle. Fourthly—this is most important—they can provide the long-term capital needed to answer and build answers to the very deep-seated challenges that many of these communities face However, as my noble friend Lady Barran said—I am sure that if I could see my noble friend’s speaking note I would see that he will repeat it in a minute—this is a new approach and the Community Wealth Fund Alliance is setting out, brimming with confidence, hope and optimism. I certainly wish it well, but there will be difficult days ahead with hard decisions about structure, approach, governance and impact. The noble Baroness will probably raise that last issue in her speech in a minute. It is dangerous if you accept too rigid an approach in primary legislation; if it subsequently turns out to be less than ideal, you are stuck with it. So there is an element of "Be careful what you wish for" Then there is the issue of consultation. I think many of us would say that this was a case of putting the cart before the horse. Normally you have a consultation, get the results, draft the legislation and then discuss it in the light of what has been discovered, but that has not happened here and we are going at it the other way around. Whether we like it or not, that is where we are. So I can see why, unsatisfactory though that approach is, in the circumstances, the Government cannot and do not want to pre-empt the results of that consultation Conversely, primary legislation, like buses, does not come along very often; the next Bill might be in another five or 10 years—it is 15 years since the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and I discussed the Charities Act, and we have had probably had one since—but we need to send a signal of our support for community wealth funds. How do we balance those issues? I suggested that if the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, replaced "must" in his original drafting with "may", that might provide an answer that would not force the Government, the Secretary of State and my noble friend on the Front Bench to set up a community wealth fund but would provide them with an option to do so in light of the consultation when they had the full outcome available. Since the noble Lord was kind enough to make that change, I am delighted to support his amendment.