Lord Berkeley
Main Page: Lord Berkeley (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Berkeley's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years ago)
Lords ChamberI agree with my noble friend; he is completely correct. It is worth pointing out as some reassurance that over 79% of adults over 65 have made a payment using contactless in the last year and 84% of adults over 65 have used online banking, so I think the digital revolution is spreading to all parts of our society.
My Lords, the Minister’s answers seem to indicate that the Government are very keen that we end up as a cashless society, with everything done with cards and so on. Is he aware that Sweden has stopped this move because of fears of a covert attack? In which case, if we were cashless and had a covert attack which disabled everything, we would be a moneyless society.
The noble Lord makes a good point—though perhaps he meant “cyber” attacks—and it is certainly part of our responsibility to ensure that the banking system is resilient to attacks. We have convened the banking system and ensured that operational resilience is a key part of protecting the UK’s financial system, institutions and customers.