Banks: Cheques

Lord Eatwell Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we are straying a bit from the rather important and focused question of cheques and the Payments Council, which those other forms of payment extend rather beyond. The critical thing is that no decisions are to be taken precipitately. As I have said a couple of times, the banks recognise what they have to do. This issue will remain a matter of considerable public focus, not least because the Treasury Committee in another place recently announced that it is reopening its own inquiry into the future of cheques. The issue will remain very much in the public eye and the pressure will be on the banks and the Payments Council to come up with a solution that works for the whole country.

[Lord Eatwell]

My Lords, the Minister said just now that it was the Government’s view that cheques should not be phased out until suitable new arrangements have been made. Can he tell us what criteria the Government will use to judge the suitability of any arrangements? If those criteria are not met, will the Government require that cheque payments be maintained?

[Lord Sassoon]

To those noble Lords who were listening to some of my previous answers, forgive me for repeating myself: the criteria which the Payments Council itself put forward and which the previous Government welcomed back in December 2009—I echo that welcome—were that the new system had to be generally available, generally acceptable to its users and widely adopted. There also has to be, in the view of the Government, a paper-based system. Those are the criteria that have been set and we are making sure that the Payments Council sticks to them.