Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I was going to make a very similar point. We have to consider the serious consequences of the Government, in effect, turning banks into de facto government inspectors, as well as the unintended consequences such as those for politically exposed persons. Goodness knows that that has not gone well. It has created all sorts of chaos. I am very anxious about private institutions, in effect, being asked to do the Government’s dirty work in many instances. I want to query, though, banks being able to charge for the hard work they do via new paragraph 8 in Schedule 5, in which there is a provision for the bank to be able to deduct a fee from the debtor’s account to meet its reasonable costs in complying with the order, which is a ridiculous situation. It amounts to state-backed approval of funds being taken directly from the bank accounts of private customers to deal with administrative retrieval of overpayments. By the way, the maximum amount that banks could charge would be set by the Secretary of State via regulations, which is also not reassuring. Although I do not want the banks to be used, I also do not want them to be able to charge their own clients to do the job that the Government have demanded they do. I feel very queasy about all this. On the discrimination point, if these measures identify a range of types of bank clients who are causing more trouble than they are worth, the obvious decision will be to debank. It makes perfect sense that they would think, just like every other private sector organisation, “Do I really want people on benefits living in my house?” We have seen this discrimination time and again. There is a serious danger of unintended consequences here that the Government have to take seriously.