Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) for securing this very important debate.
In recent years, banking services have been withdrawing from my constituency. Every single high street has seen bank branches close, and we now have fewer of them, but Cheshunt has borne the brunt. Cheshunt is a busy town of 40,000 people, right in the heart of my constituency, but not a single bank branch remains. That simply cannot be right.
The lack of in-person banking facilities is depriving individuals and businesses of access to vital services and, for so many older and vulnerable people, causing huge difficulty and frustration as they are forced to use digital services and smartphone apps. My own nan is one of them, and she is not happy about it. Across Broxbourne, more than 3,000 people are living with sight loss, and that group is particularly reliant on in-person banking services. Many cannot use online banking at all, and they feel the pressure that not being digitally connected puts on them. That is why they like going into a bank branch, to get help from a real person to access their cash. They might specifically pick a bank with a branch on the high street, but if it closes, some banks now require customers to use an app to get a code in order to speak to the bank over the phone. That does not solve the issue.
It is the sensible view of me and my constituents that Broxbourne needs a banking hub and, in particular, that the town of Cheshunt would be the perfect place for one, as it is right in the middle of my constituency. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire mentioned, the process for securing a banking hub is far from sensible.
Link has told me that Cheshunt does not meet the criteria for a hub because
“there are already cash access services and facilities within a 1-mile radius which are suitable for the needs of the local area”
and “the deficiency does not” affect my constituents enough. Well, not having a bank really does affect my constituents. This is typical civil service protocol on where policies should be implemented and where they should not be. The rules simply need to change.
Link points out that my constituents can take a 15-minute bus journey to Waltham Cross, where a handful of banks remain for now, but do not get me started on the state of the bus services in Broxbourne. It is true that there are bus stops in the precise centre of Cheshunt and a few of my constituents will be able to get a bus—if it turns up and it is on time. In most cases, buses simply do not turn up on time or do not turn up at all.
However, the vast majority of the people of Cheshunt do not live on top of a bus stop. Link has told me that journey times of less than 15 minutes are deemed acceptable, but many of my constituents living in residential areas off the high street, in neighbourhoods of Cheshunt such as Flamstead End, Rosedale or Bury Green, or in the village of Goffs Oak have much longer journeys even to board a bus, let alone to travel to a bank. That is not acknowledged at all in the assessment process, which uses only an
“approximation of the centre of the high street”.
That is not acceptable; it does not reflect the wider catchment area of towns such as Cheshunt and the role that Cheshunt serves for my constituents.
The criteria need to change to ensure that any town that wants a banking hub can have one. Surely that is within the Minister’s gift. I thank her for meeting me recently to discuss my campaign to get a banking hub in Cheshunt, but every time that I have asked for one, I have been told that we do not meet the access to cash criteria and that there is nothing the Government can do about it—they simply wash their hands of it. I was told in a written answer that it is all down to Link, or the financial services sector, or the Financial Conduct Authority. Well, I have met Link and it tells that it cannot help; I have met the Financial Conduct Authority and it says that it is up to the Government to change the law. Will it really take the closure of every bank in my constituency before we are even considered for a banking hub? It looks inevitable that that day will come.