Extract from Commons
debate on Business Rates: Small Retail Businesses
Sir (The
Cotswolds) (Con):...The hon. Member for York Central
(Rachael Maskell) was talking about the relationship between the
ability to pay and the rates payable. I do not want to knock the
banks as I have great regard for them, but I was shocked to hear
that HSBC has six banks in London alone that qualify for small
business rate relief. I am sure that HSBC would not have those
banks open unless they were making a good profit. That is an
excellent demonstration of how the rates payable are not related
to the profits a business makes...
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Extracts from
Westminster Hall debate on Business Banking Fraud
Mr (Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab):...One of my constituency cases is to do with
HSBC. The director of a company that was not failing—it had a
huge number of assets—was asked to sign over to a new loan
agreement, but he was attending his dad’s funeral in India so the
agreement was signed on his behalf by someone in the bank.
Someone faked his signature on the document. On his return, he
was told he had no choice but to proceed. The loan was offered to
the company without its asking for it, to invest further in the
capital assets into which it wanted to expand its business. It
was forced into the position of having an additional loan and,
because of the terms and conditions of that loan, the company was
offered restructuring. So a company that was fluid in its assets
and able to function normally was forced into restructuring. The
personnel initially involved in the restructuring—those who were
forcing the company into that corner—then turned into the
recovery personnel, so there were people in the bank with the
dual role of restructuring and recovery.
The company has fought the case for more than 10 years. It has
fought extremely hard, despite the main director having lost his
father and the huge stress caused throughout the family. There
has been continuous suffering. The company was bound into a
non-disclosure agreement and was stuck for many years. Through a
lot of hard work and pain, with my office and one of my senior
advisers dealing with the case, we have managed at least to get
to the stage where the NDA has been removed. Yet the company
cannot get any recourse for the losses incurred, let alone the
initial debt problems that the bank caused, which put the company
in such a predicament. Those are the problems we have; that is
what these banks do.
There are two of my constituents in that position with HSBC, and
two in that position with Lloyds. Both banks operate in exactly
the same way. Another constituent who is involved with Lloyds
bank had the bank decide to call in the receivers on a Friday at
5 pm, so it was not possible to have recourse through lawyers or
anyone else to stop the injunction. That was someone rich in
assets being closed down and locked into this process. The modus
operandi of these banks is clear. All four of my constituents who
have been dealt with in this way were fluid in their asset
base—they were not struggling for money—yet, at the moment, one
of them is unable to go to another high street bank because of
what the people in HSBC have put them through. That is where the
real issues are...
(Aberdeen North)
(SNP):...I will raise a few issues that the
Scottish National party is asking to be addressed. I will focus a
little on GRG, because that is the organisation that the majority
of Scottish constituents have been hit by, but we have also had
constituents hit by HSBC, Lloyds and Clydesdale. We believe
that the UK Government need to pick up where the FCA has failed
in relation to the comprehensive review of banking culture. The
FCA produced a discussion document, but that is not enough. If
the FCA cannot do these things comprehensively, the UK Government
can step in, take action and make sure that positive changes are
made to banking culture, because it is not the case that banks
are now perfect...
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