Lizzi Collinge

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wishart. We all know that there has been a marked decline in the number of bank branches across the UK over many decades. The main message I want to get to the Minister is that the response to bank closures has focused too much on access to cash—important though that is—and not enough on the loss of face-to-face services, as my constituents know all too well. We have had bank closures in Sedbergh, and the NatWest branch in Kirkby Lonsdale closed earlier this year. It had not even been noticed that the ATM was closing, so it took far more effort than it should have done to ensure that access to cash was retained. Face-to-face banking services offer a lifeline for vulnerable people and protection against fraud and digital exclusion. Some things are simply too complex to do over the phone or through an app. Setting up powers of attorney and delegated authority has been mentioned. Anyone who has lost a partner or a parent knows the complexity of dealing with grief—there might be a mortgage to deal with, money to transfer out of a joint account or bills to continue paying from the estate. Those processes are complicated and upsetting enough without having to explain the situation over and over again to different call centre staff or spending 20 minutes listening to hold music—sometimes people just need to sit down with a member of staff. Of course, rural inequalities compound that problem; people are told to travel to another branch, and anyone who has tried to get around Morecambe and Lunesdale on the bus will know how challenging that is.