Interest Rate Swap Products

Debate between Tessa Munt and Emma Reynolds

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making those points, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to them in due course, if not today.

There seems to be an extremely worrying level of coercion involved in the banks’ selling these products to small businesses without making sufficient information available. I have no doubt that what happened to the company in my own constituency has been replicated across the country. That is regrettable at a time of such difficult economic uncertainty when small businesses are the backbone of the British economy. We need to make sure that they are supported, not systematically exploited.

[Tessa Munt]

I have a quick point. One of my constituents took his local bank manager to Bristol to talk to Barclays about what had happened, yet that local bank manager did not understand it. If bank staff do not understand what is going on, how is a farmer who has so many things to consider every day meant to understand it?

[Emma Reynolds]

The trust between the bank and SMEs certainly seems to have been exploited, as the hon. Member for Aberconwy demonstrated, although one would have hoped that the banks would support small, viable businesses rather than exploit them.