Jonathan Edwards
Main Page: Jonathan Edwards (Independent - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)Department Debates - View all Jonathan Edwards's debates with the HM Treasury
Royal Bank of Scotland Branch Closures
Jonathan Edwards Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
The hon. Lady is right about the need to look at the criteria for community banking hubs. My constituency has been left with one bank in one town, Ammanford. All the other market towns have lost their banks, but the community banking hub is not an option because the towns are so small. The current criteria work against the interests of rural Wales, so is there not an argument that the criteria should be extended to take into consideration an amalgamation of rural towns within 20 or 30 miles of each other, so that the community hub could serve two or three towns put together?
Deidre Brock
The hon. Gentleman will be more familiar than I am with the needs of those communities, but I think any proposal is worth looking at. That is certainly true of community banking for several towns, though it might depend on the distance between them. My mother-in-law lives in the highlands and has to travel 10 miles to get to her nearest bank branch. These are all things that need to be considered carefully.
I would like to give a nod to the Castle Community Bank, a fantastic community bank in my area of Leith, for the work it is doing in filling the banking gap for many people where the other banks have failed them. As a credit union, it has been a real asset to the community, supporting vulnerable people to break cycles of debt and get affordable access to loans and other financial services. Its focus is on helping people, not serving shareholders, and I am very happy to give it my thanks and my support for its efforts.
Perhaps RBS should take a leaf from its own book and remember the people it serves. Its website proudly claims that
“the bank has a history of making life easier for its customers. The bank is committed to serving Scottish communities and putting the interests of customers first.”
It is time for that commitment to be made clear in bricks and mortar, not just words.