Santander Closures and Local Communities

Debate between David Linden and Paul Sweeney

Thursday 14th February 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I pay tribute to my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), for securing this debate. He spoke very powerfully about the impact that these bank closures will have on the city of Glasgow and further afield.

As I listened to my constituency neighbour’s comments, I reflected on the picture in Glasgow. By my calculation, there are five Santander branches in the city of Glasgow, yet the two that have been earmarked for closure are in Springburn in my constituency and in Parkhead in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. They just happen to be the two worst areas of Glasgow for social multiple deprivation, which leads to me to look at the wider programme of branch closures. In the last four years there have been four branch closures in my constituency, including two run by the Royal Bank of Scotland—one in Dennistoun and the other in Possilpark, directly opposite my constituency office—and the Clydesdale Bank in Springburn, just around the corner from the Santander branch that is earmarked for closure. The only branches left will be the TSB in Dennistoun and in Springburn. We are down to some of the last banks in the poorest communities in Scotland, which is a great tragedy. What does it say when we extrapolating that observation across the country?

Of the five branches in Glasgow, the ones in Shawlands, Byres Road, Argyle Street and Sauchiehall Street are staying open. They are in quite prosperous parts of Glasgow, and I think they are staying open simply because the current accounts held at those branches are much more valuable to the bank. It is profit-seeking behaviour, and there is no legislative imperative for the bank to correct it. The bank will therefore seek to maximise profit at the expense of its customers.

[David Linden]

There was a point that I omitted from my speech due to time constraints. One of the things that I learned from speaking to the staff was that we had a mortgage adviser in Parkhead. Given that they were not doing a roaring trade, apparently they were taken out six months before the decision to announce the plans for closure. That absolutely backs up the hon. Gentleman’s point: these decisions are made entirely on the basis of profit rather than on serving the people who live in those communities.

[Mr Sweeney]

I accept that observation. To be fair, my interaction with a physical branch is limited, because I have adopted new technology—I suppose it is because I am a millennial. I use the banking app for TSB, despite some recent difficulties with the transfer from Lloyds TSB using the banking technology. The only time I visited a branch for any substantial business was when I took out a mortgage in Dennistoun about three years ago. The hon. Gentleman makes the point that if we are going to cut the cloth, we will create almost a self-fulfilling prophecy by stripping out key banking services such as mortgage provision, which is a great problem.

Scottish City Deals

Debate between David Linden and Paul Sweeney

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Since the UK Government provided half the capital for the city deal—cash that was contingent on a no vote in the 2015 referendum—it appears that the SNP Scottish Government are at best apathetic about the progress and success of the deal and are therefore dragging their feet and putting nationalism ahead of the national interest and of the interests of Glaswegians. There is no better example of that than the way in which power was ripped away from the SPT and centralised in Transport Scotland. There has been a total lack of progress in infrastructure investment in Glasgow, particularly in the Glasgow metro rail network, which was built by the Strathclyde region. There has been no substantial investment to expand the network since the end of the Strathclyde region and the centralisation of transport powers under Transport Scotland.

The Glasgow airport rail link was scrapped in 2008, and there was a fire sale of the land—a scorched earth policy—that would have allowed it to happen. We struggle to see how we can revive that deal, because all the infrastructure that was put in place to achieve it was sold off in that fire sale by John Swinney. There is also a threat to the Crossrail scheme in Glasgow, which is vital for unifying the city region’s rail network. Transport Scotland has actually demanded its removal from the city region plan, which would open up the land for the construction of housing.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I will avoid the theatrics that some others have used. The hon. Gentleman talks about the danger posed to Crossrail. Does he accept that, under a previous administration, Glasgow City Council granted permission for 800 houses where Crossrail would have gone? I do not think he is in strong territory.

[Mr Sweeney]

I do not accept that at all. The high street curve area was protected until June last year, after the change in administration. It was actually Transport Scotland—[Interruption.] No, the planning application was not before that. I am the only Member of Parliament who raised an objection to that planning application, which went to the city council only last month. Crossrail was enabled in the city region development plan, but it was removed from the latest edition of the plan in June last year at the demand of Transport Scotland. That is why a planning application went in that threatens the delivery of the Crossrail scheme, which is a vital project for Glasgow. I urge all Glasgow city region Members of Parliament to get behind it. We need to protect and safeguard the route for Crossrail. It is a critical project that should be funded by the Glasgow city region city deal, and it is another example of how dysfunctional and disjointed the whole administration of the deal has been.

At a time when public money is tight, it is unacceptable that the involvement of two Governments—in Edinburgh and London—can lead to a stalemate in the progress of the Glasgow city deal and a failure to draw up and implement a strategy for investing the allocated funds. The Tories and the SNP must get a grip if our urban areas are ever to catch up with and exceed the ambition of their English peers.

In an evaluation of their progress in 2016, the Fraser of Allander Institute commented that the three city deals that existed in Scotland at the time

“could have an important impact in increasing urban productivity, and increasing the culture of partnership and innovation in these…city regions,”

but “many more steps remain,” and that for cities in Scotland to move forward,

“they need to be empowered—with additional roles, funding and competencies, because they will need and are best-placed to identify their infrastructure investment requirements, especially in transport and housing.”

Jobcentre Closures

Debate between David Linden and Paul Sweeney

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) for having the foresight not only to secure an Adjournment debate, but to secure an Adjournment debate that allows us to detain the Minister for a certain amount of time and to rake him over the coals about this deeply flawed decision. If the Minister thinks that he is getting out of here before 10 o’clock tonight, he has another thing coming.

I commend the Minister for his promotion to this post. He will be aware that I, my colleagues on the SNP Benches, the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) and other cross-party politicians from the city of Glasgow have written to him commending him and congratulating him on his new post, and inviting him to Glasgow. Now, I have not checked my mailbag this evening to see whether we have yet had a response to that letter. I am sure that his response will be there when I toddle over to the mail room tonight; he will be telling me that he is coming to visit the city of Glasgow in the next couple of weeks.

The main issue I want to address is the disproportionate impact of jobcentre closures on the east end of Glasgow. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) has, in her time in this Parliament, very passionately outlined the case for retaining Bridgeton jobcentre, the doors of which closed on Friday last week. My own constituency of Glasgow East will see the closure of Easterhouse and Parkhead jobcentres over the next two weeks, with everybody being relocated to Shettleston. I will come back to that point in a moment.

Since being elected to this House in June last year, I have been clear that Ministers sit in their ivory towers in Whitehall, making decisions by spreadsheet and Google Maps. They decide what they are going to do in communities in Glasgow and in Scotland without having the foggiest idea about those communities. A visit to the Easterhouse Housing and Regeneration Alliance in December reaffirmed that for me. The Minister will have heard me mention the alliance in questions this afternoon. It is a coalition of independent housing associations that has been operating for as long as I have been alive. These associations know their tenants and their local communities. Every single director, staff member and board member of the alliance was absolutely clear that these closures will be deeply damaging for some of the most vulnerable people in the city of Glasgow.

If the Minister will not listen to the Easterhouse Housing and Regeneration Alliance, he could listen to the citizens advice bureaux in our city. There are fantastic citizens advice bureaux: in Easterhouse, led by Joan McClure; in Bridgeton, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central, led by Frank Mosson; and in Parkhead. I am sure that it is only a coincidence that the only jobcentre that the Government plan to keep open in the east end of Glasgow is not located next to a citizens advice bureau. When people are sanctioned or treated unfairly at the jobcentre in the east end of Glasgow, they can currently go to their citizens advice bureau to receive support. It is deeply damaging that we are going to remove that support.

After I was elected and met the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who is now the Education Secretary, I was struck that there is this idea that this campaign is party political or that it is a campaign against the Tories. If the Minister wants to believe that, that is absolutely fine. He can take it from me that, as an SNP politician, I do not have a huge amount of love for the Tories. But if he will not listen to me, will he at least listen to the three Tory councillors in the east end of Glasgow—Councillors Thomas Kerr, Phillip Charles and Robert Connelly, who is the councillor for Calton—who have all added their voice to the campaign to save our local jobcentres? If the Minister leaves this debate tonight thinking that this is some sort of Labour and SNP campaign against the Tories, he is deeply mistaken. This is a campaign to protect our jobcentres and some of the most vulnerable people in our city.

I want our jobcentres to be kept open for three reasons: digital exclusion, transport and the deep-rooted issues of the gangland culture and territorialism that, sadly, still exist in our communities. On a cross-party basis, we politicians all have to solve that. Fantastic research has been undertaken by the likes of Citizens Advice and the Church of Scotland about the real problems associated with the total exclusion of people. Something like half of my constituents have never touched a computer. Some people are able to use the internet on their smartphones, but that is not the way to do a 90-minute universal credit application. If the Minister wants to come to Glasgow and find a library that is willing to allow people to sit for 90 minutes to complete a universal credit application, he will be quite shocked to find that that is not actually the case.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my constituency neighbour for giving way. The Public and Commercial Services Union has done an assessment of the rationalisation of jobcentres. Its survey data shows that libraries in Glasgow are so in demand that they place time limits on the use of computers, thus excluding people from being able to do these onerous applications using their facilities. This just places another barrier before people who are already IT illiterate or who do not have the capacity to do this.

[David Linden]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very powerful intervention. That is reaffirmed by the fact that I do a surgery in Baillieston library and Parkhead library, and as soon as I arrive at 10 o’clock there is already a queue of people waiting to use the computers. What the Government will do by removing the computer access at jobcentres will be deeply damaging.

The Minister will be aware, no doubt, of his predecessor answering a slew of written questions from me about the number of wi-fi connections and computer log-ons at Easterhouse jobcentre—the very jobcentre he wants to close.