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Banking in Scotland

The hon. Lady is in a good position if she can say that the Royal Bank of Scotland was a client of hers. I used to be a client of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Not many of us have it the other way round. She is right—people should feel able to come to their MPs and ask them to raise issues on their behalf, but I fear that in some locations, the Members involved would run the risk of being swamped. In my early days as an MP I was involved in establishing a money advice centre and a citizens advice bureau, simply because my office could not cope with the volume of complaints it received. We do not necessarily need to meet those involved in such cases directly in order to get information about them. I regularly get information from advice and information centres, which aggregate. There is always a problem for individual MPs when dealing with casework in this and a number of other areas, because one is never certain of the extent to which the problem presented is typical and shared by a lot of people, or whether it is due to a persistent constituent who wants to pursue the matter as far as their MP. Although I accept that it would be immensely helpful if MPs had more information, seeing people individually is not the sole way of getting it. However, I congratulate the hon. Lady on having had the Royal Bank of Scotland as a client. I hope that she treated it better than some of its clients have been treated by that bank. I have spoken enough about Citizens Advice; in the accompanying papers, people can read an update from that organisation which indicates that not everything is flowing as well as it might. I conclude on this aspect by pointing out that there are always two elements to a relationship between a group such as Citizens Advice and an organisation such as a bank. First, it is important that the banks are willing to listen, and I think that they are getting better at that. However, they are not necessarily better at the second element, which is acting on what they have heard. Citizens Advice tells us that it has greater access to the banks, and the banks tell us that they have more meetings, but it is not entirely clear that the banks act on the information they receive in the way that we would want. I want to make two other points. The first relates to the work force. It is important to stress that the vast majority of people working for the banks are not on megabucks—they are not enormously well paid or taking huge risks with other people's money. The Committee had figures indicating that bank employees' average pay was about £28,000 at Lloyds bank and £30,500 at the Royal Bank of Scotland, with the UK average being about £25,000. It would therefore be unfair and unreasonable to say that everyone working for a bank should be the subject of the same opprobrium and be held responsible for the activities of those at the very top. We want to make sure that bank employees at the lower levels are not held responsible or accountable and do not suffer the pain as a result of lay-offs and the like. We welcome the fact that the dialogue between the banks and the trade unions on a number of these issues has improved recently. As we take this matter forward, however, we will want to hear from the trade unions about what happens subsequently. I also want to touch on question of bonuses, which is related to the issue of staff but not properly part of the Committee's remit, so I will allude to it only in passing. It was clear from the evidence that we took that the offence caused to many of those affected by the economic crisis by the paying of enormous bank bonuses was disproportionate. The issue was very high up the list of people's priorities, even though people were not necessarily affected by it and notwithstanding the fact that those bonuses might not come to a lot if they were spread across all the bank's clients. People simply saw the bonuses as immensely offensive and unfair, and the Committee's view when the report was drawn up was that if we are all in this together, the Government—whichever Government—should be involved in ensuring that bonuses are curbed as much as possible. I very much welcome the fact that the previous Government dealt with that by introducing a levy and that the present Government have indicated that they intend to do something similar. We look forward to seeing the details. As I said at the beginning, I hope that the report and this debate are not the end of the process. Given the significance of the banks to economic life in Scotland, I hope that the Committee will continue to keep these matters under review and that the Government will continue to work with the Scottish Government and others to ensure that there is an appropriate and constructive regulatory environment. So much economic development in Scotland depends on our getting our banking right. I hope that those Committee members who are here today will be able to add to the points that I have made. I also hope that the Government will endorse the report and its conclusions, as they have already, and agree that most of the conclusions should be taken forward actively.