NEW LAW TO PROTECT ACCESS TO YOUR CASH
NEW laws to protect the right to use hard cash are to be unveiled.
The major boost for millions of Britons who rely on notes and coins will be announced in next week’s Budget.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said last night: “People across Britain work hard for their money, with millions relying on coins and
notes to make their daily payments. That’s why, at next week’s Budget, I’ll be making sure they can continue to access and spend their earnings in whatever way they want.”
The rapid disappearance of many bank branches and free-to-use ATMs has fuelled concerns about people’s ability to continue accessing coins and notes.
John Howells, chief executive of ATM network Link, said: “Cash use is declining quicker than expected. Weekly ATM volumes are already 20 per cent lower than last year and there’s a risk that the cash system could collapse within the next couple of years.”
Hurtling
Campaigners last night said the changes will help the elderly, vulnerable groups and local communities across the UK.
Caroline Abrahams, of Age UK, said: “We are delighted to hear that the Chancellor will announce plans to protect cash.
“Age UK has been deeply concerned that we are hurtling towards a cashless society, with no real consideration for the many people who will be left behind.”
The Association of Convenience Stores, the
British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses have all urged the Chancellor to secure long-term access to cash across the UK.
The Treasury is expected to start talks with the industry and regulators – the Bank of England, Financial Conduct Authority and Payment Systems Regulator – immediately after the March 11 Budget.
One area being looked at is whether to give watchdogs new powers that ensure the banks continue to properly support their customers’ cash needs.
Mr Sunak could look to Sweden, which requires large banks to provide their customers with facilities for withdrawing cash.
Around two million people in the UK still rely on cash for their day-to-day spending, with three in 10 payments still made using notes and coins.
In 2018, 50 million adults used cash machines, with 87 per cent of them using one at least once a month.
Consumer group Which? recently wrote to Mr Sunak, saying: “In the past two years, 9,000 free cash machines and 1,200 bank branches have vanished.
“If things carry on as they are, cash as we know it will cease to exist in two years.”
INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day, which takes place tomorrow, has for many years really been an International Women’s Week. In the days leading up to it there are countless campaigning events to highlight some hitherto neglected aspect of the discrimination that women have been fighting for more than a century.
Media coverage is of a scale and duration that lifts the occasion way above many of the other special days we are now invited to recognise. With all due respect to the likes ofWorld Book Day or International Lefthanders Day, they are not playing in the same league.
And in many cases, the points made are strong ones, raising awareness about everything from domestic violence to stalking, from pension discrimination to the gap between what men and women earn on average, to women’s health issues that are not being properly addressed.
It is also important to acknowledge that socialists have long been at the forefront of this feminist movement.
They’ve got almost everything else wrong for more than a century – from wanting us to unilaterally surrender our nuclear defences in the face of Soviet aggression to recommending various lurches into ruinous Marxist economics – so it’s only fair to note it when they find a fundamentally important cause to pursue.
In this case, that cause is nothing less than the desire of half the population for basic equality.
It was socialists in both America and Europe who instigated International Women’s Day in 1911 as an annual day in honour of working women and they have dominated feminism ever since.
But this year something has gone drastically wrong. Far from using its campaigning muscle to boost women’s rights, the Left has started to use it to constrict them.
The most obvious example came in Sefton on Merseyside this week, when the local council took down flags bearing the dictionary definition “Woman, noun – adult human female” after complaints from transsexual-rights activists that these somehow amounted to “a transphobic dog whistle”.
Words are powerful things and somehow, at the behest of Left-wing campaigners, the trans-rights movement has been allowed to acquire part ownership of – some would say a controlling interest in – the very idea of womanhood.
Then there was the astonishing moment at Oxford University on Thursday evening when students voted at the last moment to “no platform” former home secretary Amber Rudd after having invited her along to speak at a “Women Trailblazers” event.
The UNWomen Oxford group gave her just half an hour’s notice that she was being cancelled because it judged her record in office to have failed to uphold nondiscriminatory values.
“We are deeply sorry for all and any hurt caused to our members and… non-binary people in Oxford over this event,” the group’s ruling committee said in a notably snowflaky statement. The idea of the inoffensive Ms Rudd being an extremist who should be barred from debating her ideas with Oxford students is absurd.
This elite university is training the leaders of the future and they should surely be welcoming the chance to test their views in debate, not seeking to hide away from challenges to their new orthodoxies.
Ms Rudd certainly thought so, saying: “They should stop hiding and start engaging.”
Yet one only has to look at the chorus of abuse raining down on the new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to see that the Left is no longer on the side of high-achieving women in general. Only those with the full panoply of woke Left-wing views are welcome under their feminist umbrella now.
When a privileged man with liberal leanings accuses a Rightwing woman of bullying, then the Left uses it as an opportunity to attack the woman rather than question his motives.
And there are lots of women’s right issues that the Left now systematically underplays and where the political right-ofcentre has had to lead the way.
These include tackling the outrage of female genital mutilation, combating the grooming gangs that target vulnerable working class girls in many British towns and cities, preventing forced marriages and supporting the legitimate desire of many women for some public spaces such as loos and changing rooms to be reserved for biological females only.
In all these areas the Left has actually permitted injustice against women and girls to flourish because it is squeamish about confronting the idea that some minority cultures are advancing values hostile to real equality between the sexes.
International Women’s Day will no doubt come back bigger than ever next year and overall it still has a good story to tell of notable advances.
But the idea that Left-wingers can any longer be trusted to lead the way is best consigned to the dustbin of history.
‘This elite university should welcome debate...not hide away’