Financial Exclusion: Access to Cash
Debate between Jamie Stone and Peter Aldous(5 years, 6 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.