Luke Graham
Main Page: Luke Graham (Conservative - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend’s questions are all absolutely spot on, and they are all related. On the question of consultations, we had real issues with how the Lending Standards Board was going about this. Our report found that there is clearly a sense that the voluntary code is not working satisfactorily and that the Government should at least examine the possibility of putting statutory regulations in place so that communities can be consulted in advance about branch closures. I hope that that is something the Minister will be able to take away from all this. I will say no more about the selling of RBS shares, other than what I said in my statement, because that is not part of the report, although we note the massive profits made by RBS in the first quarter of this year and the comparatively paltry £91 million that has been saved by these branch closures, as well as the impact of the huge reputational cost to the bank.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), on this report. I also welcome the extension of the life of the Alloa branch in my constituency, which was announced earlier this morning. Will he join me and other colleagues across the House in seeking further clarification on the criteria for these branch closures? When other Members and I met RBS representatives earlier this week, there seemed to be no differentiation between the criteria being applied to urban branches and those applied to rural ones. That is a major concern for north and south Perthshire.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to my neighbour for making that point. I note that that branch in his constituency has secured a reprieve, along with the branch in Comrie, which is just down the road from my constituency. He is right to suggest that this is a critical test for RBS. This is one of the concessions that we were able to extract from the bank, and we welcomed its announcement of the reprieves, but it must demonstrate that these branches are not simply being set up to fail. We need to ensure that, when it talks about an increase in transactions and business, it is able to assess that properly. The Committee will have an ongoing monitoring role to ensure that this situation is properly monitored, and we will report back to the House in due course.