Central Bank Digital Currency

Lord Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct that a number of countries have launched pilots of central bank digital currencies, which the UK is looking at closely. As I noted previously, the UK is also leading international work to ensure that there are standards for CBDCs and that they are interoperable across different jurisdictions.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I shall bring this down to ground a little. A central bank digital currency paves the way for the abolition of cash, but the market is already doing that: across the country, increasingly over the past year, many businesses refuse to accept cash or cheques and accept only digital—either a card or an app. There are about 5 million people in this country who are excluded because they are cash-dependent. What are the Government doing to ring-fence those people to make sure that they can continue to participate in the economy? What will they do as this move to digital gets even faster?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord that the Government recognise that cash remains important to millions of people across the UK and have committed to legislating to protect access to cash in this country.