Tomlinson Report

Debate between Tessa Munt and Guto Bebb

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Guto Bebb]

That is a fair point about timing. Another of my constituents was told that his bank charges would be increased to a weekly fee of £4,000. The letter informing him of that arrived on 21 December, just before his business closed for Christmas, which I am sure was enjoyable because of that letter. There was nothing to be done until the new year, because the business was closed. There is an issue there. To go back to the hotel I was talking about, as a result of the lower valuation, the business can show on paper that its bank charges over the following six months were £250,000 higher than they had been in the previous six months.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I applaud the hon. Gentleman’s work in this area, and it is a joy to work with him. I want to mention a similar case involving a constituent who had a long-term arrangement with a bank. His business, which owns housing, has been told by the bank that it wants to finish his loan on 31 March, so he is required to sell the housing on 1 April. How can that be fair?

[Guto Bebb]

That is an issue on which the bank would have to respond, because my view is that clearly it is not fair.

I have a fourth and final example of businesses finding themselves in difficulty due to decisions taken by the bank. A company that contacted me recently had net profit of £272,000 on turnover of £3.5 million in 2008, net profit of £281,000 on turnover of £4.4 million in 2009, and net profit of £268,000 on turnover of £3.9 million in 2010. Those are all healthy figures. The company employed about 40 members of staff. In late 2010, however, an agreed overdraft facility with the bank was withdrawn, because a loan agreement under the EFG—enterprise finance guarantee—system was declined. The company was therefore put into GRG support, and the group proceeded to disallow a payment of £14,000 in corporation tax, on which basis the company found itself in difficulties and ended up going into administration. The final set of management accounts for the nine months before the company went into administration showed a net profit of £190,000. The company would argue that its difficulties were caused by the bank refusing the corporation tax payment, even though the final accounts showed a profit.

Such businesses feel extremely hard done by as a result of the way that the GRG and RBS have behaved towards them. My evidence could be described as anecdotal—I am more than happy to accept that—but it is important to emphasise that the cases highlighted in the Tomlinson report are the tip of the iceberg; they are not representative of an issue created by Lawrence Tomlinson himself. I have seen these issues in my constituency, and other Members have seen them in theirs.

Once businesses are in the GRG, the concern is that its attitude and behaviour is less than helpful. RBS argues that the whole purpose of the group is to put businesses back into health, but it is difficult to see how a business allegedly subject to cash-flow problems is helped by having an additional £250,000 in fees in a six-month period. Time and again, I have seen the fees charged by the bank go up when businesses go into the GRG, and they apparently bear no relation to the amount of work done in support of the business.

So-called independent reviews are forced on businesses by the bank, whether through a valuation, accountancy work or solicitors. Professional fees are charged to the business, but the instructions come from the bank and, often, the reports go to the bank first. We have to be concerned about that. Furthermore, the businesses often have no say whatever in who the reviewers will be. There is a question about the conflict of interest faced by those professionals: if they are being paid by a business, but instructed by the bank, surely they are conflicted in their work.

The other thing that I have seen time and again is payments by suppliers not being prioritised. There is almost never a case in which a payment to suppliers would be allowed if that took the business beyond the terms of its overdraft or facilities, and yet I have never seen a case in which charges due to the GRG have not been taken because they will take the business over its overdraft limit. That is a fair point to make, because if a business can go over its agreed limit in order to pay the bank charges, why on earth will the bank not allow a payment to a supplier if that supplier is crucial to the continuation of the business in question?

I have already mentioned a constituent of mine struck with a £4,000 weekly fee for the continuation of his banking facilities. To return to him, after three months of negotiation, the GRG agreed that it would accept £2,000 per week. There was no explanation as to why the fee was initially £4,000, or why £2,000 was now acceptable. I get the impression that the reason why it was £4,000 to start was that the bank thought that it could get away with it; the fee was subsequently £2,000, because the business put up a fight—its accountants and solicitors argued the case, as did the MP.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

I would be extremely wary of using the word fraud. In my view, there has undoubtedly been systematic bad behaviour and I could speak at some length about West Register, which is part of RBS, and the way in which assets have been taken from businesses by the GRG and West Register—there is a conflict there. However, even with the privilege afforded by being in the House, I would be careful about using the word fraud.

[Tessa Munt]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we could summarise the matter in this way? Customers have trusted their banks over so many years and that trust has been built up through generations. People still think that they should trust their banks, but there is now a complete imbalance in that relationship, as a practice has grown up in which highly commercially minded organisations are managing personal money and business money. People are now not qualified to understand what they are being offered by their so-called friends, the business or relationship manager and their bank.

[Guto Bebb]

Undoubtedly. That imbalance is something I have highlighted time and again in relation to the issue of interest rate swaps. I do not think it is reasonable to assume that we are talking about two equal parties when one is a banking organisation that has the ability to pull someone’s livelihood away from them at the stroke of a pen.

To conclude, the attention focused today on the GRG and RBS reflects the fact that RBS was bailed out by the taxpayer to such a great extent. With that taxpayer support comes added scrutiny. We should not take our eye off the behaviour of other banks and there are issues within those banks, but the key point is that the bank that we are talking about today is supported by the taxpayer and so has an obligation to justify its behaviour, over and above what is expected of other banks.

Interest Rate Swap Products

Debate between Tessa Munt and Guto Bebb

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

That is a good point. I have a constituent, whom I will not name, who is a farmer and was offered such an arrangement completely inappropriately. He said specifically that he did not want it. None the less, his bank, Barclays, wrote to him on 6 June 2008 with a contract, which he read in detail, but on 10 June sent him the final contract, into which it had slipped two clauses that turned it into this sort of agreement. He accepts that he probably should have read the second document, but it did not indicate at all that it had changed the arrangement. That was very poor.

[Guto Bebb]

That is another example that should be taken on board in this debate.

Another example of general mis-selling already touched upon is where a swap is for a period longer than the loan. I have also seen examples of where the swap was for a sum in excess of the loan. Another crucial example is where the break cost for terminating the swap was described in one e-mail from a bank as being £9,000 but, three years later, when the customer approached the bank to break the swap, a figure of £135,000 was quoted to settle. I fail to understand how it could go from less than £10,000 to £135,000 in three years. That is another example of mis-selling. Another one worth mentioning is where the bank classified the client as a professional client and experienced derivative trader. I can assure the House that the business in question was blissfully unaware of the nature of the product it was buying, yet, for paperwork purposes, the bank had described it as a professional client rather than a retail client.

It is generally agreed that there is an issue here. The FSA accepts it is an issue. Bully-Banks, an organisation representing 350 victims, has done some work highlighting that 96% of businesses in its organisation were approached about such products by relationship managers. Businesses did not go looking for these products; they were approached with a solution to a problem that often they did not have. Some 87% of businesses surveyed by Bully-Banks were unaware that the adviser was not an adviser but a salesperson, and there was a general lack of understanding. In 95% of cases, businesses stated categorically that they entered into these agreements on the basis of advice and guidance given by their bank relationship managers.