Richard Foord

I join this debate to speak about an appalling bank heist. It is happening not just in one town but in rural towns across the country. It is not a vault being raided, and it is not cash being snatched; it is the very banking services that support our most vulnerable being taken away. Too often, people’s concerns about bank branch closures are misrepresented as issues of convenience, but they are about lives and livelihoods. Let me offer an anecdote or two in support of that argument. Jack and Jacqueline Barrass from Honiton have an adult daughter who has significant learning difficulties. Unable to remember her PIN without prompting, or to conduct telephone banking without a parent present, she relies on in-person banking. Virtual services are too complex and leave vulnerable adults like her dangerously exposed to online scams. Another constituent of mine, who is in her late 70s, had a miserable experience of using a banking hub. She wanted to pay her husband’s care insurance with cash. She was told that, because her local branch of Lloyds bank was closing, she would have to use the post office. The post office said that it could not make the payment and told her to ring Lloyds bank. After using an automated system, she gave up. She went to a banking hub, where she was reduced to tears as the helper again tried to navigate her through the Lloyds automated service. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this debate. The figures she set out are stark: Lloyds closed 218 branches across the country last year, including in Seaton, and will close 95 more in the next year, including in Honiton, while reporting £6.7 billion of pre-tax profits. That is an outrage, and the Government need to do more than just set up an independent review into access to banking services. They need to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society get the services they need in rural regions.