David Chadwick

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing this timely debate. We heard last week that the banks will be closing their doors to more customers. Lloyds Banks has decided to close an extra 136 bank branches, despite making £7.5 billion in pre-tax profit in 2023, an increase of 57 %. That followed years of tax cuts given to it by the previous Conservative Government. Lloyds has decided to reward its customers by closing its doors to them. Shame on Lloyds Bank. Banks have been permanent fixtures on our high streets for centuries. The Lloyds branch in Brecon was founded in 1778 and is part of our town’s history. Bank closures will reduce footfall in our town centres, hurting the local economy. Pontardawe’s Lloyds bank will also close in November. More than 300 local residents have already told me about the challenges that will cause them. The elderly and vulnerable people in Pontardawe deserve to have somewhere safe and easy to go to access their own cash. The same is true of local businesses. Pontardawe is a gorgeous town with some very successful high street businesses. The bank’s closing will make life harder for those local traders. The banks are abusing their market dominance to pile pressure and costs on to local businesses that can ill afford it. Local traders are being told to make further journeys just to access cash. That is piling the costs on to them, and our local economies will suffer as a result. Imagine being a wheelchair user in Presteigne. After the bank branch on its high street closes on 3 March, the nearest banking hub—when it opens—will be in Leominster, 14 miles away. The bus journey to get there is two and half hours. Why are we letting our banks do that to people? While those bank branches are open the Government must ensure that they remain so. They should remind Lloyds and all other banks that the Government are in charge, setting the conditions for our banks, and not the other way round.