 The final item of business today is members' business debate on motion 14782, in the name of Sandra White, on planned Bank of Scotland branch closures. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Can I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press their question speak buttons? I call on Sandra White to open the debate for around seven minutes, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I can also thank all members who have supported my motion to enable this very important subject to be debated today. Indeed, I note that Neil Finlay lodged a question regarding bank closures last year, as well as members' debate, which was led by the now Minister Kate Forbes in December 2017. We should take note of the response from the Scottish Government at that time. The stated bank should commit to work with local communities to establish a range of delivery channels that best meets the needs of their customers, including access to local physical banking services. Here we are, a year later to the day, and again, phasing more bank closures. They continue to renaig on their commitment to meet the needs of local communities, including the business sector. I would like to read out an email from one of my constituents. It sets out exactly how the closure of the Bank of Scotland branch at St George's Cross and my constituency affects this community and beyond. I will not tell you the person's name, but I will e-mail out. I am e-mailing you in regard to the Bank of Scotland's decision to close its branch at St George's Cross. I find it very worrying that this closure will have a serious impact on the elderly, firm and local businesses. We are now in a position of not having a local Bank of Scotland from areas such as Bearsden, Torrance, Milton, Pawsal Park, Kelvin Dale, Kelvin Bridge, Arnie's land, Maryhill and Count Caddon. That is quite a widespread area. The nearest bank will now be in the city centre. I am just wondering if you and your parliamentary colleagues would be willing to use your parliamentary influences, he says, to approach the Bank of Scotland in an effort to reverse their disgraceful decision to deprive the good people of Maryhill and beyond of a much-needed and loved branch. I can just say to members and Parliament today that I have replied to my constituent to make them aware that this debate is taking place today. Perhaps the minister in summing up could follow up my constituent's request and contact the Bank of Scotland with the issues that he has already raised. I also know information that I received from the bank, indicating the nearest branch in light of the closure of St George's Cross branch. Customers now need to do their banking impersonate buyer's road branch, Suckey Hall Street branch or Giles Street branch, which is quite a distance away if you are elderly or in firm. In addition to this, they are also advocating the uses of Sparshop in Maryhill, a day-to-day store in St George's road and Anissa store in Great Western Road. This is simply not good enough. It is not serving local communities, particularly the frail and elderly, as I have already said. It is not serving small and medium-sized businesses, and there are many of those across the constituency who rely on local banking facilities to bank their takings or change monies. The Bank of Scotland closed its Canustee branch in my constituency a little while back, despite the fact that 47 per cent of the personal customers used no other bank and no other alternative means of banking. My constituency, which has a rather large rural hinterland, now has 45 per cent of its customers who use no other branch, and it is under threat. Would she agree with me that the evidence from Angus suggests that the Bank of Scotland cares very little about the needs of its customers? Sandra White I absolutely concur with what my colleague has said and many others, too. As in emails that I have received in phone calls and visits to my constituency office, it is much worse in Angus and other outlying areas. I am sure that we will hear from members as they contribute to the debate. I mentioned the fact that local people and local businesses rely on banking facilities to bank their takings or change monies. That brings me into another issue, which I have already mentioned. I do not know if a lot of people know about that, but it is the subject of the use of what they call white spaces. Those are in shops and stores, which I have already mentioned. It supplies some banking services, but not all of them. That is a very worrying trend. That is particularly problematic for those who use card accounts. Lots of people use card accounts to pay their rent and various bills, etc. Those white spaces are starting to be created in local shops that do not necessarily take card accounts. It is a lifeline for a lot of people, the only way that they can pay their bills, and it is connected to the social housing rent from housing associations. That is something that has been raised quite often with me. There is also the case, which is a knock-on effect of the banks that are closing, which is the fact that the issue of post offices, which I know has been raised by a number of people in Westminster, has also been raised by me. I thank the member for taking my intervention. In the Burnside branch, in my constituency, it has also been announced to be closed. When the branches have been closed, all the banks have been closed in Blantyre and all the banks have been closed in Cambus Lang. The consistent theme from the banks when they are closing is that people can go to the post office, and she agrees with me that that is not a suitable alternative. Often post offices are at the back of shops, and there is a lack of privacy. It causes concern, particularly for elderly people, going in to lift their pension or lift substantial sums of money, and they do not give the service that the bank does. Sandra White I concur once again with my colleague. It is not just the lack of personal banking, but it does have an icon effect on post offices. It certainly has an icon effect on businesses who cannot leave their money overnight or whatever it may be. It is really very worrying that post offices are being used as a substitute for banks. I want to go on to more about that, the fact that post offices are being utilised more and more as bank closures take their toll. Those post offices are doing a fantastic job—what they have to do—some in very deprived areas where banks have closed. They are the only means for people to be able to either pay bills or get monies out of it, but they are not being treated equally. I have met the postmaster's federation and I was going to host an event and I will in the Parliament. They are not being treated exactly the same as the banks are being treated. If you deposit money with a bank, the bank gets more money. If you deposit it with a post office, the post office submasters do not get the same amount of money. The biggest worrying part is the cost of operating ATMs. Banks and building societies are exempt from rates for ATMs, but post offices are not. Post offices are required to pay the rates, and those costs are increasing all the time. It is a real fear that I have heard from postmasters and others, mostly post offices and postmasters, that the lifeline in which the post office is now becoming for our communities, with the lack of support and the lack of monies and more charges, will not survive. What happens then? Banks have a moral responsibility to look at the knock-on effect that they have in post offices, and I know that it is being raised in Westminster by other colleagues. It is a worrying time. People should be able to access their banks. Not everybody does internet banking. I do not do internet banking. I like to talk to somebody or a phone, whatever it may be, but I do not do internet banking. There are lots and lots of people who do not even have access to a computer to do internet banking and do not like internet banking. However, the sheer knock-on effect of bank closures to communities—I have loads and loads of small SMEs that cannot bank their money—I have to go and find a post office or whatever it may be—is got a huge knock-on effect for communities and local businesses. I hope that the minister in the summon up can answer some of the questions that have been raised, not just for me, but for colleagues as well, and raise them with the banking industry. The banks have a social responsibility to the people that they serve, businesses and local communities, and they should recognise that. We move to the open debate. Speeches have up to four minutes. Please, Jamie Halcro Johnston, followed by George Adam. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank Sandra White as well for bringing this debate to the chamber. Although the branch network has been in decline for some time, it has become clear that in recent years those closures have gained pace. That has left us in a position where the very future of branch-based bank services are at threat, services that are still utilised by significant cross-section of our constituents. If we are looking potentially to a future envisaged by our bank, but major banks, where a truly nationwide branch network, covering small towns and villages like many of us represent, is no longer considered within their economic interests, what a future scale-down network will look like and how banking services continue to be offered to customers is, however, still unclear. Two of the branches that are affected and included in today's motion are located in my region of the highlands and islands in Keith and in Lossymouth. Both are relatively substantial settlements in Murray. Both maintain a range of businesses that might not be found in similarly-sized towns in the central belt, but both are losing their Bank of Scotland branches, and Bank of Scotland are removing the ATMs, too. The Bank of Scotland branch in Lossymouth is the last remaining bank in that town. The decision to close it comes at a time when there is major investment being made by the RAF in Lossymouth, investment that will bring hundreds of new residents, families and visitors to the town, but there will be no bank. Richard Lochhead I thank the member very generously for giving way and also for raising the subject of the proposed bank closures in my constituency in Keith and Lossymouth. I am sure that he is aware that Murray has lost 40 per cent of its high-street bank branches in the last eight years, and there is a lot of strength of anger in relation to the proposals for Keith and Lossymouth. Does he agree, in the case of Lossymouth in particular, that there is a proposal to shut the last bank in the community with all the damage that will inflict in the local community, having no high-street bank, that extra safeguards should be put in place by the banks themselves or, if need be, by regulation by the UK Government to prevent that from happening? Jamie Halcro Johnston I thank the member for that intervention. It is something that we have discussed at the Economy and Fair Work Committee and we covered during our inquiry into that. We recognised that not only did there need to be a particular view taken when it is the last bank in town, but it also recognises the impact that that can have, particularly in communities in areas such as the Highlands and Islands, where banks can be so spread far apart. That is the story of the Highlands and Islands. Our geography has meant that local residents are more dependent than most in Scotland on the small towns and the services that they provide. While closures are a national trend, it is locally that the impact is most keenly felt. The two proposed closures in Murray have received objections from the local community. My colleague Douglas Ross has organised public meetings in both towns to put residents' concerns to the Bank of Scotland, and they were attended by representatives from Murray Council, from local community councils, from the Post Office and from local business organisations, including the Lossy Mouth Business Association and the Federation of Small Businesses. However, they were not attended by representatives of the Bank of Scotland who were empty-chaired at both meetings. It would, however, be unreasonable not to acknowledge that the greatest proportion of bank closures has not been in the Highlands and Islands. That was among the findings of the Economy, Energy and Work Committee's inquiry on the subject, and that is not something that I dispute. However, as I have spoken about, the geography of the region means that even fewer closures can have a disproportionate effect. In many cases, the nearest alternatives are often more distant and less accessible, particularly by public transport. Highlands and Islands Enterprise also found a significant increase in the use of mobile and online transactions in its report commissioned on access to banking services. Many banks have expanded the scope of their remote banking options in recent years, for example allowing checks to be paid online, and that is to be commended. However, as Highlands' report notes, it is dependent on strong connectivity, which, in many parts of my region, is simply absent. That is partly the reason why cash transactions remain more common, particularly in the context of the region's many small and medium-sized enterprises. As I said at the outset, it is unclear how residents are expected to adapt. While adopting the lessons of digital inclusion will be key, there is a role for branch-based banking. One commonly heard issue, of course, is the use of banking services through the post office. However, as many constituents would tell us, the post office network itself has declined, and that can present a particular problem on island communities, even where cash machines can be distant. The economy committee finds also extended to a number of barriers to the post office simply taking over wholesale, the role of branch banking. Banking hubs also have a mix of benefits and challenges, but potentially an opportunity to better integrate with other community facilities. The reality, Deputy Presiding Officer, is that significant reductions in banking services available to remote and rural communities continue to create problems. We are still seeing closures where the alternatives are not clear. That is a negative for communities who have grown used to the local branch. In many cases, even small branches can be key in maintaining town centres where businesses come to react. Most people are dismayed by the bank's retreat from the high street, and the level of closures that have been announced is to those views from their own customers that the bank should be listening. I was going to articulate my arguments with the notes that I had here in front of me, but I have decided that I am absolutely sick of this nonsense. I am sick of getting a letter at the last minute from a major co-operation of a bank that tells me the devastation that it is going to cause in my community. I am absolutely sick of a email and on a letter that tells me that there is only 0.8 miles to the nearest branch in Suckey Hall Street. Most of you will work out that Suckey Hall Street is not in Paisley, and the letter was just such a cut-and-paste effort that it had not taken the time to tell me that there was a Paisley south branch in my own hometown. I am angry about that, because we are now in a position in Paisley where we only have one bank of Scotland, one Royal Bank of Scotland and every single branch at one point in the Bank of Scotland we had Bank of Scotland south branch, two central branches plus one in the west and one in the east. Now we just have that one branch. How are many of the older people in my community? When you talk about the community in the south end of Paisley, there are three or four high flats that are all full of families that have been in there since the day that those flats were built. Many of them are older and have mobility issues. One of the flats, in particular, has been adapted for older people with mobility issues. They bank in their local bank and see the face that they have seen in numerous times. They do not know one end of a computer from another, so they do not ask them to do online banking. They do not ask them to go to the local post office, because many of us in here will have had the post office people coming to us and saying that the sub-post office masters are struggling to make a living with the services that they currently offer. They are still struggling there and they are getting more and more and every time a bank closure happens, they say that the only way forward is to get the services at your local post office. That network is under pressure, as is the bank network, so do not every time you decide to make a commercial decision and do not get me wrong, this is a commercial decision. We bailed them out and we are the ones that are still suffering after all those years. It is older in a disabled community in my town that are going to be the ones that are suffering, because Scotland's largest town is going to have all its major banks within 200 metres of one another, 200 metres in a town that is the biggest town in Europe, let alone in Scotland. When you sit there and look at that, where is the logic in that? Where is the support that we have often asked from those banks when we have given them? I have said to many of my constituents, do not support them. If they do not support you in our community, do not you support them. Change your bank, because it is a lot easier now than what it was in the past. I have done that. I have actually done that myself, what the bank I had banked with for years was pulling out paisley. They told me that they had a lovely branch right smack in the centre of Glasgow. I said, well, sorry, we are having a partner in the ways. I went to a branch in one of the local Scottish base bank that spent £400,000 on their HQ in paisley. I decided that I was going to do that. If they are going to invest in my town, if they are going to show that there is a future in my town, then I am going to back them as well. I think that that is what we have got to look at here, because far too long, far too long, they have actually thought that they can just dictate here. They get the email at the last minute. The email is an afterthought. They do not even try to talk to the community. They do not even try to engage with the community. They leave it to the last minute to the parliamentarians and then you end up talking, you drag them in, you have the meetings with them, you say, you know, this community cannot have this, you need to do it. I went through the same thing with the Bank of Scotland and the East End of Paisley. Again, it is a similar demographic of older people there as well. You bring them all in and at that point they say, we are listening to you, we will do what we can. They are just doing a tick-bock exercise. They have got no interest. Those institutions are purely in it for themselves and they need to remember that we are their customers, our communities are the ones that are suffering and they need to decide what they have gone on in my branch. I would ask them at this late stage to look at it again, look at the people that they are serving and make a different decision. Monica Lennon, followed by Stuart Stevenson. I am grateful to Sandra White for bringing forward this important debate. As we can see, it is an issue that concerns us all. We all share the anger that we have just felt from George Adam and the concern about the very serious impact that this is having and will have on the communities that we represent. Several RBS branches in my central Scotland parliamentary region have already faced closure, including in Hamilton, Larkhall, Airdrie, Bellshill and Steps. Now Stonehouse is facing the closure of its Bank of Scotland branch. That has happened again without full consultation with customers. There is another example of the bank treating loyal customers with contempt. I am very concerned about the cumulative impact of all those closures. Banks are literally profiting from the closures and customers are paying the price with increased travel costs, with having to go in to visit branches in neighbouring towns or in to the cities. People are already experiencing quite a poor customer service and are seeing longer queues and waiting times in the branches that are remaining who are picking up the pieces. The banks are telling us that they are responding to changing customer behaviour, but it looks like a cost-cutting exercise and communities are losing access to valued local banking services. I completely reject the idea that there is no demand for local banking services. High Street bank branches are closing at an incredible rate of £60 a month, that is according to which. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll found that 58 per cent of people and 68 per cent of small business customers said that a bank branch is important to them. I think that Sandra White's constituent made some of those points very well. Bank branch closures are not just a mere inconvenience. I think that all of us would agree that some of the most vulnerable people in society that are going to be hit the hard to stand. Again, Sandra White talked about the impact on older people, people with disability and mobility issues. Age Scotland highlighted that a substantial proportion of older people in Scotland are not connected to the internet and that number increases with age. One-thifth of UK households are now more than three kilometres from their nearest branch, again that is according to which. Longer journeys are concerning for people with mobility issues. The additional travel costs will affect the poorest who simply do not have the spare cash to get a bus to the bank or even a taxi if the bus services are not there and reliable. Others have talked about the importance of local businesses being able to access banking. Those businesses are the backbone of our economy and will be damaged by those changes. Bank branch closures mean that there is an increasing reliance on ATMs, but three cash points are also disappearing from our high streets and in place are ATMs that charge their customers. To go back to Stonehouse, it is losing its bank of Scotland branch and two out of the five available ATMs at the moment charge the customer. There is a real risk of financial exclusion for vulnerable people and it cannot continue. Communities need greater protection against banking and ATMs deserts. No one should have to worry about having to travel three kilometres to access a bank or pay to access their own money. That is why Scottish Labour has called for mandatory consultations on bank branch closures. My Labour colleague Jed Killan, who is the MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, has been leading the way in Westminster with his proposals on a ban of ATM charges. We are serious about those issues. I thank Sandra White for giving us the opportunity to discuss that albeit briefly tonight. We cannot abandon communities by leaving them without the basic banking infrastructure that they need. Banks have a responsibility to meaningfully consult with customers, but there is also a real impressive need for government intervention at a UK-level Labour and Westminster and here in Hollywood. We will continue to condemn and oppose these bank branch closures and ATMs, and we welcome the opportunity to work cross-party to stand up for our communities on that issue. Stuart Stevenson, followed by Bill Bowman. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It is one of those occasions where I feel very grateful that I am more than a sword's length from any of my colleagues in the chamber as I declare that I am a shareholder in the Bank of Scotland, which came from my 30 years of employment. That ceased nearly 20 years ago. A few facts about what is going on. Spice tell us a third of bank branches in Scotland have closed in the last 10 years, which found that 78 per cent of consumers in the two lowest-income households rely on cash, with 26 per cent saying that they never use card payments, and among over 65s, 80 per cent are reliant on cash. Research by Reuters showed that 90 per cent of bank branch closures in the last year have occurred in areas where the median household income is below the national average. What that is telling us is that, yes, we are having closures, but they are adversely affecting those least able to cope with those closures. It is a socially discriminatory activity, which we will all pay the price for if it continues in the way that it is, and where 80 ms are concerned, they are closing across the UK at a rate of 250 a month. Just a little observation about 80 ms in Scotland should not be closing so fast, because the Scottish banks issue their banknotes, they can fill the cash dispenser at no cost beyond the printing of money. In England, they have to pay £1 for every pound that they put in the cash dispenser, so it is much cheaper to run 80 ms in Scotland, so we should not see the same rate of closures. Typically, there will be £40,000 in a cash dispenser. Banking is a very simple business, so the bankers seem to make it look very difficult. You take some money in and reward the people who give you the money from the deposit, you lend money out and you charge people when there is a transaction system that sits in the middle. To make banking work, you just need to get the two sides of the equation at work. Why do bank branches develop the way they used to? The answer is because the rural branches were typically where people deposited money. They came into the cities and in the city branches, and they lent the money out. That was the model traditionally of banking—the Justice Savings Bank in particular—that funded the lending from your depositors. That was a safe model for banking. One of the contributors to the bank crash in 2008 was that banks had increasingly gone to the wholesale markets to get money and have moved away from keeping the two sides of the banking in balance. That did not help. I want to say that, in my previous constituency—the change of boundaries in 2011—in New Deer, the Clyde Steel Bank announced that we were going to shut the branch there. That community of some 600 people was outraged by that. They got themselves together and bought the bank branch, then persuaded the Royal Bank to move in and run the bank. It is still there to this day, in the face of all those closures. That was largely down to a dear and now departed colleague, councillor Norma Thompson. Of course, she was one of a whole range of people in the community. The point that I am making is that there is potential scope for community action and making banks responsive to the communities in which they operate. Let me just close by giving a very particular example of the risk that banks are taking in disconnecting themselves from the communities. It comes from South Africa in the early 1990s, where, in the townships of Soweto, Caillicia and elsewhere, people who had informally built their houses and wanted to regularise their position started to get engaged in the formal banking system. The traditional banks would have nothing to do with those people whatsoever because of their situation. What actually happened is that they set up their own banks and deserted the traditional banks. That is potentially what will happen to Royal Bank of Scotland, the traditional banks here. If you think that today the population of Soweto is 1.27 million people, it is not a trivial matter that those people have deserted the traditional banks and taken their own banking fate into their own hands. The same sort of thing can happen in Scotland. Those so-called commercial decisions ultimately can be in the commercial disinterest of those organisations that are devastating to so many communities, particularly those who are most affected by the closure of banks because they are those who have leased in our society already. The last of the open debate contributions is from Bill Bowman. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the chance to speak in this member's business debate and thank Sandra White for bringing it forward. Bank of Scotland's branch closures in the north-east region have and will continue to have consequences for many of my constituents, in particular in Dundee and Currie Muir, with branches closing in both of those places. For clarity, let me say that I am a customer of Bank of Scotland and also the Lloyds banking group that owns Bank of Scotland. Bank branch closures have been steadily increasing for the last few years. The number of bank branches in Scotland fell by a third between 2010 and 2017, with five banks closing 488 branches between them. Bank of Scotland has shut 87 branches since 2010, going from 293 to 206, a 30 per cent decrease. Robin Bullock from Bank of Scotland told members that the 30 per cent reduction in the number of branches was a measured and gradual approach, taking into account the changing habits of customers with people shifting to online banking services. However, Hollywood's Economy Committee found that closures had left communities and local businesses feeling abandoned. In March, the committee opened an inquiry into bank branch closures, aiming to gather evidence on the effect on local businesses, customers and the economy. Upon closer questioning of the five banks, Bank of Scotland, RBS, Clydesdale Bank, TSB and Santander, it emerged that none of the banks had a formal consultation process with local people before deciding to close a branch, as many of the contributors have commented on. The closure of Bank of Scotland's flagship city bank branch in Dundee is a blow to customers and staff alike. The Bank of Scotland city branch on the Nethergate will close at some point between February and June of this next year. This is yet more bad news for the city. Last year, more than 250 jobs were axed at the Bank of Scotland Group's call centre in the same west market gate building after it was closed. Following the closure, some staff were offered voluntary redundancies while others were offered the chance to transfer to the bank's Dunfermline call centre, which is, of course, more than 50 miles away. Current customers of the branch set for closure in 2019 will at least have their accounts realigned to the Bank of Scotland firm your branch on Cleppington Road, which is two miles away. Bank of Scotland bosses have blamed the latest decision on the changing ways that customers choose to bank, claiming that 79 per cent of Dundee city's personal customers predominantly use telephone or online banking or alternative branches. A Bank of Scotland spokesperson said that we have made the difficult decision to close the Bank of Scotland Dundee city branch in February 2019 due to the changing ways that customers choose to bank with us. Customers can continue to access their banking locally by visiting the nearby post office, which is less than half a mile from the branch, and the answer that we have heard from others. However, although many people are switching to online banking, there are concerns among many communities of how those closures will affect them, in particular the vulnerable, elderly and disabled. According to Age Scotland, 37 per cent of people over the age of 60 in Scotland do not use the internet, which is equivalent to the size of Edinburgh's population. My colleague Gordon Lindhurst MSP has said that members of the economy committee and the Scottish Parliament were, in no doubt, that the loss of branches has had negative impact on communities and businesses across Scotland. Cary Muir in the north-east region will have no physical Bank of Scotland branch after the bank announced its branch there is to close next year. The town has a population of around six and a half to seven thousand people who will now be left without a bank. This not only deprives residents of the service but also affects shopkeepers and business owners, who are already under normal commercial pressures. The nearest bank for those living up Glen Isle will probably be Blair Gowrie, while others will have to travel to Forfer for their closest Bank of Scotland branch. A 2017 report by UK Finance found that 71 per cent of adults used online banking in 2017, amounting to 38 million people. Furthermore, debit and credit cards overtook cash and coins as the most commonly used method of payment in the UK last year. Many people feel as if they have been abandoned by the banks following these closures, with alternatives offered not meeting their needs. It is vital that people have access to cash and face-to-face banking services. As the economy committee concluded, the banks must engage properly with people and businesses on their needs before deciding to close branches in future. As we can all see across our constituencies that have been affected by bank branch closure, it is not just the customers who suffer. Jobs, businesses and the high street also feel the impact of those closures. Job losses and empty buildings, on what were once busy shopping streets, are proof that there have been and will continue to be many negative impacts of bank branch closures. I now ask Kate Forbes to respond to the debate for around seven minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also want to thank Sandra White for raising today's motion, although it is with some sadness, because it has only been two months since the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee brought the issue of bank closures to this chamber, and we are here again today debating the same subject. That is very disappointing. My own views on the subject are on record, because, as Sandra White said, I raised a motion for members' debate about a year ago on the subject. It sounds like a bit like a broken record, raising the same concerns, the same worries, time and time again, and not getting the sense that those issues are being responded to. Sandra White started by listing the long list of areas in her constituency where there is no longer a branch presence. I started scribbling them down, but there were so many that I did not get very far. That in itself tells the story of the number of communities that are now expected to travel. For some people, that may be part and parcel of their daily activities. However, as so many others have mentioned, there are elderly and frail customers who frankly cannot travel that distance, and there are small businesses who cannot take that time off work on a daily basis to visit a branch in work hours. In my own area, where it is rural, those distances are so considerable that they are very challenging. It is not just a case of popping down to the nearest branch, it is a case of taking a considerable chunk of time in a day to get there. The question for me is, are those banks serving local communities? Are those banks serving frail and elderly customers? Are those banks serving the small businesses? I am judging by the debate that we have had this evening, and I would say that the resounding answer is no. We try to quantify the issue by quoting figures from which or from you-gov, but the impact on individuals who are dependent on visiting those branches is enormous. Graham Day mentioned the evidence in Angus and in rural areas, and Clare Haughey also talked about her constituency and the lack of privacy that is in some of the alternatives, such as post offices. Jamie Halcro Johnston talked about Keith and Lossy Mouth and removing the ATMs and the continuing dependence that we all have on cash. At the last debate in September, I promised to write to both Link and the payment system regulator to seek their assurances that no ATM in a vulnerable community would close until a new operator was found and that communities would not be left without free access to cash. Access to cash and the ability to deposit cash remains a critical issue, particularly for small businesses and rural communities. It is clear that there will be a continuing long-term need for access to cash banking services in Scotland. I wrote to the chief executive of Link, and I am pleased to say that he responded, and I intend to meet him to discuss his support and commitment to Scotland. Richard Lochhead also talked about the closures in rural Scotland, with 40 per cent of high street banks closing in his constituency in the past eight years. The importance of the last branch standing, as it were, in some of those communities and the need for extra safeguards, which I would wholeheartedly support. George Adam talked again about being older people who are left to bear the brunt of those banks' decisions to close branches. At the end of the day, banks rely on our custom, on customers, and there is a critical point there in terms of customers voting with their feet when it comes to supporting local banks. Monica Lennon made an important point, I think, that, although we may look at the isolated impact of branch closures in our own communities or constituencies, there is a cumulative impact of those branch closures over the course of the past few years. 68 per cent of small businesses are saying that a local branch was still important, and Stuart Stevenson talked about the adverse impact on those that are most dependent. Scotland has fared disproportionately badly with the reported 367 branches closing across the country, and recent figures from which show that the UK has lost almost two thirds of its bank branch network in the past 30 years, leaving a fifth of households more than three kilometres from its nearest current account provider. As a minister for the digital economy, I recognise that customers in many cases are choosing to bank in different ways, but digital should never be a means of excluding customers. It should never be a means of excluding those that are most dependent on a physical bank presence, although there has been great development. The issue about the alternatives of banking in the rural areas is something that I had to look into in relation to my role in community safety, but the issues to using the post office as a means of banking lies in the hands of the banking association of which there are 28 members. One of them is the Allied Irish Bank, which is the one that banks the post office. It is quite clear when I spoke to them that there is an opportunity to resolve the issue to give the post office in our rural areas maximum banking facilities. Has the minister ever discussed for the banking association in the United Kingdom to get the post office approved for full banking facilities? They understand that it is possible, and it lies in the hands of the banking association. It is something that you may have to address down to Westminster, but I would implore you to do so, because I think that that will solve a lot of problems. I have met people on the islands and things like that in other rural areas, and they say that there is no problem in doing that. Take as long as you like, minister, to finish what you are saying. It is a fair question. As he rightly said, the UK Government retains legislative and regulatory responsibility for banking. We have raised the issue of closures and a number of ways to mitigate the impact of closures directly with the UK Government calling for access to essential banking services to be maintained, but I shall take that specific point away. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government convened a round-table discussion between the main Scottish banks on the issue of branch closures and the provision of banking services. We have now established a banking and economy group as a subgroup of the financial services advisory board, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy, Fair Work and Scottish Financial Enterprise. Through that group, we will continue to engage with banks on the various issues that have been raised. Sandra White I thank the minister for taking that intervention. It is on, obviously, the digital economy and things are changing, but, although things are changing in banking at times, he tells us that things are also changing how people's benefits even are paid into banks. That is a huge problem on Monica Lennon and raising it about the length that you have to walk or you cannot afford the bus fares. Would you raise that particular issue, please, in the subgroup that is up there? Kate Forbes I was going to close by making that assurance to Sandra White that I would raise specifically the concerns of her constituent directly with the Bank of Scotland, because the point that she makes there is such a valid one that I can quote statistics of the general impact, but for those individuals who are dependent on a physical branch presence, who are dependent on getting into a branch in order to be able to access cash, whose whole lives depend on being able to pay and to receive whether it is their benefits, universal credit or other things, their whole lives are being impacted on. I would happily make that assurance to raise the concerns of her constituents and more generally the social impact of branch closures directly with the banks themselves, because that impact cannot go unnoticed. Just today, I was speaking to a number of individuals, including representatives from Age UK, about how we increase digital participation with an older generation. Again, people quoted figures of the number of individuals over the age of 60, 37 per cent over the age of 60, who do not use the internet. That means that they are being entirely excluded from local accessible free-to-use banking service if they are not online. That for me is a massive problem, and I can commit to the chamber to continue to raise those issues, recognising that the Scottish Government does not have the regulatory or the legislative frameworks, but will continue to raise those issues with the banks themselves directly and with the UK Government in order to get banks to recognise the social impact, not just the commercial impact of the decisions that they make, and that at the end of the day they are accountable to their customers who will vote with their feet if they are concerned that their interests are not taken into account by the banks.