Financial Services Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

Financial Services

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts
Wednesday 11th January 2023

(1 year, 11 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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The access-to-cash provisions in the Bill will require the FCA to consider access to cash at both a local and national level, so it will take geographic factors into account. That is also taken into account through LINK’s maintenance of the ATM network, which considers how far people might have to travel to access cash and what is reasonable.

Lord Tunnicliffe Portrait Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
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My Lords, is the Minister claiming that progress on this matter is rapid enough? It seems to me that the general view in the House today is that it is not. If she is saying that the legislation is sufficient, surely, the implication is that the regulator is not doing its job well enough.

Baroness Penn Portrait Baroness Penn (Con)
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My Lords, there is always more to do. For example, I referred to the rollout of Post Office banking hubs. They may have been slower than expected to get off the ground, but just recently we have seen a large number of new hubs announced. That is an example of improvement in these areas. As I have referred to, we think we need more legislation, so we have measures in the Bill on access to cash to further strengthen that.