Justin Madders – 2022 Speech on Employment and the High Street

The speech made by Justin Madders, the Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 7 December 2022.

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing this really important debate.

This debate is apposite, because only last week Barclays bank announced that it is going to close its branch in Ellesmere Port. What is particularly frustrating about that is that I was approached a couple of months ago by a constituent who told me that when they went into the branch they were discouraged from using the counter services. In fact, they were told that it was not available to personal customers and that there were other options available. Lo and behold, two months later Barclays bank says, “We don’t really have people coming into the branch any more, so we don’t need to keep it open.” I am afraid this drive to online services is being used by banks that can frankly afford to keep those branches open. It is part of a wider trend.

We will now go through a 12-week consultation period that has been described as nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. I am pretty clear that Barclays is not going to change its mind. Has any bank ever decided to remain open after announcing its closure? The code of practice needs to be looked at seriously, because we are being treated as a box-ticking exercise. The wider impact of such decisions on our communities needs to be considered much more.

It was 20 years ago that Barclays closed its branch in Little Sutton. It told us then, “It’s not a problem because you can still use the branch in Ellesmere Port.” Now my constituents will be sent further and further afield. HSBC announced that it would close its branch in Ellesmere Port back in March. It said, “You can go and use the branch in Bromborough, about five miles away,” but this week it announced that it is going to close the Bromborough branch. The cumulative effect is there for all to see. It seems that we are powerless to stop this trend, and our high streets are the worse for it.

Some banks say that post offices can be used, but we are seeing closure after closure of post offices. In my constituency, two have announced their closure in the past couple of months. The Post Office’s flawed model means that they will reopen only if there is commercial partner. That means the great likelihood is the people of Great Sutton and Elton will not see those branches reopen. The people of Elton have already suffered: they had to wait more than a year for a commercial partner to be found the previous time their branch closed, and the people of Neston had the same problem. The Post Office needs to completely reappraise its responsibility to communities, instead of operating on a completely commercial basis.

Barclays made £2 billion profit in the last quarter, so frankly it can afford to keep open every single branch that in recent weeks it announced would close. We need to draw a line in the sand. Will we continue to accept these closures? Will we continue to accept the decline of the high street? Or will we ask these organisations to take a bit more corporate responsibility for their areas, for the communities they are supposed to serve and for people who cannot go online for many understandable reasons?

Councils are not able to offer a solution while they are restricted by ever-shrinking budget rounds and competitive bids that are not always successful. We need a sustainable, long-term strategy for our high streets that requires big anchor organisations, such as banks and post offices, to serve their communities. Without that, the civic pride that people feel in their high streets will continue to erode, and we will all be the poorer for that.