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10.4 am
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): It is a pleasure to follow two such powerful speakers as the hon. Members for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). I agree with every word that the hon. Member for Gosport said about Haslar.
There was much with which I identified in the speech by the hon. Member for Bolsover. It may surprise the House to learn that I too represent a mining constituency. The coal mines are closed but there are still miners, and I very much identify with the points that the hon. Gentleman made. I hope that areas such as the Somerset coalfield will not be forgotten, and that the miners who are suffering in exactly the same way as their colleagues elsewhere in the country will have access to the money that they should have.
Although the three points that I shall raise are well worn, they deserve to be addressed yet again before the House rises. The first--the issue of post offices--has been discussed ad nauseam in the past few weeks, but I make no apology for returning to it. I believe that we are making progress with the Government, not entirely as a result of the efforts of hon. Members. That progress has much to do with the 3 million people who were prepared to put their name on a petition and make plain their concerns
about what was happening to their local post offices, not just because of the people directly involved in the post offices, but because of all the people who depend on the presence of that service in their communities--the pensioners who do not want to be encumbered with bank accounts with which they are not familiar, but want to continue to use cash, drawing it from a post office, from people they know, in their local community.We have made progress in three ways. First, the Government have recognised that there will be a continuing need to allow people the choice of drawing benefits in cash from their local post office. Secondly, the Government have recognised that there is a need to maintain the integrity of the sub-post office network. Thirdly, an amendment has been introduced to the Postal Services Bill that provides for a subsidy to be paid.
Unfortunately for sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, there is a lack of definition on all three aspects. Business decisions are being taken now. People are deciding whether to invest in a post office business, whether they can safely retire and whether there will be a buyer for their business. More clarity is needed.
Therefore, I make a plea for the Government to talk now to the Post Office and to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, and put flesh on the bones of the arrangements that they are starting to develop. I do not take a partisan view of this. The issue is too important to use as a party political weapon. I believe that there are hon. Members on both sides of the House who recognise the value of sub-post offices. I was sorry that the Government took so long to respond to the legitimate concerns. I congratulate them on the fact that they are starting to do so, but they must finish the job. We must have clarity.
Secondly, I want to discuss the rural economy. I make no apology for doing so, because so many people--not only those who are involved in agriculture but all those in businesses that derive their income from agriculture, directly or indirectly--are still in a desperate position. I saw a tenant farmer, a dairy farmer, a man who had worked on the land all his life, a strong man, in tears in my presence because I mentioned the word "retirement" and it suddenly came to him that he had no means of retiring; he had nothing. His business was on its last legs, and once he retired he would be left with no house, no business, no capital--nothing. We must address that issue.
The only thing that is keeping the agriculture industry afloat at the moment is the extraordinary maintenance of the value of land prices. Land and quota are maintaining their prices, not because people are investing in agriculture but because they are investing in farmhouses, parkland and paddocks for their horses.
A farm in my village is for sale, and the estate agents who are selling that land have advertised it as a leisure dairy farm. Anyone who lives in a rural area knows that if there is an oxymoron to end all oxymorons, it is one involving the use of the words "leisure" and "dairy". That is how the estate agents describe that farm, which has provided a living for generations, in order to sell it. I find that offensive.
The Government have made moves in the right direction in terms of the farm summit, but they do not go far enough. The pig sector is still in desperate straits despite the measures that have been taken, as is the dairy sector, which is so important in my area. Those sectors
are not asking for more subsidy. They do not ask continually for more money. They simply want a fair deal for their effort. At the moment, they are not getting that from the processors and supermarkets. Until milk prices are set at a reasonable level, businesses will continue to fail. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry could help by sorting out the successors to Milk Marque to ensure that we have the vertical integration that enables milk to be sold profitably.My final point on this subject concerns the need to consider carefully the position of the tenant farmer--the farmer who does not have capital and who is seeing his business disappear, and, with it, his home. We need to find some way of providing security for those people. We need to find for them pension arrangements, which they do not have. The retirement scheme which we proposed, but which the Government rejected, would have gone some way towards meeting that need.
Thirdly, I turn to schools and education in my area. On this, too, I follow a well-worn track. How can it be right that a child in my constituency in a local education authority school can receive from the Government £1,400 a year less than a child in a leafy suburb of London? It is not just in Somerset that children lose out, but in many areas across the country. The extraordinary distribution system does not recognise the value of the child.
All sorts of academic arguments can be advanced in support of a better deal for our children. I do not want to go into that today, but simply want to say that a child, wherever he lives, is entitled to have a reasonable sum spent on his education. That is not happening. It is no good talking about three years of stability when those are three years of injustice to children in Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Derbyshire or wherever education authorities are losing out under the present formula. The Government need to address that.
The Government must also address the problem of capital. As the hon. Member for Bolsover said, we had two years of sticking to Tory spending guidelines, which meant that there was no money. Now, at last, there is beginning to be some improvement and I give the Government credit for that. Temporary classrooms in my constituency are being replaced by permanent ones. I have a list of five or six this year, but we have 800 temporary classrooms in the county of Somerset and some have been temporary for 40 years. Until we address the problem of capital expenditure in our schools, we will not provide the environment in which children can learn successfully and teachers can give of their best; nor will we give parents the confidence in the state education system that I believe they should have.
For all those reasons, I ask Ministers to look again at the distribution of resources and to make sure that the education, education, education pledge works for all, not just those in city areas which sometimes seem to receive a rather better deal.
10.14 am
Dr. Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East): I want to raise an issue that I know is troubling many of my hon. Friends and which is causing a lot of anger throughout the country. I refer to the wave of bank closures that are hitting all areas of our nation. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) mentioned the rural economy, and it is in the rural areas
that banks are being closed. I want in particular to talk about my constituency, where some of those bank closures have recently taken place.East Cleveland has seen the sudden announcement of the closure of two small branches of Barclays and a large branch of NatWest. The villages affected are Skelton, Brotton and Loftus. They are not small, sleepy hamlets, but sizeable villages that could be seen as small country towns. They are neighbouring communities on the fringes of urban Teesside. Barclays has now closed branches in Skelton and Brotton. NatWest is planning to close its branch in Loftus.
The closure of the Skelton branch of Barclays follows an earlier closure of the local branch of NatWest. There is now no effective banking presence in a town of some 6,000 men, women and children. The closure of the Barclays branch in Brotton means that there are now no banking facilities whatever in a community of some 4,000 people. Loftus is the largest settlement in that part of East Cleveland: the town, with small villages and estates, has a population of some 7,000. The NatWest branch there is the biggest bank in the town. If it closes--the closure is expected in early May--it will leave the town, indeed most of east Cleveland, with only one branch of the big four clearing banks: the Loftus branch of Barclays. You will understand, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that most of my constituents are sceptical about that branch remaining open for the foreseeable future, in view of the track record of that particular banking concern.
I need to say something about what the closures and threatened closures will mean for many of my constituents. With the one exception of Barclays in Loftus, there will be no banking facilities between the town of Saltburn and Whitby--a distance of nearly 20 miles. That area is not uninhabited moorland. It covers large and small communities, many farms and a host of industrial employers--the largest being Boulby potash mine. Boulby is the largest deep mine in Europe, with some 700 employees, who have their wages paid through automatic bank transfer. Many of them have been hit by the Barclays closures, and 103 of them have been hit by the announcement of the intended closure of the Loftus NatWest. In no case was the company informed of the closure proposals by any of the banks concerned, and the same is true for other employers: the 30-odd firms based on the Skelton trading estate, the large Skinningrove steel plant of Corus plc, the nearby Skinningrove fabrication works of the multinational Caterpillar company, and the other varied employers ranging from the local bus depot to the East Cleveland national health service hospital facility.
The local authority first knew of the proposals in the same way as most of the residents--through the local paper. No consultation was built into the proposals. Many small shopkeepers are furious. In Brotton I was told that there were many small shops where the loss of cashing-in and change facilities could cause closures. That is because many of those shops are run by a husband or wife, leaving the other partner to take a job elsewhere. The closures mean that they may have to close shutters and drive the three miles to Saltburn and back just to exchange and bank some change.
Local employees are furious. Many of them have relied on a quick trip into the nearest village on a Friday to draw out some spending money, whereas now they have to trek
to a distant town after work to get their cash from the nearest hole in the wall that may be working. For those without access to a car--some 30 per cent. of households on some of our local estates do not have such access--the outlook is bleak. From Brotton, the nearest branch of any bank is in Saltburn. It may be only three miles, but there is only one bus an hour. If a constituent misses a connection back, it could take him up to two hours just to cash a cheque. He could get a more regular bus to the market town of Guisborough, but that is several miles away and the return bus fare is £2.70.The banks' attitude towards local feelings was contemptuous. Local management at Barclays has decided to preserve silence on the subject, relying on national press releases, but NatWest is worse. When the local newspaper for Loftus, the East Cleveland edition of the Evening Gazette asked what alternatives there were for NatWest customers, its press spokesman said:
- I think there is a small supermarket next door, and they do offer cashback facilities.
We should be more able to affect the levels of private sector investment in areas suffering from isolation or relative deprivation. We all know that financial exclusion is not just a problem for the deprived in rural areas. I mentioned the difficulties that the closures will mean for small businesses in loss of turnover and increased difficulties in acquiring change, and there are associated security issues of having more money on their premises.
Many elderly and disabled people experience mobility problems: for them, cash machines, even where they are available, are simply not a suitable option. Closing small local banks can mean the premature loss of financial independence and social interaction, because many local banks act as the linchpin for small communities.
Respected campaigning organisations such as Help the Aged and Age Concern have joined other campaigning organisations in a campaign for community banking services, and they have been vocal in their concern and dismay at the recent spate of bank closures. The Council for the Protection of Rural England, Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000 and others are concerned that, with bankless communities losing the lifeblood of the high street, people will increasingly travel out of town to shop, creating added congestion that is to the detriment of the environment.
Let us consider the figures, bearing in mind the fact that unless we do something about the problem, things will only get worse. In the 10 years since January 1990, more than 4,000 banks have been closed in England, Wales and Scotland. Independent consultants predict that a further 4,000 are set to close in the next five years. That will leave more than 1,000 communities across the United Kingdom without banking facilities.
Tackling social exclusion is one of the biggest challenges facing us. Only last week, we saw the publication of the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, about which I have tabled an early-day motion. I hope that all Members will sign it. That was the theme
of a speech made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and the message from Ministers is that social exclusion has been, and will remain, at the top of the Government's agenda.In November last year, my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury published the findings of the social exclusion unit's policy action team--PAT 14--which considered access to financial services. In her introduction to the report, she says:
- The banks in particular have a major task ahead of them, extending services to low-income households and developing delivery channels accessible to people in deprived neighbourhoods.
- The banks have to recognise the importance of the role they play, the extent to which we all rely on them and their responsibility to sustain equal and open access to those who wish to use them.
In his recent review of efficiency, competition and innovation in the banking industry, Don Cruickshank singled out two main areas for criticism. The first was retail current account banking, which costs householders and small business users between £3 billion and £5 billion a year too much. That is the equivalent to £400 a year for every account holder. The second was the payments system--with indefensible delays, lack of transparency and high charges.
Earlier this week, the Treasury Committee took evidence from three of the big four banks--from the chief executives of HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Barclays. NatWest had to give a presentation in the City the following day, so its representative did not bother to turn up. That says a lot about NatWest. The chief executive of Lloyds TSB made a welcome concession, which obviously surprised his competitors. Mr. Ellwood promised to preserve Lloyds TSB branches where it was the last remaining bank in a remote community. That is a start.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office will reassure us that the Government treat the issue seriously and that he will do everything that he can to protect our constituents in rural communities.
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