Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

I come back to the issue of debanking. The Minister said some very useful things. This is debanking. We talked about defence companies and I look forward to hearing the results of that active engagement. I have talked in the APPG to individual defence companies that have had difficulties in this respect and we need to be supporting our defence companies, especially the innovative ones, given the change in the nature of weapons and so on at this difficult time. The banks are required to offer basic banking and give 90 days’ notice if they want to close an account. When you are given notice of the closing of an account, you then have to go to another bank and go through the whole system of being approved by it. I have tried to set up a new bank account at Metro to complement my account with one of the major four banks. Frankly, I gave up. Once you are in the system, it is absolutely fine. My bank knows about me: I have been banking there for years. But, if you try to go to a new bank, it is quite complicated: a lot of questions are asked and you give up. This all links to what the Minister is trying to do, which is to make it easier for citizens who do not necessarily have a good credit record to have a bank account, because it is important for them to be able to operate an account, save, have a card and so on. I wanted to emphasise that point and say that the Government’s work is important. If more progress is made in that area, I should be very interested to hear about it.