Financial Exclusion: Access to Cash

Debate between Lord Bellingham and Paul Sweeney

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sweeney]

I completely agree. My constituency, like the hon. Gentleman’s, has had a disproportionate number of closures. I commend and thank the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen), and the hon. Gentleman for their work on the issue. The LINK cut is critical, but we need legislative backing to safeguard provision. Many small businesses, including postmasters, are saying that they will not pay punitive business rates to maintain free cash access.

The discussions about credit unions are pertinent, and I commend the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and my hon Friendfor Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for speaking about their work on the issue. As a result of the closure of the Greater Milton and Possilpark credit union, 4,212 members have had that facility taken away. Santander is threatening to close and remove its ATM, just as in Parkhead. This is a critical issue, because banks do not feel any sort of obligation to maintain their provision. In America, Santander has a £1.9 billion community reinvestment fund because the American Government have forced it to do that in poorer communities, but there is no equivalent legislative obligation in the UK.

We need legislative teeth to back up the provision of banking services in our poorest communities. I urge the Minister to recognise that urgent need in our communities, particularly in Glasgow North East.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)]

We want to leave two minutes at the end of the debate for the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) to wind up, so if the Front-Bench spokespersons confine themselves to eight minutes each, I would be very grateful.

Veteran Suicide

Debate between Lord Bellingham and Paul Sweeney

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this critical debate on our national life, Sir Henry. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) for speaking so touchingly and movingly about the cases he has had to deal with and the impacts they have had.

I will speak from my personal experience of friends who have served in the Army and how they have been affected. I have spoken about this issue several times in the last few months, because many of my friends and people I know have been affected. Indeed we lost four Jocks from the Royal Regiment of Scotland in July and August last year through a terrible spate of suicides. We really worried about what that meant. Reflecting further, more than 70 veterans have taken their own lives in the last year, which is really worrying. The death toll exceeded the number of battlefield fatalities in 11 of the 13 years that British forces were operational in Herrick in Afghanistan. It is a worrying rate.

More than a third of those who took their lives in 2018 whose details are known had suffered from PTSD, so it is clearly something we need to deal with. I spoke to Combat Stress about the issue and most worryingly, many of those people—particularly those in the Royal Regiment of Scotland—had identified themselves. One of the men who tragically took his life, Jamie Davis, had been recording video diaries of his experiences, which are particularly haunting to watch in the light of what happened and knowing that he ended up taking his own life. The descriptions of the difficulties that he encountered are harrowing, but they are not unfamiliar from what we have heard in the debate.

It is critical that we now recognise the urgency of the situation. More than 100,000 people have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. This is not about veterans of the world war two generation, but about people in my peer group—people in their 30s and 40s—who served in those theatres and have suffered terribly as a result of losing their friends. I think about some of my friends I lost in Afghanistan, and I recognise the impact that that can have. This is critical, and the care review and the mental health review that the Ministry of Defence suggests do not go far enough. We need more grip around this, we need a proper casework service, and we need proper and more robust engagement as a matter of urgency.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to colleagues for showing restraint and being so concise, and also for making very moving contributions.