200 free cash machines lost every month

FREE cash machines are vanishing at a record rate amid cuts to their funding.

More than 200 are being removed – or switched to charging for withdrawals – every month. Remote areas are among the hardest hit.

The figures from Link, which oversees the ATM network, show that the number of free machines fell from 54,500 to 53,200 in the first six months of the year. The shutdowns follow a cut to the fees that banks pay when a customer uses an independent operator’s ATM.

Most affected are the elderly, who are more likely to use cash, and small traders such as cafes.

Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said: ‘The simple truth is that for most people, Britain remains a cash economy and we can’t pretend that the vast majority of people are using credit or debit cards for everything.’

Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses said: ‘Access to cash for small firms is vital, particularly to those in rural or hard-to-reach areas, but these figures highlight that more and more of these firms are losing that crucial access. A reduced access to cash via ATMs and bank branches is only giving card payment companies free rein to increase the charges they place on to small firms.’

The fee cut was pushed through after intense lobbying by Lloyds and other banks.

Campaigners warned at the time that it would make thousands of ATMs unprofitable and force them to shut.

Link pledged to protect 2,365 ATMs in remote and rural areas which are more than a kilometre (0.6 miles) from another machine. But in a blow to the organisation’s credibility, 76 of these isolated machines vanished between January and June.

The fee cut, which was announced in January, came into effect in July.

Wes Streeting, a Labour member of the Commons Treasury committee, said: ‘I’m concerned that what we’re seeing are money- saving decisions to remove ATMs with little concern for the impact on customers, particularly in isolated areas, and a failure by regulators to act quickly enough to protect the public interest.’

The Payments Systems Regulator says it will now seek to stem the closure of isolated machines, after initially refusing to get involved.

Hannah Nixon, the watchdog’s managing director, said: ‘The requirements we intend to place on Link will help ensure that Link achieves their commitment to protecting the geographic spread of free- to- use ATMs across the UK. Link should be in no doubt about the importance of this work.’

Link’s chief executive, John Howells, said: ‘ATM volumes are falling 6 per cent year on year. Given this backdrop, it’s critical we protect cash access.’

OBESITY is the greatest public health threat to this country, with devastating consequences for individuals, the health service and the economy.

The figures are shocking: two-thirds of the adult population are now overweight or obese, with almost one million people claiming sickness benefit as a direct result.

This week, a UN study showed only two of 53 European countries are fatter than the UK.

To put it bluntly, millions of Britons are too fat to work.

Soaring

The UN findings follow a warning by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) that seven in ten of so-called millennials (those born between the early Eighties and mid-Nineties) will be overweight or obese before they reach middle-age.

Four in ten youngsters aged five to 19 are already overweight or obese — four times the number in 1975.

No wonder the NHS is ‘ straining at the seams’, according to the Care Quality Commission, due to the unprecedented pressures of ‘ lifestyle’ illnesses — chief among them being obesity, which is linked to diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

As a doctor who has spent more than 50 years on the NHS frontline, I have no doubt that obesity is a key driver of why the NHS is struggling to cope.

It is why waiting times are lengthening and corridors are lined with trolleys as hospital trusts sink deeper into deficit.

Being overweight is the biggest cause of cancer after smoking — responsible for more than 1 in 20 cases — yet, as CRUK said, people seem oblivious to the fact.

More than 1 in 20 cancers in the UK are related to being overweight. In my own speciality, we are seeing ever more liver cirrhosis and primary liver cancers caused by obesity.

And every week a staggering 4,500 people are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a condition associated with excess weight and poor diet that can lead to heart and kidney disease, strokes, nerve damage, visual problems and amputation. Recent figures show NHS spending on drugs for conditions related to obesity is more than £1 billion a year — a 65 per cent increase in a decade.

In total, £40 billion — more than a third of the NHS budget for England and Wales — goes on treating the consequences of soaring obesity rates.

This colossal sum further exposes the fallacy that the difficulties of the NHS can all be solved by further injections of taxpayers’ money.

More cash is not the answer. It addresses the symptoms of the crisis while failing to tackle the cause. The real solution lies with us all — politicians, doctors and the public — honestly facing up to the challenge of obesity.

Before prescribing the cure, we must be clear on the cause. I am convinced the answer lies in our changing culture.

France, Spain and Italy have far more emphasis on proper meals with freshly prepared, home-cooked food. That is not just a result of the abundance of healthy produce, but also a legacy of the culture of family life and eating together.

Our less family- oriented, more urban society undermines such an approach, as does our culture of long hours.

We have become a nation addicted to ready meals and fast food, a habit reinforced by mobile technology such as takeaway delivery apps.

Britons eat 79 million readymeals and 22 million fast-food takeaways every week, a trend that is likely to worsen.

Nor should we should forget the role played by alcohol.

Studies show that a quarter of all clinically obese people are also heavy drinkers. Obesity makes liver- disease from alcohol worse; it is also linked to worse outcomes for those with chronic liver disease.

Again, the NHS bears the brunt: 25 per cent of all hospital admissions and outpatient attendances during the week, are related to drink, rising to 80 per cent at the weekend. The Government estimates the annual bill for alcoholrelated illnesses is £3.7 billion, though my research suggests a total nearer £6 billion.

We cannot go on as we are. If we can reduce the number of avoidable diseases caused by excessive weight and drinking, we will immediately reduce pressure on the NHS and free up money to be invested elsewhere.

Such a strategy requires genuine political courage.

Politicians are fearful of the food and drinks industry, whose economic strength — including the employment of four million people — gives them significant policy-making power. But the Government must ensure the food industry takes some responsibility for its role in a worsening crisis.

Published data tells us most manufacturers will fail to meet a modest official target to cut sugar by a fifth in their products by 2020. Those that don’t should face tough penalties.

I know also, from my conversations with ministers, that there is a reluctance to take truly radical steps because they sense the electorate still does not favour those who interfere with individual choice — over what they eat and drink and how much — even if that choice has brought the NHS to the brink of collapse.

Habits

Well, I disagree. This caution explains why successive governments have fallen back on softer options, such as voluntary codes and public education to change behaviour although there is little evidence that these have worked.

How can they fail to grasp the nettle when, according to the Obesity Health Alliance, junk food manufacturers spend 27 times more on advertising their products than government does on its campaigns?

What does work is a pricing policy. People change their habits when money is involved, as has been dramatically illustrated by the huge success of tobacco taxes. We need the same for food and drink. That means, at the least, a sugar tax with real bite, minimum pricing per unit for alcohol — no more cheap booze and discounted offers — and restrictions on packaging and advertising.

No one likes the so- called Nanny State, but we accept it for public protection in other parts of our civic life, such as road safety, smoking in public places or illegal drug abuse.

Indeed, we have already seen that the introduction of sugar tax on soft drinks — though far too limited in its scope — has had an impact with manufacturers reducing the sugar content of their products.

The food and drinks industry can no longer be allowed to hold the nation’s health to ransom.

Study after study shows that people who cut down their intake of sugary foods and/or alcohol reduce their vulnerability to acute illness — and can even ‘cure’ Type 2 diabetes.

Crisis

The medical profession, too, has to play a more active role.

After ferocious opposition from the Royal College of Surgeons, last year two Cheshire health trusts abandoned plans to refuse obese patients hip and knee replacements and prescribe free exercise and weight-loss classes instead.

This was, without doubt, a rational policy, since all the evidence shows such operations for overweight patients are less likely to be successful because of the strain placed on artificial joints. Offering surgery is therefore potentially a waste of NHS resources — and the Cheshire initiative should have been supported. The NHS was created 70 years ago when its biggest challenges included TB and polio — infectious diseases eventually conquered by drugs and vaccination programmes.

Today, it faces arguably a greater challenge in tackling the ‘lifestyle’ obesity epidemic and its lethal consequences.

All of us must commit to tackling the obesity crisis — and safeguarding the health of not only the NHS but also future generations.