Thank you!
Thanks for all the response folks, there's a lot of stuff there I hadn't considered and thank you for the legal advice as well. Although we do bank online, I don't think we'd be tempted to access our account whilst away from the UK, apart from using a credit card for purchases, which I know can be dangerous too. In fact, we did get someone using our A****n account once but on reporting the fraud it was all quickly cleared up.
Thanks to those who sent me a PM I'll get back to you now.
MTB