Asked by: Ged Killen (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will consider the merits of introducing rules to govern the provision of free to use cash machines (a) within a given geographic area and (b) on the basis of per head of population.
Answered by John Glen
The Government recognises that widespread free access to cash remains extremely important to the day-to-day lives of many consumers and businesses in the UK. Government has been engaging and will continue to engage with industry, including LINK, to ensure that this access is maintained.
The Government has not made any formal assessment of the potential effect of LINK’s proposals to change the interchange fee rate on consumers or small businesses, including in Scotland. However, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), which Government set up as an independent regulator in 2015 with a statutory objective to ensure that the UK’s payment systems work in the interests of their users, is monitoring developments within ATM provision, and is conducting ongoing work on the impact that changes may have. The PSR has recently published a summary of their work to date, which can be found at https://www.psr.org.uk/psr-focus/the-UK-ATM-network.
The PSR has committed to using its powers to act should any of the firms it regulates behave in a way that conflicts with its statutory objectives.
LINK has assured the Government and the PSR that industry is committed to maintaining an extensive network of free-to-use cash machines, and to ensuring that the present geographical spread of ATMs is maintained. LINK intends to bolster its Financial Inclusion Programme, which ensures the provision of ATMs in areas of deprivation, where demand would not otherwise make one viable, and has also committed to protecting all free-to-use ATMs which are a kilometre or more from the next nearest free-to-use ATM.
Asked by: Ged Killen (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the relationship between the availability of bank branches and the numbers of loans issued to small and medium sized enterprises.
Answered by John Glen
The Treasury has no made no such assessments. The decision to open and close branches remains a commercial judgement for banks. However, the impact of closures on communities must be understood, considered and mitigated where possible.
The industry’s Access to Banking Standard, launched in May 2017, commits banks to ensure personal and business customers are better informed about branch closures and the reasons for them closing, along with the options they have locally to continue to access banking services, including specialist assistance for customers who need more help. The Access to Banking Standard is monitored and enforced by the independent Lending Standards Board.
99% of personal and 95% of banks’ business customers are now able to withdraw cash, deposit cash and cheques, and make balance enquiries at a Post Office counter via its network of 11,600 branches. At Autumn Budget 2017, my predecessor wrote to the Post Office and UK Finance to ask them to raise public awareness of the banking services available at the Post Office for individuals and SMEs. I look forward to receiving their proposals later this month.
More widely, the Government remains committed to supporting SMEs’ access to the finance they need to grow and expand, and has: established the British Business Bank to make finance markets work better for small businesses; supported challenger banks; introduced a bespoke regime for peer-to-peer lending; and made structural interventions such as the Bank Referral Scheme and the SME credit data sharing scheme.