The Economy
Jamie Stone Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, the SNP’s obsession with another damaging referendum on independence is already hitting growth in Scotland, and that is why Scotland is lagging behind in growth terms compared with any other part of the UK.
Sajid Javid
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. When I address amendment (h), I will say a bit more about that.
Sajid Javid
I will make some progress.
There are some who would have us abandon fiscal responsibility altogether, and to those people I say this: it is only because of the hard work of the British people that we can now afford to invest more, and that is what we are doing when we kick-start a decade of renewal in this country. Our top priority is economic infrastructure. High-quality and reliable infrastructure is essential to how we live, work and travel. The UK is the fifth-largest economy in the world, and it is not good enough that we have fallen so far behind other nations on infrastructure, so we are going to fix that. I can therefore confirm today that our national infrastructure strategy will be published at the Budget. That strategy will deliver better transport, faster broadband and wider mobile coverage. It will level up every region and nation of this great United Kingdom and deliver an infrastructure revolution. The strategy will take great strides for the decarbonisation of our economy, which is one of this country’s most important challenges, by building on our record as the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero by 2050.
Kirsty Blackman
The SNP only walked out of this place because our leader was chucked out. We followed him out because we were standing up for the rights of the Scottish Parliament to stand up against the power grab this place was foisting on us.
A Panelbase poll came out a couple of weeks ago showing that more people in Scotland believe they would be better off in an independent Scotland within the EU than in broken Brexit Britain. We are winning the economic argument, and the Conservatives are losing it.
The Conservatives know they are losing the economic argument, which is why they are unwilling to publish an economic impact assessment of this deal. They are unwilling to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish the figures on what will happen to the economy as a result of the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal. That is why they are wavering about the date of the Budget. If the Chancellor would confirm that the Budget will be on 6 November and that the OBR’s figures will be published, that would be welcome news, but he does not seem keen to see those figures come forward.
Jamie Stone
A vibrant Scottish economy, whether independent or within the UK, relies on a viable banking network. I will shortly have only one bank branch left in the whole county of Sutherland. Every time I have raised this, the Treasury has given me comforting words about 99% of the population having access to a local post office. Many of my constituents live 20, 30 or 40 miles, or even further, from the nearest post office or bank branch. Surely now it is time to take action on this serious issue, which fundamentally undermines the economy not only of Scotland but of the UK.
Kirsty Blackman
I agree. In fact, the SNP has been at the forefront of fighting rural bank closures, saying that post office services are inadequate and unable to take on the role being foisted upon them by the closure of banks. We will continue to do everything we can to support our communities and to ensure they have access to free local banking services, local to them, that they can get to by public transport, if at all possible. We will keep doing what we can.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
The loan charge tackles so-called disguised remuneration arrangements, which use loans to avoid tax. It applies in the same way to people in the public and the private sectors. A tax information and impact note published in 2016 and a report on disguised remuneration published in March 2019 both considered the impacts.
Jesse Norman
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right and HMRC will continue to take firm action against those who promote tax avoidance schemes. As he will know, and I think has been made public, it currently has more than 100 promoters under civil inquiry. It is important to be clear that although there are no criminal offences of promoting or marketing tax avoidance schemes specifically, HMRC may conduct criminal investigations and make referrals to prosecuting authorities where, for example, there is evidence that promoters have deliberately misrepresented the facts to it.
Jamie Stone
Perfectly innocent working people are caught in a terrible trap here and there have already been several suicides. HMRC said that
“teams are trained to identify customers who are anxious, worried or need extra support to ensure they get the help they need.”
Will the Minister confirm whether those people have had that training? Will a dedicated helpline be set up to help people who are under huge stress?
Jesse Norman
The hon. Gentleman is right that there is stress, but he should also be clear that a large number of people have been systematically using those means to avoid paying tax, and the potential amount payable is more than £3 billion. He should be protective of the tax base more widely when he reflects on those matters. He is right that HMRC is taking careful steps to ensure that it protects and supports those who may be in genuine difficulty, and those who have other personal concerns can of course be referred to outside agencies.
Local Bank Closures
Jamie Stone Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Douglas Ross
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, because that issue came up when I held a public meeting in Lossiemouth, following the announcement that the final branch in the town would close. The local football club, Lossiemouth F. C., said that it had checked with its insurers, who said that they would either increase the premium to a level that it could not afford or simply not insure it at all, because it would now not be able to deposit cash at the end of the night: the cash would have to remain on the premises. I hope the Minister addresses that issue, but we also have to put it to the insurers, because it is no fault of the football club or other operators in these towns that the banks are now closed and people cannot deposit money.
I want to return to Lossiemouth, a huge town in Moray, being left without cash this weekend. Denise Bedson of the Lossiemouth Business Association told The Press & Journal:
“The situation at the weekend was disgraceful. A lot of small businesses can’t afford card facilities. I know there are cheaper solutions but the phone signal isn’t always the best here for them to work properly. We’re trying to get more banking facilities here because the situation is very difficult”.
It was so difficult that there were reports of people going into the local store to buy one tin of baked beans just to get cash back. They had to buy something that they did not want or need, simply to get money from the store, because the cash machines were not working. Councillor James Allan, my colleague, who represents Heldon and Laich, has been a great local champion for this cause for years. We have gone from four banks and seven ATMs down to just two ATMs. In a community the size of Lossiemouth, that is simply unacceptable. This is just the first weekend. We have serious concerns that this will go on further.
Mention was made of tourism and tourist businesses. Lossiemouth is a great attraction for tourists, with whom it is very popular. We have takeaways and taxi firms, which do not accept credit cards or debit payments. They will suffer as a result of this. Lossiemouth Community Council and its councillors Mike Mulholland and Carolle Ralph have been highlighting the bank closures for some time; they also held a public meeting about them, following my meeting. The issue has been of considerable concern since the announcement was made last November. We knew that this was coming, but the banks have deserted Lossiemouth and other communities across Moray, Scotland and the UK. I believe that they have to do more about it.
While I am speaking about Lossiemouth, the area in Moray that is most affected because it has no branch left, I also want to mention post offices. They play a vital role, but there are some limitations. I know how hard Tony Rook, owner of the post office in Lossiemouth, and his staff are trying—as he commented in The Northern Scot this week, they are doing their level best—but when there is a spike in use and they are away for the weekend, there is nothing that they can do to put more money into their cash machine. He has one of the two cash machines in Lossiemouth. It costs his business to have it facing outwards to the street, but he does it as a public service. It is a great service, but even with great efforts from him and his staff, we were still left without money in a Moray town at the weekend. That is something that we need to look at.
It is not just Lossiemouth that has been affected. At the same time as the closure in Lossiemouth was announced, there was another in Keith. I held a public meeting there as well; I was grateful for the attendance of local councillor Donald Gatt, as well as Paul McBain, representing the post office, and Pearl Hamilton from the Federation of Small Businesses.
When we consider the impact of branch closures or the reduction of ATMs, we often think only about the customers who want to take money out, but the small businesses in our communities suffer just as much, if not more. FSB Scotland retweeted my tweets about today’s debate because it has great interest in the matter. Small businesses are losing not only the branch that they bank with and deposit their takings at, but the opportunity for people to take money out and spend it in their shops. They are the lifeblood of our local communities, so it is unfortunate and deeply reprehensible that they are being drawn into this.
I also want to speak about the bank’s response. I have to say that its contempt both for its own customers and for local communities is disgusting. As the local Member of Parliament, I got a phone call about the Bank of Scotland’s closures in Lossiemouth and Keith, days before it even wrote to its customers; I know my MSP colleague did, too. It came to the politicians to tell us, “This is what we are doing—oh, and by the way, we will tell our customers after the bank holiday weekend.” It thought that they could wait a few days before even bothering to tell its customers about news of such magnitude.
The banks get involved in the process that has been laid down to consult and inform communities of their decision, but they never change their mind. It is a fait accompli—they have decided what they are doing. When communities rightly stand up against these cuts and removals to express their concern about how deeply damaging they will be, the banks turn a deaf ear: they are not interested, and they do not want to hear it. I have to say that I think their behaviour shocking and unacceptable.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is making a most persuasive speech. When a local authority in Scotland wants to close a school, there has to be a proper public consultation process. Does he agree that something similar would be appropriate for proposed closures of bank branches?
Douglas Ross
The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point with which I wholly agree. Like him, I have been involved with school closures as a local councillor, and they are not easy decisions to take. When we were proposing to close Cabrach Primary School in Moray, we had to have a full consultation, even though it had no pupils left at all—the final two, a brother and sister, had moved to another school. There has to be a full consultation with the community to close a school with no pupils, but a bank branch with so many customers that is so valuable to the local area can be closed when the bank comes in and ignores every view put to it.
My most abiding memory of Lloyds’s reaction to what it was doing in Lossiemouth and Keith was that it was not even willing to engage. I wrote to it when I quickly assembled the public meetings, which were attended by people from community councils, the post office and business associations. The meetings in Lossiemouth and Keith both had an empty chair for the bank; because it could not even be bothered to turn up and face the public about its decision, I thought it only right to show the public that it was absent by leaving a chair empty.
People wanted to challenge the figures about reducing footfall or the number of transactions. There were several people in the community who did not believe the figures that were put forward. The bank should have either substantiated its claims and stood up to support them, or gone back to the community and said, “This is where we were correct, and this is where you were correct.” That it was unwilling to do that demonstrates its whole attitude to this crisis.
The bank’s next response is, “Well, we’ll put in mobile banking.” A town the size of Lossiemouth, which has gone from four branches to none, now has a mobile bank coming for an hour or two a week. We have a great climate in Lossiemouth, but it is not always sunny and beautiful; it is sometimes cold and wet, and yet we expect elderly bank customers to stand outside and wait while others go in and carry out their business. There are also elements of privacy that a mobile banking service cannot replace. It is wrong that we should keep hearing, “We are closing your branch, but we will continue to have a presence.” That presence is pitiful, and it does not match the needs and aspirations of the community that uses it.
As I have mentioned before in Westminster Hall, in a debate about access to cash, RBS in Moray has a mobile branch van called the Moray Rambler. There have been so many closures of bank branches across the north-east of Scotland that the Moray Rambler now has to ramble into Banffshire and Aberdeenshire to cover areas outwith my constituency. Not only have we a poor service, but it is being stretched further and further and towns are getting less and less time with the mobile bank.
Post offices rightly have a role to play that we all value. Paul McBain represented the National Federation of SubPostmasters at my public meetings, and he did so well. Some tasks can be done at the post office instead of the bank, but some simply cannot be replicated: transferring money from an account, seeking advice about bank accounts, opening or closing accounts, registering a power of attorney or grant of probate, making complaints or inquiring about savings, current accounts, credit cards, mortgages, personal loans or investments. There is a role for the post office and there are tasks that it can do, but there are many that it simply cannot. It is wrong for the bank to say, “We’ll put in a mobile branch, or you can use the post office as an alternative.” It is not a like-for-like alternative; it is misleading and wrong to say so, and we will be in trouble if we go down that route.
Research into post office usage by Which? reveals that only 55% of adults are aware that they can use the post office for banking—almost half of the population do not know that—and that 47% are unlikely to use a post office for banking in the future. I hope that we can change those figures; as I said in an Adjournment debate in the main Chamber a couple of months ago, we need to encourage the public to use our post offices. However, many people out there do not want to use them for certain aspects of their banking needs. Some 42% of people did not want to go into a post office for banking because queues were too long, while 32% believed that they were not private enough.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan.
I want to draw Members’ attention to the county of Sutherland in the highlands, which is part of my constituency. Since 2005, eight branches have shut. With the recent announcement that the Clydesdale is going to shut its branch in Brora, we will be left with precisely one branch, the Bank of Scotland in Golspie, in a very large county of 2,028 square miles, with a population of some 13,500 who will have only one branch left. For some people that means a 150-mile round trip to get to the bank, if someone lives in Durness in the upper north-west—a three and a half hour bus journey for my constituents. And it gets worse. We have talked about post offices and how the banks say, “Go online or use the post office,” but Clydesdale bank seems to have conveniently forgotten that the post office in Brora has been shut for some time, making a complete mockery of that.
I and other Members have always said that the point of having a real branch is to have a human face behind the counter. Even if people can go online—not a lot can in my constituency—if someone has a big payment coming along but they do not know what it is, which can be a real worry for people, old and young, it would be better if they could go into a branch and see somebody who would say, “This is what it is,” or, “This is a scam.” That is why we want the human face, which is very hard to replace.
In my huge constituency, we are told to use mobile banks, but it is not awful funny going to a mobile bank in Wick if it is sleeting in January. The weather in good old Wick can sometimes be very inclement.
My contribution is short, but the matter of Sutherland serves the purpose of helping all Members here today, because it provides such an extreme example: one branch in a vast county of 2,028 square miles, which is astonishing. However, I give credit where it is due to the Minister. He has met and listened to a cross-party group of MPs, and I think he has taken the issue on board, but I say to him from the bottom of my heart that we have to get something together. The hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) made a superb speech. This is about getting the hubs to work. Where there is a will, there is a way before us. If we could get those hubs to work together that would not solve the problem, but it would make things a heck of a lot easier, so I say to the Minister, “Go and bang the banks’ heads together. Tell them to get off their backsides and get the show on the road!”
Financial Exclusion: Access to Cash
Jamie Stone Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry.
In my home town we have an excellent fish man called Steve who comes all the way from Buckie to flog his fish, and his smoked haddock is to die for. Steve is also a political sage. When he predicts that an MP will lose their seat, he is usually right, so I am very careful of him. Steve takes cash for his fish. You could no more present your mobile or your card to pay by contactless than fly to the moon. For many years, having ready cash in one’s purse, wallet or pocket has been fundamental to a civilised society. If we do not have it, we might as well go back, at least where I live, to bartering and swapping a salmon for a bag of peats or something like that.
With the best will in the world, we cannot go entirely digital or contactless in a constituency such as mine. As the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) has said, there are many areas where the iPhone and iPad simply do not work. In the case of my own Bank of Scotland card, it is already playing up, so it does not always get money out of a hole in the wall or work when I go contactless.
In my constituency we already have precious few ATMs. There has been talk of safeguarding them, but that is time limited. If a retail premises with a cash machine shuts, the shop goes, the cash machine goes, and no safeguard in the world can stop that happening.
Peter Aldous
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. His constituency is similar to mine. Does he agree that 24/7 access to cash is important in market towns? Certainly I note a postcode lottery developing in my area.
Jamie Stone
That is absolutely correct. I compliment the hon. Gentleman on his very good point.
There is a nasty parallel, as other Members have said, between the closure of ATMs and the closure of bank branches. In just a short time—can you believe this, Sir Henry?—we will have only one bank branch in the whole huge county of Sutherland, which is 2,028 square miles. Imagine what that means for my constituents. There are, however, already examples of banks working together to form one-stop shops in southern conurbations in England. I call on the Government and the Scottish banks to do something similar for rural areas such as mine in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.
I must give due credit to the Minister. We had a constructive meeting care of the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) the other day. I believe that the Minister is on to the issue and is working well towards sorting it out, so I wish him Godspeed. If we do not get it right at Government or bank level, it will be a fundamental failure and we will be letting down the poorer, as other Members have pointed out, and the elderly, who absolutely rely on having 24/7 access to cash.
Business Rates
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman is not without friends on the Opposition side of the House. He knows my constituency well because he pursues sporting interests in it, and his aunt and uncle—very nice people—are constituents of mine. He knows from his sporting interests that one must give the gillie a tip. If I may draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to his future remarks about ATMs, the distance between ATMs militates against easy access. Where I come from, it is necessary to travel a very long way indeed to get to a cash machine. I would suggest that that is not at all good for the local businesses.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. Gentleman has been a friend of mine for many years, and my family and his have been friends for even longer, so I do know his area very well indeed, especially his family town of Tain. It is a relatively recent phenomenon that the Valuation Office Agency has started rating ATMs. There is a particular quirk in the system: if an ATM is situated inside a bank or a post office, it is not rated, but if it is situated on the wall of the bank or post office, it is rated.
The hon. Gentleman and others—particularly in Scotland, because of the distances that they have to travel—have had numerous debates on bank closures, which may result in the removal of the one ATM in town. I am sure that a factor in the banks’ decision in closing those ATMs must be that they are now rated, whereas hitherto they were not. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Chancellor might look at that, particularly for all market towns. Up and down my constituency, all my market towns have lost ATMs in the last few years, and in some of those market towns only the post office still has an ATM facility. Now even the post office in some of those market towns is coming under threat. That is becoming a real problem for my constituents—particularly constituents with businesses who need to withdraw cash.
Beer Taxation and Pubs
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for bringing this debate before us. As other Members have said, this is light relief compared with the dark place we have been in for far too long—let me put it that way.
Many of the points I would have made have already been made, so I will crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and tell a little anecdote from the past. As some Members know, prior to appearing rather unexpectedly in this place, I was much involved in amateur dramatics and the local pantomime group—I have, indeed, been the dame in my time. On a Thursday night—to go back to the halcyon days of pubs—we would repair to a particularly famous old pub in my home town. At 11 o’clock, the barman, Sandy, would say, “Well, well, boys and girls, I think we will need to lock the door.” He would shut the massive, great door, turn the key and then carry on pulling the pints. One Thursday, I turned to a new member of the cast beside me at the bar and said, “Goodness me, do you think the bobbies might come knocking on the door tonight?” He laughed and said, “Ha, I’m an off-duty police sergeant,” which caused a slight reaction around the bar. Then, a voice further down the bar said, “That’s nothing. I’m an honorary sheriff’s substitute.” They were lax days, but I just wanted to tell Members that anecdote.
There are two points I want to pick up on in my brief contribution. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) made the point that publicans and their staff are trained, and they know the danger signs when somebody is drinking too much. As often as not, they will refuse to serve them, or they will get them into a taxi and get them out of the place. How much better is that, as she said, than having some lonely bloke drinking himself into a stupor at home on cheap White Lightning or cheap wine? We all know that far too many household fires are caused by somebody being blootered in their seat and dropping a fag down the back of the settee or whatever. There is therefore a safety aspect to this.
If someone goes on holiday to Spain, Italy, or wherever, if they are like me, fairly quickly they think, “I’ll pop down the village”. It is a hot day, there is a place with nice wee tables outside, and they have a pint of lager. Let us switch that the other way round. Visitors come to the highlands of Scotland and find no pubs—are you kidding? Tourism is crucial to the highlands, and the one industry that is fundamentally sustainable in the long term. If there are no pubs, the visitor experience will be much impoverished, to say the least, and the bad news is that the next year, people will think, “Perhaps I’ll not go there again”. Pubs have a far wider role than has yet been touched on in this debate, and I echo all that has been said about pubs being part of the social fabric of our communities.
Bob Stewart
The Jolly Woodman in Chancery Lane in my constituency is the nearest pub to my house, and it provides quality real ale. People come from miles around to visit that pub, and that is the sort of reaction we want to pubs in our areas.
Jamie Stone
I could not agree more, and I hope that one day the hon. Gentleman will take me to that splendid place and introduce me to the delights of that nectar.
I have said enough. As soon as I have the opportunity, I shall invite the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling)—he is not in his place at the moment—to my constituency, and introduce him to its local delights, of which there are many. I hope there will carry on being many, because if we lost them it would be a tragedy.
Clydesdale Bank and SMEs
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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John Glen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I have responded to I think nine debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall on this matter. I am very aware of the pitch and the breadth of concern that exists on this matter and the urgency in getting some outcomes that actually deliver for our constituents, and I will continue to work towards that aim.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I think the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) hit the nail on the head. Let me give the House an example. A couple of years ago, when the Clydesdale proposed to shut its branch in my home town of Tain, I had a meeting with it and representatives of a highly successful local fish-processing business, and the Clydesdale was at pains to say, “Yes, we’re going to shut the branch, but you can use the post office locally.” Well, a fat lot of good that was, because the post office was too small, and I have raised that several times in this House. Now, in the next few days, that post office is going to close, and we will have no Clydesdale branch and no Royal Bank of Scotland branch in my home town. What good is that to SMEs? It is useless for business. I back the hon. Gentleman all the way: the time has come for a full inquiry into these banks, which, in my opinion, are completely out of control.
John Glen
As has been discussed in numerous debates, the changing face of the high street bank causes considerable concern for our constituents. We have a protocol in place on the relationship with the Post Office and, from memory, I think something like 97% of people in this country live within three miles of and have access to a post office. I think the hon. Gentleman needs—
John Glen
The hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on the fact that there will not be a one-size-fits-all approach across the whole of the United Kingdom, and the banks are willing to look at individual solutions in different circumstances. I would be very happy to meet him to discuss that further.
HMRC Estate Transformation
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Mel Stride
I can confirm that services will be improved. All the evidence suggests that is the case as we have upgraded and brought HMRC into the 21st century, and I have already stated that the savings will be of the order of £300 million in the run-up to 2025.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) pointed out, the nearest centre will be a huge distance from my constituency. If we end up out of the customs union, ports such as Scrabster and Wick in my constituency will be the UK’s border. How exactly will the Minister get HMRC to support those ports? If he is going to put personnel in them, why do we not simply reopen the Wick tax office?
Oral Answers to Questions
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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John Glen
I have always said that the banks need to do more to restore their relationship with SMEs, and I welcome the scheme that UK Finance has announced to address unresolved historical complaints. I look forward to meeting my hon. Friend next week, with the Chancellor, to discuss the Government’s position.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Inverness and Highlands city region deal was agreed a little while ago, and that is very good news. A whole shedload of money has been spent on Inverness—well done, Inverness!—but precious little has been spent on the outlying areas, including Wick and Thurso. That is surely not in the spirit of the deal. Should there not be an audit of this kind of deal in future?
Elizabeth Truss
We are doing city deals right across Scotland and they are having huge benefits for the local economy. We have also announced in the Budget a freeze in whisky duty. The question now is how the Scottish Government will respond to that in their budget tomorrow. Will they cut income tax, and will they also cut business rates?
ATM Closures
Jamie Stone Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Ged Killen
My hon. Friend anticipates my next point. If an ATM is removed, it costs between £7,000 and £10,000 to reinstall. That high capital investment means that, once closed, an ATM is difficult to replace, due to concerns that the investment may not pay off.
LINK sought to reassure the Payment Systems Regulator that the spread of free-to-use ATMs would not be damaged, because it would use its financial inclusion programme to protect ATMs in areas where there was not another free-to-use machine within 1 km. However, although it is well-intentioned and well funded, that programme relies on communities or operators reporting vulnerable ATMs to LINK and nominating them for extra funding, which, as my hon. Friend alluded to, they do not have to do.
The problem is that the existence of the financial inclusion programme is not well communicated, and there is concern that take-up has been poor. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the process for accessing the programme is not well known or straightforward, meaning that communities, operators and councils are often delayed in applying for funding.
I spoke recently to Tesco about its network of more than 4,000 ATMs. As I am sure Members know, many of those ATMs are in groups of two or three outside stores. Tesco told me that in some cases, those two ATMs are the last two in the town, but neither falls under LINK’s financial inclusion programme because both are right beside another free-to-use ATM.
As a consequence of the poor deployment of the financial inclusion programme, more than 100 ATMs with “protected” status have closed. We see examples of the programme failing in Scotland. Just outside Edinburgh, in the EH18 postcode, the nearest free-to-use machine is now 1.3 km away. In the PH24 postcode in the Cairngorms, the nearest machine is 6.6 km away. In TD10 in the Scottish Borders, some consumers must travel 10.9 km to withdraw their cash without charge.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I am extremely glad that the hon. Gentleman is making an issue of the distance between ATMs. My constituency is vast and remote, and we have a thin scattering of ATMs. There is a threat of closure. I have a map here. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the distance between some of those ATMs is more than 10 km. If any one of them closed, that would be severely detrimental to my constituency.
Ged Killen
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. He came along to an event I held in conjunction with Which? where that information was available to Members from across the House. Many Members were surprised to learn just how far apart ATMs are in their constituencies, and how vulnerable each of those areas would be if something happened to one of those machines.
The 1 km rule just is not working. Even if it were, things can go wrong quickly when one of the last remaining machines develops a fault or runs out of cash. I stopped off in Ballantrae in South Ayrshire over the summer recess, which seems a long time ago now. When I went to use the ATM, I discovered it was out of service. There is a post office counter in the local shop—we would need an entirely separate debate to talk about the pressure post offices are under to try to meet the gap in services created by the banks—but when I went into the shop to inquire, I discovered that the next-nearest ATM is more than 20 km away, or almost 13 miles in old money.
The other issue is that it is difficult to take account of local circumstances in applying the 1 km rule. In Cambuslang in my constituency, both free-to-use ATMs at either end of the main street are—excluding the other—within 1 km of another ATM, but those alternative ATMs would be not just inconvenient but very difficult to get to for anyone who experiences mobility issues. The closure of either ATM on the main street would have a massive impact on the small businesses in that area, which are already really feeling the pressure.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber. I was delighted to support his recent ten-minute rule Bill on protecting access to cash and reducing charges, the Banking (Cash Machine Charges and Financial Inclusion) Bill.
According to analysis by Payments UK and the Bank of England, those who rely almost entirely on cash are much more likely to be in rural areas such as my constituency. Yet they are experiencing the greatest reduction in the number of machines since the funding reduction by LINK in 2018. The closure of ATMs on the high street is of particular concern to older residents, who are more likely to rely on such services. The ATM network in rural areas is therefore incredibly important in supporting rural economies. My constituency will soon lose the Bank of Scotland branch in Kirriemuir, and earlier this year we lost our Royal Bank of Scotland branch in Montrose. When we lose banks, we also lose the ATMs.
Such closures have a huge impact on rural high streets. High streets in Angus are struggling anyway, and the closures put further pressure on them, continuing to challenge their trading environment. The removal of ATMs only creates a further barrier and a disincentive to shoppers. That is why the UK Government and LINK should work together to make shopping on high streets as simple and straightforward as possible. Everything should be done to prevent rural communities from feeling the brunt of the fee reductions and the potential closures that might ensue.
Like many hon. Members, last week I visited many small businesses in my constituency. Among the matters that came up was the ATM issue, and the negative impact that card transactions can have on small independent businesses. Many ask that people spend a certain amount before they can make a card transaction, but if one in 10 people have to walk more than 30 minutes to find the closest ATM, they may just walk away from the transaction. There are differences between contactless payments and card payments, and those things all put more pressure on small independent retailers. That is why ATMs must be in place to support them.
The financial inclusion programme, which aims to identify vulnerable ATMs and increase the interchange payment by 30p, in order to keep rural ATMs financially viable and protect rural communities, is welcome, but there is a question as to how effective it has been. Despite the programme, research by Which? has shown that closure rates of free-to-use ATMs have still been at their highest in rural constituencies such as mine. The provision that people should not have to travel more than 1 km does not go far enough. In fact, it is not in place in every area in Angus, and today we have heard other Members say the same. Residents in Inverkeilor, a village in my constituency with a population of 1,000, must travel six miles to Friockheim to use a free ATM. That is well outwith the 1 km provision that should be in place.
Jamie Stone
What if someone living in the hon. Lady’s constituency, or in my Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency, does not have a car?
Kirstene Hair
The hon. Gentleman is right. With declining public transport provision in rural communities, if someone does not have the provision of a car they are left completely stranded, with no access to cash.