Banking Sector Failures

Debate between Stephen Kerr and Martin Whitfield

Thursday 12th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kerr]

My hon. and gallant Friend not only says the right things but says them with the passion and angst that we all feel on our constituents’ behalf.

At the stroke of a pen, and often based on a valuation that was instructed by the bank in the first place, a director or an individual loses immediate control of their business and their assets. To that end, I would like to share with hon. Members the story of one of my constituents, to add to the many other stories that have been and no doubt will be told today. My constituent’s name is John Roseman. I can do no better than to describe him in his own words from his LinkedIn profile, which I know are accurate from having met him. He describes himself as an “entrepreneur” and he is absolutely that. He fits the bill. He has

“vast experience in International Business in the High Tech Arena of Microelectronics, Solar, Oil & Gas, Cleanroom Environments & High Purity Manufacturing.”

John had a business, Sematek UK, that he describes as a

“Clean manufacturing service company specializing in turnkey clean environments, high purity gas, chemical and water installations, Mechanical, control and electrical engineering.”

His business had a turnover of £10 million and was based in my constituency. There are not so many businesses in my constituency that turn over £10 million, but John’s business did. He had blue chip clients across the world on every continent. His business was making money—it was profitable and had good margins. He came to see me in a surgery that I held in Dunblane, with a whole set of management accounts as evidence.

The success John had made of the business that he founded in 1990 was clear and obvious. But that all changed. Suddenly, in 2011, without any notice, John had the rug pulled from under his feet. RBS said it would like security on his existing facility, but no covenant had been broken and nothing substantial had changed, except that John’s business was becoming more successful and making more money. One day, the bank appointed someone to call on his business. John thought that he had come to do an inspection on behalf of the bank. But no, this was an insolvency practitioner, whose first words to John were that his facility had been immediately withdrawn and his business put into administration by the bank. John Roseman had another company called Mov-Stor. That business was not liquidated, but RBS GRG took all its assets and sold them on. It gave him a fraction of the true worth of that business’s assets.

I spent some time with John and he gave me permission to talk about his case today. His story is just one illustration of the brutal approach of RBS GRG and other banks to small and medium-sized businesses such as John Roseman’s.

[Martin Whitfield]

It is interesting that when we discuss entrepreneurs in this country, we frequently talk about their inability to develop from an SME into a large company. We put that down to selling the idea abroad, but actually today’s debate and the effects of the finance show that perhaps there is another reason why they are unable to do that, which has nothing to do with their ability or out-of-the-box thinking.

[Stephen Kerr]

The hon. Gentleman speaks well to that subject. Banks should exist to provide the capital that businesses need to scale up and become bigger, albeit for their own commercial interest, but I am sorry to have to say that is not how it works in this country.

The impact of the events on John Roseman was far more than just commercial. They had a devastating effect on him, his health—as I witnessed when I met him—and family, and his employees and their families. John’s business was stolen from him, and I make no apology for using that word.

[Stephen Kerr]

There can be no doubt about the nature of GRG’s operations. To say anything other would be a deceit about the part played by GRG. I apologise for having to use such unparliamentary language to describe the operations of a business, but that is the case too often in the examples that so many Members have had brought to us.

There was no failure in John’s business or model—they were a success. His business’s products and services were in demand. His customers certainly had not deserted him. But the Royal Bank of Scotland brought him down for its own purposes. He has still to get anything like an appropriate settlement in compensation for the way he was treated. John is cut from rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland should be warned that it can try to close his case, as it has told him, but he will not give up and will not go away. He wants justice and recompense, and he should be treated with more respect than he has been so far. As his Member of Parliament, I will support him as best I can.

John’s case is only an example; there are so many others. He suffered severe trauma. His health has been affected through stress and anxiety. He has suffered heart problems; he had heart surgery the week before his daughter was married. His marriage and his friendships have suffered. He said to me:

“My wife found it especially hard having to deal with the day to day situation and our marriage suffered seriously and was lucky to survive the constant pain, anger and aggression I was going through watching our family business and assets being stolen from us.”

That is the human cost, along with the human cost to his employees, his team and their families.

I repeat that, at the stroke of a pen, directors and shareholders suddenly have no voice and no right of reply, even if they never missed a payment but honoured their obligations. It is that easy. The customer gets no warning and has no ability to appeal. That can happen whether or not the valuation on which the supposed contract breach is based is correct.

Who determines that a property’s value has fallen? It is usually a surveyor from one of the bank’s panel of firms, which depend on banks for their business. They are hardly independent. Hypothetically, if a bank had a liquidity problem and needed to raise funds quickly, all it would have to do is engineer a bogus breach of contract—the rest would be history. Sadly, many banks are commonly accused of having done exactly that in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

As we can see, it is not just the bank involved—surveyors, LPA receivers and administrators all play their part. It is therefore imperative that those practitioners and their regulators are held to account for the roles they played—and continue to play—in the destruction of British businesses.

[Martin Whitfield]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. The fact that the contracts the banks entered into with customers were so complex and so cleverly—I use that word carefully—worded that they misled individuals about the powers the bank had over them plays into the APPG’s cry for a much simpler, more straightforward and more honest contractual relationship between banks and individual customers.

[Stephen Kerr]

Absolutely—complexity is a weapon in the hands of the banks.

RBS has been at pains to point out that Promontory did not find any evidence of deliberate undervaluation of properties. However, Promontory also stated in its report that in many cases it could not find any evidence that a valuation was correct. In other words, they were making it up as they went along. In such a cosy relationship, the surveyors, LPA receivers, insolvency practitioners and financial institutions all hold incredible power over the borrower. They used that power—they still can —to enrich their own firms and their balance sheet positions at the expense of viable businesses. Indeed, the section 166 report specifically refers to their searching out “opportunities” to default.

Insolvency was seen as an opportunity to get rid of troublesome complaints, as the voice of the individual businessperson is wiped out, and avenues for complaint or redress blocked, at the point of receivership or administration. In our last debate about this issue, which was in the main Chamber, I mentioned another method that some banks—Clydesdale, for example—have used to wipe out swathes of troublesome or just unwanted business customers: selling their loans on and letting a shady vulture fund, such as Cerberus, do the dirty demolition job for them.

We start with a situation where businesses have no effective protection against being badly treated by banks and their associates. Added to that, there is no real disincentive for banks and their associates to behave badly and even criminally towards those businesses, and nothing to stop the same banks and associates simply pulling the plug on them and hoovering up their assets to distribute among themselves. Businesspeople have nowhere—nowhere within their financial means, at any rate—to take their complaints about poor treatment that gives them a realistic chance of resolving their problems before their businesses and lives are consumed by them, or of receiving satisfactory compensation where they have suffered substantial loss or damage. On top of that, we repeatedly fail to take allegations of mistreatment and fraud seriously, and we refuse again and again to investigate and clamp down on bad and even criminal behaviour. Even on the rare occasions when we eventually investigate and prosecute, as in the case of HBOS Reading, we go after the foot soldiers, not the generals. It is not hard to see how that awful recipe of things combined to cause thousands of businesses to be devastated, their owners’ lives to be shattered and many jobs to be lost.

If we repeatedly fail to take allegations of mistreatment and fraud seriously, and we refuse again and again to investigate and clamp down on bad and criminal behaviour, there is no reason why such actions should ever stop occurring. I reinforce and second the questions the hon. Member for East Lothian asked, and I say to the Minister: please, for the sake of UK plc and the many businesses devastated by the issues I have tried to describe, let us take clear action to ensure that justice is served.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Stephen Kerr and Martin Whitfield

Report stage: First Day: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kerr]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for remembering my speeches, which makes him very favourable in my sight. I shall come to clause 11, but first I wish to make it clear that the people and businesses of Stirling—the individuals who live in my constituency—want us to make the best of Brexit. All we hear from other parties, as we heard from the First Minister of Scotland yesterday, is an unmitigated diet of doom and gloom. The fact is that, as was disclosed in an esteemed social attitudes survey that was released last week, there are really no differences between the electorates in Scotland and England when it comes to what they want the Government to get on with doing. They want the best possible Brexit, and a smooth Brexit that will work for all the people of this country.

The Bill is a necessary enabling measure. No one in this House wants to put our country and British businesses through a cliff-edge Brexit. The idea that there are Members who do is often repeated, but it is just not true. We want a smooth Brexit and a working statute book at the end of it. I repeat that, and I do not apologise for repeating it.

[Martin Whitfield]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the electorate do not want a deficient Bill to lead them into Brexit?

[Stephen Kerr]

Let me come to that—I promise that almost my next sentence will be on that. I want to make sure that the Bill and Parliament deliver what my constituents expect.

I now turn to clause 11 and the amendments to it, particularly amendment 3. Let me be absolutely clear about the clause: we must have an agreement between the UK and Scottish Governments to allow for the passage of a legislative consent motion. I am not convinced that that is a legal necessity, but it is a convention that the Government are honouring and they should be commended for that. I am therefore intensely disappointed, dissatisfied and frustrated that a deal has not been struck between Scotland’s two Governments.

In the past few days, there has been a lot of talk in the media about the claim that there is an agreement in principle between the UK and Scottish Governments. The Scottish Government’s Brexit Minister, Mike Russell, claimed on television on Sunday that such an agreement existed. Will the Minister tell us the status of the negotiations between Scotland’s two Governments? Is there an agreement in principle? Is there an agreement on the frameworks that we all agree are essential for the operation of the UK marketplace, to allow the UK to honour its international obligations and to strike trade deals?

Banks and Communities

Debate between Stephen Kerr and Martin Whitfield

Thursday 11th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of banks and their responsibility to the communities they serve.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us this time to discuss a profoundly important matter. I also thank all the right hon. and hon. Members across the House who have supported the debate, and I welcome the new Minister to his place.

The debate is, in part, a product of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s disappointing decision towards the end of last year to close 259 branches. Those closures will start to come into effect, and communities in my constituency will be cut adrift from the face-to-face banking that is so essential. The towns of Dunbar and North Berwick are to be hit, which have high streets with diverse mixes of independent and chain businesses. The impact has been succinctly described to me by a constituent, who said:

“Dunbar supports many small businesses, not just on the High Street. How and where will they bank their cash takings? Online banking does not work for cash. Many older people in the town are dependent on the bank local branch, especially those who have no computer, or are wary of internet banking. Dunbar whose population is rapidly expanding, and the nearest RBS branch is 12 miles away.”

All Members here may have in their constituencies banks that are closing, in some cases leaving towns with no banks at all.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. It is important to note that the branch closures that he refers to are only the latest tranche of branch closures; they come on top of a series of branch closures, and that is even more devastating to what they used to call the branch network.

[Martin Whitfield]

Indeed, I will come on to the statistics about the existence of branches in the United Kingdom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) tells me that when the branches close in his constituency towns, one town will be left with no bank and the other town with just one. That one bank will serve 58,000 people. This debate is more encompassing than just a recent set of closures. It seeks to ask a very pertinent question about the responsibility and the relationship between retail banking and the communities they should be so proud to serve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr]

The hon. Gentleman made a strong point, made much stronger by the fact that we are talking about the Royal Bank of Scotland, more than 70% of which is owned by the British taxpayer, who bailed it out in the first place.

[Martin Whitfield]

Hear, hear.

Physical money is the most symbolic representation of trust, but there is strong evidence that banks want to move as quickly as possible away from the physical movement of cash on to online and electronic transfer. Any transition from face-to-face banking to online services must take place at a similar rate to a drive to remove cash from society. Significant numbers of our constituents rely on cash to facilitate their budgeting, and those who do must not be abandoned in the rush by banks to change.

Last year it was suggested that 10,000 free-to-use cashpoint machines are at risk of closure. Some 2.7 million people in the UK still rely entirely on cash. The free-to-withdraw cashpoints will vanish first from communities where the individuals who rely most on cash for budgeting are based. Additionally, among the small and medium-sized businesses that make up our high streets, the challenge of banking cash is increasing. I have examples of constituents in Prestonpans who now have to travel, sometimes by public transport, with their daily take to the nearest bank where they queue for up to 30 minutes to pay the money in.

Insurance and safety issues prevent them from storing cash on their premises, and the cost of contracting the deposit to security companies is prohibitively high. When the issue was raised with the banks, they said, “The money can be paid in at the post office,” but the post office will not take larger sums of money because it does not want to have the problem of transporting the cash either. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), where tourism is a major industry, she has a business that banks more than £2 million a year but, following a bank closure, it has the responsibility for taking the cash elsewhere.

The closure of cash machines and the continued closure of high street branches are alienating business owners and older customers, fracturing still further their trust.