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Banking (Responsibility and Reform)

The hon. Gentleman needs to reflect on what is happening in banking. I think his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) even got as far, in last night's debate on the Financial Services Bill, as suggesting that people should not use online banking so as to keep bank branches open. People are changing the way that they access banking and are thinking about whether they need to go into bank branches. We need to ensure that branches are there to meet needs where that is commercially viable, but there is no free lunch here. If the cost of maintaining branch networks continues to rise and insufficient numbers of people use them, the cost will be passed on to the customers who use the branches. The hon. Gentleman needs to think quite carefully about how many additional costs he wants to impose on bank customers in order to keep branch networks viable in that way.