Tackling Financial Exclusion (Financial Exclusion Report) — House of Lords, 2017-12-18
Topic: Social Welfare
John Patten (Conservative, Centre-right): I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness about this time of goodwill. At this time of the year—Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Veil or whatever one wants to call it—a lot of people try to help those who are excluded in society from all sorts of activities. So I congratulate the committee on the clarity of the in-depth analysis that it has carried out I do not know how many noble Lords were in the Chamber earlier when the noble Lord, Lord McFall, as Senior Deputy Speaker, talked about the need for much greater understanding of the work of the Select Committees. A lot of people stood up and said that that was absolutely right, and there needed to be more missioning—going out and telling people about the excellent work that the Select Committees do. I say "hear, hear" to that, and there are some satisfied nods around the Chamber from committee members. But I sometimes wonder whether a bit of missioning within your Lordships’ House might not also be a good idea from the Select Committee. On the speakers list there are 10 speakers who are members of the committee, who will doubtless tell us all what an excellent report they have contributed to—and only four as-it-were immigrant Back-Bench people who are not on the committee. So there is a lot to be said for that, just as there is a lot to be said for the vision of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister for a shared society, which I strongly support. Having said all that, may I get in my retaliation first? It is always much easier to define than to solve—and, with respect, to find practical tools for change. I say that as someone who works in the financial world, in the City of London, as declared. Whenever there is a problem, whether it is financial exclusion or anything else, in your Lordships’ House two ideas always pop up—let us have a Minister for it, to stop it or extend it or change it, and, secondly, let us put better education about it in the national curriculum. Those are absolutely standard suggestions from most Select Committees about their proposals On the first, only last week there was a call for a new Minister for Loneliness in a report by a commission following the tragic death of the late Jo Cox, to deal with that sometimes devastating problem for too many people. And so on, up the headwaters of recent political times, to calls in the past under both parties to have Ministers for Children’s Play or whatever. I do not think that having a Minister designated to do stuff necessarily always sorts stuff out. I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, making a plea in your Lordships’ House for greater attention to happiness. I think that he may have called for a Minister for Happiness —and perhaps indeed he was the Minister for Happiness, or at least the tsar in charge of happiness. I cannot remember. But I do not think that it is an easy solution On the second point that always pops up—the need for better education—of course financial education is a good thing and it would be daft not to have it. But I think that there would be a collective groan in the staffrooms of our schools, which already have a difficult enough task in dealing with a crowded curriculum, if there was another ad hoc, sudden insertion into the work that they have to do. I do not think that jamming stuff into the curriculum solves anything very much I congratulate the committee on the depth of its analysis, and also on not calling for large sums of new money to be spent. That is a very important point: many problems can be solved without new budgetary extensions. People such as us, in positions of responsibility, have to recognise that we have a role—whether large or small—in improving financial inclusion. Her Majesty’s Government are, for sure, extremely important in this—but so are local authorities, NGOs, the charitable sector, in which my daughter works, churches and the rest, including local communities. Last Thursday, I was discussing this with someone with whom I work in the City and whose opinions I value. She told me of the problems facing her parents in Worcestershire who have a very long journey to a bank. They are fortunate, however, to have a sub-post office still in their village—but most sub-post offices cannot provide the sort of financial services that the excluded or those on the margins find so difficult to reach In our nearest market town, in the West Country, it is not to a sub-post office but to the local Crown post office that we turn. Three years ago there were three small bank branches: Lloyds, HSBC and NatWest. They have all gone, but the local post office has stepped into the breach, providing excellent banking services and foreign exchange facilities to trade in euros and dollars. When people go in to make a transaction it also has the commodity which is vital in all rural areas: the latest gossip. Not so far away from us there has been a bit of a fight-back. Four banks in Glastonbury shut within a two-year period, but Nationwide was lured to go back. It is an exciting place to be for all sorts of reasons, but perhaps not for banking. The leader of the local campaigners who got Nationwide back—and well done to them—said: "There are many customers, particularly the elderly and those on low incomes, who do not and often cannot bank online" Not every town is so lucky, nor big enough, like the village in Worcestershire where my colleague’s parents live. They cannot get financial help in their local sub-post office One Minister might be able to help in this area, particularly one in the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy who has in her portfolio both small businesses and post offices. Can more be done with imagination and encouragement by central government to get more internet facilities to provide better banking-like services in these smaller sub-post offices? That would do so much to help with financial inclusion However, financial exclusion is not going to be solved by having more bank branches. It was there all those years ago in the golden age when we seemed to have bank branches everywhere. Why is that? Some geographers, cleverly mapping the characteristics, find some correlation with geographical exclusion founded on relative remoteness. People in some rural areas near us are not only without the luxury of a bus a day; they only get a bus chugging into the local town one day a week. If you overlay a map of that sort of isolation onto a map of the areas Ofcom has just identified as having an 80% failure to get 4G services, the correlation is there all over again It is particularly important that rural people are not forgotten in the issue of financial inclusion. They are more likely to be isolated and to suffer from financial exclusion. There are a number of ministries, and no end of interministerial and cabinet committees, as well as the Cabinet Office, which are full of talented young civil servants who can help to bring these different strands together. That is a better way forward than having a Minister devoted to the task—because, unless you have a budget and power, you cannot do much.