Access to Cash

David Mundell Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller, and to take part in another debate on access to cash. I commend the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) not just for securing the debate, but for setting out the issues. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) for his passion on this issue, which he has pursued relentlessly in Parliament and with the Minister. The Minister has always offered good grace and helpful engagement, but as my hon. Friend intimated, we are at the crunch point and need action.

In her contribution, the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) touched on something that the Minister and I have not always agreed on. I feel that the Government have not done enough to convey the message that cash is safe. During the covid crisis, cash was no less safe than using a PIN pad and terminal. The Bank of England and many other international authorities confirmed that, and I do not think a clear enough message was given out that cash was safe. We also know that many retailers and other service providers have just used covid as an excuse to move to cashless payments, rather than there being some safety or security issue.

As we have discussed, the issues of acceptance and access are interlinked. Of course, the third key issue is the ability to deposit cash, which remains incredibly important for many voluntary and smaller organisations. To give an example from my local community, people do not go to coffee mornings, when they are allowed again, with their iPhones.

[Jamie Stone]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way—he is an old friend indeed. Does he agree that there is an additional safety aspect to somebody having to travel a long distance with a lot of cash on them?

[David Mundell]

Indeed I do, and I think the hon. Member for Pontypridd made those comments in her opening remarks. We have to have the three elements: access, acceptance and the ability to deposit. Like the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), I have a very large constituency—in fact, it is the largest constituency in the United Kingdom outside the highlands—where many of these issues of rurality are to the fore, so the issue of the 1 km within a rural context has to be properly addressed. We also have to have a better understanding of how engagement with post offices will work.

I remain very concerned about the post office network. I recently had four post office closures in significant communities, because a well-known retailer decided that it would no longer have post offices within its premises. Just glibly saying that the post office has a role might be right, but it is not as simple as that. We need to understand the basis on which it will underpin the availability of cash. I welcome the progress since the last debate, and I hope that we can achieve the same level of progress in the coming weeks, with a response to the White Paper and an understanding of the timescale. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said about the crunch, the banks have to put up or shut up. If they do not put up, we have to take the necessary action here in Parliament.