Speeches by Baldwin.

“Five months in and after a Budget that the Office for Budget Responsibility says will lower growth over five years, increase inflation and reduce the number of people in jobs, it is extraordinary to see a document that has so many areas not covered. I want to probe the right hon. Gentleman specifically on his goal of i…”

“Have you made representations?”

“On that excellent point, I should elaborate on my question, because you can have a community where the last branch closes, and the community does not qualify for a banking hub because there are cashpoints to take cash. But there is nowhere for the businesses to deposit cash. My question was whether you have made repres…”

“That is really interesting. Would you concur with that evidence?”

“Just slightly flipping this whole issue on its head and thinking about the businesses that have chosen not to accept cash, the reasons why they might have made that choice are presumably to do with the expense of handling cash. In addition, in a constituency like mine, there will be lots of communities where the last b…”

“On the point about leisure centres, if I may observe, I went to a council leisure centre once that would not take cash, but that insisted that you had a £1 coin for the locker.”

“There is increasing alienation from politics and the system. One of the conspiracy theories that seems to be in great currency is that any Government, irrespective of party, is determined to make us a cashless society. Do we need to challenge that conspiracy theory by enabling the use of cash or easier use of cash?”

“You do not qualify for a banking hub if there is access to a cashpoint. Could you all please make that point in writing to the regulators?”

“You are all excellent advocates of the importance of this issue today. Can I ask all of you to make formal representations by letter to those three organisations about this important point?”

“Can you all please make these powerful representations?”

“But they are not in the criteria for banking hubs.”

“I wanted to probe Chris Brooks’s evidence a little more. In fact, you have all been really compelling about the types of people who will be excluded if they cannot use cash. Specifically on the age distinction that you shared with us just now, I can understand the situation with older people who have not necessarily be…”

“You are comparing apples with oranges there, aren’t you, because that is a different currency and a different interest rate?”

“We seem to have regulated any sort of actual help for consumers into such a space that not enough of them are getting it.”

“We are going to come to insurance in a moment. Last week, the FCA reported that 7 million UK consumers have now bought cryptocurrency of some kind. Whose fault is that?”

“I just wondered if you had seen any that you could report to us specifically.”

“Do our constituents see any change at all?”

“We will get to insurance in a moment.”

“You have to have failed to go to the ombudsman, so that does not sound very optimistic. Has Which? been able to pick up any differences?”

“You would think there would have been something noticeable by now.”