Scottish Affairs Committee

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, and I am grateful for his contribution. He is absolutely right, and he will recall some of the conversations we had with RBS about the reprieved branches and the dissatisfaction expressed by all of us on the Committee that there is no independent reviewer in place. He will recall that, as part of our recommendations, we said that those branches should be reprieved for a further six-month period until such a reviewer is in place. Also, we have to know the criteria by which those branches are being assessed. What we have secured from RBS at this stage is clearly insufficient to ensure that a proper assessment will be made.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I, too, would like to extend my thanks to my hon. Friend and to the Scottish Affairs Committee for this excellent report. Does he agree that the report absolutely lays bare the fact that RBS has ridden roughshod over our communities and that the lack of consultation by RBS throughout this entire process is clear? The access to banking standard requires banks to make an assessment of the impact of branch closures, but that is simply not possible if banks such as RBS do not consult their customers directly before making decisions on closures. Does he further agree that, with the UK Government now selling RBS shares below market value and with RBS paying £16 million in bonuses last year and recently announcing record profits of £752 million, the sense of anger and betrayal felt by my constituents in Kilwinning, Kilbirnie and Saltcoats is completely justifiable?

[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.