Gordon Brown has been proposing for a while to get hold of any money we have lying in ‘dormant’ personal bank accounts, and spend it on youth and community projects.
This is not a new proposal. He first mentioned it in the pre-Budget Report of 2005, and I wrote about it at the time. The idea is to target money in account that haven’t been used for the past fifteen years.
There is something deeply worrying about this proposal. At its most basic level, it is an assault on property rights. If I wish to leave my money sitting in a dormant bank account for over fifteen years, I do not see why that should entitle the Government to swoop down and take it. And no, it doesn’t matter that the Government is trying to reassure me that I can still reclaim it, even after the Treasury has taken it. That does not make a difference to the fact that the Government has helped itself to my property without my permission.
In addition, it doesn’t matter that the money is to be spent on youth projects, and such ‘good causes’. That is nothing short of emotional blackmail, trying to paint the owner as a selfish dog in a manger who has no use for the money, but doesn’t also want the well-intentioned Government to spend it on deserving and vulnerable people. Or even worse than emotional blackmail, one can compare the Government’s proposed actions to those of a thief who breaks into your house and steals your goods, but it’s alright because he’s only going to give it to the poor.
The point is that it doesn’t matter how the Government spends it. So-called good intentions do not legitimate the act of theft.
The Government will argue that it is not stealing the money because an account owner can still reclaim it if they want it back. But that’s not the point. Why should one be required to take positive action to recover their property? And for those who may not realise that they have some money in a long-forgotten account, the Government’s appropriating of that money is nothing short of theft. They cannot, after all, claim back money that they had forgotten they owned.
Some people may argue that if you cannot remember that you have some money sitting in an account, then perhaps you don’t really need it, and the Government should spend it as they wish. I disagree. That is a dangerous proposition. Property rights should not be qualified in that manner. The fact that you do not make active use of your property should not disentitle you to ownership. For example, the land law provisions under which squatters sometimes acquire rights to property are so tightly drawn because the law recognises that depriving a land owner of his property is not to be done lightly.
To my mind, there is a worrying philosophical issue at the root of this proposal, and this is that the State’s rights to our income and property extend beyond what it may lawfully collect through the conventional laws of taxation. This proposal seems to me to be saying ‘we have the right to take your property, unless and until you show us that you need it.’ This changes the relationship between us and the State. Rather than us yielding up our income, it is the State taking it as of right.
But why should I be surprised by this? As a lecturer in financial law, I have been watching intently as the language of the tax code has changed over the years since Labour came into office. Tax avoidance laws are framed in aggressive language, and even when reliefs are given, they are framed in such language as to leave one in no doubt that the Government sees it as bestowing unto us from its largesse, rather than giving back to us that which we gave it in the first place. Against this ideological framework, I suppose that the current proposals should not surprise us at all.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Hi Bel:
I have posted on this as well. I equate it with bank robbery. Is nothing sacred any more?
March 20th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Surely Bel, you should know by now. All our money belongs to Gordon Brown, and we only keep what he allows us to keep.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
The man needs shooting
March 20th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Will this include bank accounts that you set up for your child for when your child reaches a certain age like when they go to university?
This is legalised robbery.
March 20th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Wayne, it applies to accounts that have not been touched in the last fifteen years, so if you paid in, say, even £5 a year into that account, then it would be ’safe’. However, if you just set it up fifteen years ago and did nothing else with it, greedy Gordon will be targeting it.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Then those baby bonds that Gordon Brown set up for new babies are basically useless.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I agree, Bel. Absolutely awful.
What happens if my distant cousin died seventeen years ago unbeknown to anyone in a foreign land? Are they going to tell me that they are helping themselves to the property I have unkowingly inherited?
There are so many issues here, I can’t believe they are suggesting it.
As you say, it kind of implies that the state is the default owner of everything.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Hello Joe, long time.
I agree with you. In fact, the thing that unsettled me most when Gordon Brown proposed this back in December 2005, was that George Osborne enthusiastically agreed with him, dazzled as he was by the claim that the money was to be used for youth and community projects. If we cannot trust the Conservative Party to stand up for property rights, then they might as well pack up and go home.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
“If we cannot trust the Conservative Party to stand up for property rights, then they might as well pack up and go home.”
True… but where is home? It’s not the place I grew up in. Turned my back for five minutes and these New Labour scoundrels moved in, shifted all the furniture round, trashed the decor and changed the locks. Talk about feeling like a foreigner in your own land. It’s a bit like the end of Lord of the Rings when The Shire is taken over by Sharky aka Saruman. When will this Stalinist nightmare end?
March 20th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
My grandfather was a notoriously disorganised man. He set up an account for my father when my father was a lad. He never got round to giving him the papers.
I think my father got the papers in 1987 whilst handling his (deceased) father’s estate.
But now Gordon would have been there first.
This of course, raises wider issues concerning the trust we give our banks. Years ago, when I worked in the sector, I was distinctly umcomfortable with a lot of the regulations concerning report of ’suspected money laundering’. My own feelings were that all financial transactions should be sacrosanct and that our obligations to the client should be bound in strictest secrecy- as with a lawyer or a priest. The idea that out finances are in the hands of people in cahoots with Gordon and friends is very scary.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Yes, Joe, isn’t it disturbing that some banks and building societies have endorsed Gordon Brown’s proposals? What kind of society are we living in, where even the people we trust with our money are in cahoots with Gordon Brown to dispossess us?
March 20th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
This proposal seems to me to be saying ‘we have the right to take your property, unless and until you show us that you need it.’
Exactly right!
March 20th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Don’t stop using anything then…Or Gordon’ll have it!!!
I agree with you Bel, Too much power has become concentrated in the hands of our executive. But I don’t see any politician prepared to talk about reversing that.
We march inexorably towards the realisation of totalitarian Britain….
But then again, who is in who’s pocket? The Banks or the Government?
March 20th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Its about £400,000,000 isn’t it and I am certain that I recall the same idea cropping up many times over the years under various administrations. To be honest Bel , I think you may be getting your undergarments in a state of undue torsion about relatively little….which is not to say that your objections are not right in their own terms .
What do you think underpins property rights ?. It is clear if you look at the history of property that the only thing that guarantees property is the use of force by the state originally called the Kings peace .
I wonder if this inalienable property right that I suppose you take granted is , in a modern context, in fact more closely connected to Social Justice than you might think. Do you have an army ? No in which case you are relying on the state to protect you from anarchy , The state can only temporarily protect manifest injustice…well ok thats bollocks, but states have been caught out trying to do so on many famous occasions. If then the state sees an obviously waste in which only it can act the over arching concerns of justice and want might reasonable be called upon to justify the action . I am pretty happy with this one . I was a lot less happy with the windfall tax on North Sea Oil and the raid on everyone’s pensions ..in fact less happy is putting it very mildly
Additionally it is absolutely nothing new for the state to seize assets or monopolies to finance its wars and so forth ( BTW I approve of our latest war I `m not anti war) ,in fact this was originally the most common from of government revenue .The current tax on the poor through control of the numbers Racket, much as the Mafia did in Chicago,…this is considerably more worrying in my view
In this nebulous framework of “Property “the idea that left over odds and sods stand for some vast philosophical concept strikes me as over egging the pudding .Its more like Treasure trove which we are not going got be returning to King Alfred’s descendants .We commonly ride roughshod over property rights in the case of compulsory purchase for example which is only legal asset seizing albeit compensated. Ac far as the support of the Banks are concerned they are acting monopolistically against their domestic consumers and I expect they are all to wiling to suck up to Brown at this moment in time before they get their wings forcibly clipped . I wonder sometimes if a monopoly occurring in sssuch a non market position is even worse than a nationalised industry . It demonstrably has been in the case of what was “ British Rail”
Still …I `m often wrong and I see from what you mention about your job that you are likely to be pretty hot Tabasco on this sort of thing.
I suppose theres no chnace of you meekly simpering fluttering your eyelashes and accepting that men know best then ? ….Oh well
Cheerio
March 20th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I suppose theres no chnace of you meekly simpering fluttering your eyelashes and accepting that men know best then ?
You suppose right, newmania.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
..my instincts are uncanny sometimes…
March 21st, 2007 at 7:48 am
The banks are in on this becuase they get a cut of the deal too! broon knows where their priorities lie and it is with shareholders over customers.
No betrayl for the banks who we all know as ‘Gecko’ capitalists, but for a building society it is a n utter disgrace given their heritage.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:47 am
Seems his has turned his monogaze onto Grannys old account, still thats socialism for you.
March 21st, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Of course our tax has to be paid ON DEADLINE.
Tax refunds come when they can be bothered.
The more I read your post, Bel, the more I like it.
Might have to attend one of your lectures some time.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:00 pm
You’d be more than welcome, Joe