Northern Ireland Banknote (Designation of Authorised Bank) Regulations 2020

Lord Trimble Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

What the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, is really quite shocking. Legislation has been enacted, clearly stating dates by which things should be done, yet as those dates come up we discover that nothing has happened. That is very disconcerting. The Northern Ireland Executive have quite enough on their plate at the moment and one can understand some of the difficulties there might be there, but to not comply with the legislation that they have themselves enacted is very disturbing.

I also noted that the noble Lord, Lord Wood, was a little surprised about the arrangements we have here regarding banknotes. It goes back to the formation of the banks, which came into existence in the early 1800s. They were issuing notes. When various mergers took place, the Bank of England was quite ready to put a regime in place so that the four Northern Ireland banks and the three Scottish banks could continue their practice without disturbing what happened at a national level. There is occasional amusement about seeing these provisions but, as my noble friend Lord Caine said, there have been occasions when it has been difficult to get those notes accepted. I thought that that problem had diminished over recent years, but maybe I just have not come across it all that much.

On the detail of this legislation, the regulations are clear about the future. The Treasury has to determine a designation date and from that date Ulster Bank Limited will no longer be authorised to issue banknotes in Northern Ireland. That is very clear. Next, the regulations state that National Westminster Bank will be authorised to issue banknotes in Northern Ireland. We are therefore getting to a lovely arrangement where it appears that while National Westminster Bank is authorised to issue these bank notes, it is likely to issue them in a way that makes them indistinguishable from Ulster Bank notes, and I am delighted to hear that.

The other major provision is not in the regulations but is mentioned in Scottish & Northern Ireland Banknote Issuance Annual Report 2019. Paragraph 20 refers to AIB Group (UK) plc and what it says came as a bit of a surprise to me:

“On 13 February 2019 AIB Group (UK) plc announced its intention to cease issuing its own banknotes in Northern Ireland from 30 June 2020, and instead to dispense Bank of England notes through its branch and ATM network from this date onwards.”


That will be a considerable change in Northern Ireland because southern notes, as we call them, which are AIB notes, are as frequently found as Ulster Bank or other Northern Ireland banknotes. However, according to that report there will be a simplification, I suppose, in that AIB will no longer be dispensing its notes in Northern Ireland and will instead be dispensing Bank of England notes through its branch and ATM network. We will more often find ourselves with Bank of England notes in our hands, and that will be a good thing.