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Mr. Rooker: Obviously the hon. Gentleman's quotes are correct. Is he implying that the language in the documents that he has quoted has changed since 1 May 1997?
Mr. Nicholls: I shall move on to that.
The Government's line used to be, "We are better than you." Now we have someone of the Minister of State's reputation--the great progenitor of the Rooker-Wise amendment during those high moral days--reduced to thinking that he can hide behind the statement, "You're no better than we are." I shall deal with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying.
When the forms refer to the various accounts into which benefits can be paid, the Girobank sounds like a nice, homely account, but these days the Girobank is a current account run by the Alliance and Leicester bank. It is a bank account that comes with a cash card and a cheque book. Will such a bank, of its own free will, as an exercise in philanthropy, extend banking facilities to elderly people who want such facilities for the sole purpose of collecting their state pension and receiving it in cash? If the Minister of State or any other Labour Member thinks that banks behave in that way, three years of government should have disabused them of their naivete.
The documents refer lovingly and cosily to the Girobank, but that will not work. They also refer to the National Savings bank. That is very clever indeed. Although I do not pretend that I have carried out a survey, as a member of the Liberal party would, I have spoken to the constituents who brought me these forms. A number of people thought that the National Savings bank was like the old Post Office book account, which no longer exists.
When the forms tell people that they can take their money through the National Savings bank account, that is just about correct, but only if they have an investment
account with the National Savings bank. With an investment account, people can have their money paid in in an automated way. The problem is that they must then give four weeks' notice of their intention to draw it out.
Does anyone believe that elderly people, who are wholly dependent on state benefits and have never had a bank account in their life, will find it practical to open an investment account with the National Savings bank and then give notice in that way? It does not begin to stack up.
The documents are deliberately calculated to make people think that they have no alternative. We need to hear from the Minister tonight either that I am wrong, that he has been in contact with the Alliance and Leicester, and that it has assured him that it will be delighted to extend free banking facilities to the range of people in question, or that I am factually wrong and that it is possible to use an investment account at the National Savings bank in that way.
If that is the case, we need to hear about it because, as the Minister well knows, the ordinary account operated by the National Savings bank is a manual-based account. There is no way that money can be automated into it. The Minister knows that, because he has been briefed and he is an honest man. His honesty may be partial at times, but that is politics.
The Minister knows that the accounts mentioned will not be suitable vehicles for dealing with money. What does he intend to do? Either he must say--which even he will find it hard to do with a straight face--that there is a real prospect that, out of kindness, the banking industry will make facilities available to people who are on the poverty line, or he must say that the Government will compel them to do so.
I do not believe that, but it is not my problem--I am not a Minister any more. The Minister will have to come to the Dispatch Box and say that he will compel banks to do that, or that he believes that they will do so of their own accord. If he does not, there is a great, big lacuna in his argument.
In the Minister's letter to me, he states that after 2003 people will be able to take their money in cash. If he says that, he will know that that is a version of events which is incompatible with the truth. That is the politest way that I can put it.
Mr. Leigh:
All the Minister has to say in answer to my hon. Friend is that people will be able to take cash at the post office, with no cost to themselves. That is the end of the argument, is it not?
Mr. Nicholls:
I am not sure that I understood my hon. Friend. I do not think that it is the end of the argument. If people are to be able to take cash, they must continue to take cash from the post office, and the present arrangements must stay, but that is not what the Government are offering. The Government are saying that people can take cash, provided that they have an account through which to do so. That simply is not correct.
I want to make two further points, one of which has already been touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles). I heard the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box today do what he so often does. He says, "I can't help it. The Tories did this, and I must carry on doing it." He suggested that the arrangements proposed were what the previous
Conservative Government were in the business of doing. That is simply not true. It is not a matter of argument or of opinion. It is an absolute matter of fact. The Conservative Government intended to use swipe-card technology, but the Government abandoned that because of the job losses that it would have caused in the public sector.
When I heard the Prime Minister today I wondered how one could accurately describe what he had said in the Chamber, but I decided that it simply could not be done; it would be unparliamentary. When I returned to my office still seething, two messages were waiting for me from sub-postmasters in my constituency saying, "Did you hear what the Prime Minister said today? It was an absolute"--as I say, I do not want to dwell on that at any great length.
It has been suggested that the solution may be for banks to put cash points in sub-post offices. The figure of 3,000 has been mentioned, but what about the other 15,000 sub-post offices? Are we really expected to believe that banks will put cash points into other people's private premises when a business might collapse? Independent businesses can become insolvent for all sorts of reasons not related to this. For example, a sub-postmaster might die. It just is not commercially viable. The idea that that will happen is simply not true.
The Minister, as so often, will have got the tactics right. We want to hear no more nonsense about how the present arrangements will enable people after 2003 to obtain their money in cash. Tonight he must say that he, by force if necessary, will provide such facilities, or that the banks have privately assured him that they will do so. I just do not see it happening.
Mr. Browne:
Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House the date that the leaflet that he described as being deceitful was drafted and approved? If it is the same leaflet as I have in my hand, entitled, "Have your pension paid straight to your account", it was last revised in November 1996, when his party was in government.
Mr. Nicholls:
The hon. Gentleman digs a nice big hole and then throws himself into it. There is no doubt that at one stage the Conservative Government were thinking of going down this road and not using swipe-card technology, which they subsequently decided to adopt. That Government did what any decent Government would do; they listened to frail and vulnerable people who said that that would not work.
Mr. Nicholls:
I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's first intervention and, if he cannot contain himself, I shall give him another shot at it.
I was told by those who gave me the form that I have quoted from today that it is still current. If the hon. Gentleman has other forms which say something entirely different, he had better give them to his right hon. Friend the Minister now, because that would be the best piece of news that his right hon. Friend could hear this evening.
Mr. Browne:
I realise that most of us want to get home tonight, but I cannot possibly allow the hon. Gentleman to change his argument from the argument that he so
Mr. Nicholls:
I must have spoken too quickly. I am sorry. The Labour party is now in government. [Interruption.] The penny has dropped. The Government are now responsible for the forms that they distribute. Let us be clear that the policy that the Government are trying to railroad through was not the Conservative Government's policy, which was to use swipe-card technology which would have dealt with the matter.
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