Community Bank Closures — House of Commons, 2018-02-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Jamie Hume Stone (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in this debate, because I have a very long way to travel. I apologise to the House for not being present when the winding up speeches take place; it is not an intentional discourtesy I also congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on making a really first-class speech. She covered every single point, and I am left with almost nothing to say as a result, which is rather distressing for someone like me who has a tendency to be verbose This issue causes me an element of personal pain because I have a number of friends who work for the Royal Bank of Scotland, at all levels of the bank. My comments about the bank are not intended particularly for the bank; they are aimed at the system in general. In my constituency, we face the closure of three RBS branches. One, in Tongue in north-west Sutherland, may be on hold—there has been a stay of execution. However, in the old royal boroughs of Tain and Wick, the intention is to close the branches. I have never seen an issue that has caused so much deep unhappiness among my constituents Call me old-fashioned, but the bank and the bank manager were as much a part of the social structure of these communities as the doctor, the minister and the school teacher. I think particularly of what happens when someone has, for example, a seed corn business—from little acorns mighty oaks grow. The point is that, in the past and even in recent times, someone with a business idea could go to the branch of their bank and say to the manager, "I have this idea. This is my business plan. Will you take a punt and lend me the money?" I have seen, in my home town, some seriously big businesses grow in my lifetime from absolutely nothing—there was a brave bet by the bank manager. We should not underestimate that The point has been made about the post offices. Our main post office in the town of Tain in the north of Scotland closed. Our post office now, which is very well staffed by well-intentioned individuals, is essentially a newsagent. The gap between the counter, where a person does their business, and the magazines is only the distance between two Benches in this place. If someone is trying to bank large amounts of money at the same time as Mrs McKenzie is trying to buy her copy of the Scots Magazine, everything gets muddled and, frankly, the staff get hassled. I really do not envy their position one little bit I have a short anecdote, which reflects on the banks. My first bank account, with the Royal Bank of Scotland, was opened by my father when I became a student. He put in £16—I did not see many £16s after that. In due course, I spent all the money because I was a young first-year student who did not know what he was doing. When my grant cheque came in, I opened another bank account in the Bank of Scotland and then I spent all that, too. The trouble came when the two bank managers talked to each other and said, "Do you realise that young Jamie Stone has two bank accounts and he is spending money like water?" Then they went and told my dad. There was absolutely no end of trouble over that. In a way, for those Members who are experts on Adrian Mole, that conversation, perhaps not completely correct today, headed off a potential multiple debt situation. I was pulled up and stopped—well, I had to be—which was probably to my great benefit in my life Banking is about the human face—of course it is. It is about seeing someone in the branch of a bank who says, "Don’t worry. What’s happened here is that the payment will not clear for three days." That can be the difference between peace of mind and mental torture. It takes someone just to say, "Wait a minute, I will go online and take a look. Oh, here’s the problem. This is what’s happening." You cannot take that away. We talk about online banking. Well, let me tell Members: if I hit the icon on my phone, it says that I have been logged out and, no matter how hard I try, I cannot get back in again. I do not have a clue, just like when I was 18, I do not know what my bank account is doing. Therefore, online banking is not for everyone The issue, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) said, is one for Government. The only way in which we will stop this endless gloomy slide of closures, which is eating into our communities and sapping morale, is for the Government to say, "Wait. What is the public service responsibility here?" They should then come forward with some thoughts and guidelines. It has been suggested that perhaps we should combine banking facilities and get the clearing banks to work together to form a one-stop shop. That is a very interesting idea I look for something from the Government saying, "We recognise that this is a responsibility, that this is dangerous for the structure of society and that these are the proposals that we intend to bring forward." I am an optimist, so I wait in the hope that there will be something that will sort this out once and for all.