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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 5 June 2025

Debate

Payment Services and Payment Accounts (Contract Termination) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Contribution

My Lords, I was a little disappointed about the response on two points. One is on this business of small and medium-sized businesses. The Minister rightly referred to the FCA as the body that is responsible for guidance. It is supposed to care about small businesses and growth, following the letter that the Chancellor wrote to them. The Minister mentioned that there are more small and new businesses in the pipeline; that is good news. Small business spectacles are important, both for financial service providers and, indeed, for unfortunate customers who are trying to get bank accounts. That was the second point: perhaps it was not possible as I did not give notice of the question, which is not the subject of these regulations, but he did not inform us as to what the latest is on helping people to open a bank account. His objective is the same as mine: to make sure that everybody can do that. He may know from discussion with other parliamentarians that the publicly exposed person issue has been a big one, and there are other issues. I would be interested to be referred to an update on how we are getting on on getting people to open bank accounts. It is important, in societies, for people to have bank accounts and not to be excluded. It is a great pity that it is so difficult, if you are a publicly exposed person, to move banks. That seems unfortunate.

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