Bank Closures and Banking Hubs

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The banks have more or less abandoned my constituency, and it sounds like that is the case for many others. Some 6,500 branches have closed in recent years, as have more than 200 post offices. There are 23 separate settlements in my constituency with no access to banking. We do have banking hubs. It is an hour each way by bus to get to one, and it costs at least six quid to get there and back. I represent large numbers of people living in poverty, and it is hard for them to raise that kind of money just to have access to banking services.

I will make two other points about my constituency and then a general point. The bus services are very poor. As I have just said, it can take an hour each way to get to the banking hub, and the banking hub does not provide all the services that a bank should provide.

My other point about my constituency is that there are 15 zones for the internet, and 11 of those 15 zones are among the worst for internet provision in the country. How on earth is someone supposed to access banking on an internet system that is simply not working? It shows the extent to which Britain’s infrastructure is creaking, and it is not acceptable that banks should abandon the people who helped to create them in the first place.

I will just make this final point about mobility and accessibility. One in four households in my constituency has no access at all to a vehicle. That is more than 20,000 people without a van or a car to get them to a bank, even if a bank were available. It is a disgrace that the banks have turned their backs on all those people who were their loyal customers for so many years. Businesses that rely on cash and collect cash each day have nowhere to deposit it. People are driving home from their place of work or their business with cash in the boot and nowhere safe to put it. That is a dangerous thing.

It is odd, ideologically, to hear Members from the party of free enterprise and the free market saying, “We have to do something about capitalism withdrawing from communities.” That is what is happening, and that is the nature of capitalism itself. We should just say that the financial sector in this country is worth £17 trillion, which dwarfs our GDP of £2.5 trillion. The banks are worth eight times more than the total output of the whole UK. As we have heard elsewhere, £44 billion of profit has been made by the banks in recent years. It is time we brought the banks to order to serve our communities—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Helen Morgan. [Interruption.]