Community Bank Closures

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Susan Elan Jones

Thursday 8th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones]

Yes, I would welcome that. I think that is a positive point.

We also have to consider what the banks have been telling us. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) spoke about some commercially sensitive information that she was not allowed to have. I, too, have asked for commercially sensitive information, such as how many people had accounts at the branch, and clearly the bank was unable to tell me. Better still, I asked how many people on a typical week went in with queries. I was told something earth-shattering: that queries might not really be queries. I asked what that meant. I was told that, if someone goes into a bank, stands at the counter and asks a question, that might not be a query. I made the point that, for the customer asking the question, it very much was a query. I was told that, if there was no formal transaction, it was not a query. It is a parallel universe.

As we move at this juncture, we need to know what on earth the banks are planning to do next. An hon. Member has made the point that first we were fobbed off by being told that one could go to the next village, and then to the next, and then to the next, and that it was all right because it is just a little walk down the road—rather like an old-fashioned countryside treasure hunt. Suddenly, one realises that one has to go quite a long way to get to the next post. That cannot be the way to deal with the problem.

What we do about cashpoints and ATMs is of utmost seriousness. There are currently some 70,000 in the country, the bulk of which are free to use. At the start of 2016, the then Chair of the Treasury Committee, Andrew Tyrie, said that cashpoint charging and closures were of great concern. His point was that, if the ATM companies were not going to deal with the problem, this House needed to look at it, because people in rural communities and those on low incomes would be affected the most. As far as I can see, one problem with cashpoints is that the 38 or so banks and the like that are part of the ATM network are having a little scrap with each other. As they knock metaphorical spots off each other, each deciding that they are all paying too much, it is the customer who loses out.

[Ruth Smeeth]

My hon. Friend may not be aware that the price of an average transaction has not increased for nine years. The service is not costing the banks any more money; they just do not want to pay for it any more.

[Susan Elan Jones]

Where charges exist, the average cost of a single transaction is £1.70, and it is worrying that we are not looking more at free access to cash, which is a basic right. We do not say that about drinking water or many other things. It is nonsense that we are prepared to let banks charge money for us to visit a cashpoint, and there is no doubt that charging hits the poorest communities hardest.

I want to give credit to some examples in my constituency of where people are fighting against the system. I do not know whether Members have ever visited Corwen, which is a fantastic town.