Last year, my Voice colleague, Iain Roberts, reported the efforts of Lib Dem Cheadle MP Mark Hunter to ‘Save the Cheque‘, due to be phased out by October 2018.
Now his fellow Lib Dem MP David Ward (Bradford East) has joined the fray, this week introducing a 10 Minute Rule in the House of Commons to introduce a bill to save the cheque. You ca read the full text of his Commons speech here, and a brief excerpt here:
What have the Federation of Small Businesses, Age Concern, Help the Aged, Unite, Which?, Royal National Institute of Blind People, the Institute of Fund-raising and an EDM signed by 126 MPs from all parties, all have in common?
The answer is that they all have major reservations about the scrapping of cheques. This preferred method of payment is used by hundreds of thousands of people every single day. In fact the total number of cheques written out each day is close to 4m – that amounts to over 1.3bn in a year.
Yet, despite this very clear message that cheques are still valued by the customers of the major banks and other payment service providers, The Payments Council agreed last December on their behalf, to scrap cheques in 2018.
This decision will, I believe, have major ramifications. … This is not a Bill borne out of nostalgia for the past but for an acceptance of the present. This is not a bill to attack the independence of businesses but a bill to protect the rights of their customers. And this is not a Bill to condemn customers to an outdated method of carrying out financial transactions but a Bill to give all those carrying out such transactions greater choice about how they do so.
David’s bill was passed and now proceeds to its next stage; it is due to be debated in June next year.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Full slate of Lib Dems in council by-elections
Getting things done - West Port #dundeewestend
Payback time
The Joy of Six 1274
Gasping Local Government.
The Chagos Islands, Mauritius and the ICJ
Honouring the Real Thing and launching Black History Month in Liverpool
Russell
Peter Martin
Peter Davies
Dave Tate
14 Comments
*sigh*
Must we?
The cheque is a valuable way making payments between normal people and shouldn’t be scrapped just because banks don’t much like them. Until there is an equally useful way of making payment between ordinary people that can be posted, the cheque should stay.
I don’t know about you but I don’t have the facility to take credit card payments and whilst I have a paypal account, I don’t carry it around with me. Find us a better alternative and we can swap. Until then, let us keep the cheque.
Even as a relatively tech-savvy person at a relatively sprightly 28, I use cheques for all sorts of things – and that’s before we get into talking about people who cannot or will not use methods like debit/credit cards or direct debit.
There is no technological advance that can replace all the functions of the cheque any more than card transactions have replaced cash. This may not be the most dynamic campaign the party ever ran but it is about something tangible and of real value to people.
>Until there is an equally useful way of making payment between ordinary people that can be posted, the cheque should stay.
Agreed. I imagine charities will be hit particularly hard: not everyone wants or can afford the monthly obligation of direct debit.
I pay my car tax by cheque: I don’t want to do it oniine, I want to keep my local post office branch open.
I also pay my credit card bill by post, by cheque (it’s a different bank to my current account.
Maybe in future they’d like a WH Smiths gift token instead? 😉
It would also be nice if banks ran proper services at weekends for those of us who don’t work in town/city centres and can’t get to them weekdays. And hadn’t shut loads of little branches, meaning the town/city centre ones are all that’s left.
But I guess that’s a lost cause.
Where is all the favourable press comment by Conservative columnists about a debate on the phasing out of cheques?
This is surely natural territory for the Telegraph and Dailies Mail and Express…… but there’s little nice to say about Mark Hunter’s Ten Minute Rule Bill because he’s in the wrong half of the coalition. Has the party’s press machine been so Tory tamed that it won’t be finding a way of articulating this undoubted vote-winner ahead, for instance, of next Spring’s local elections?
Unfortunately we don’t have to wait until 2018: witless bank tellers and ‘consumer banking advisers’ now so prevalent in open-plan banks tend to smile at customers from their work stations with just a hint of irritation if not pity for the “enabling” of yet another paper transaction.
I opened a new current account for a specialist purpose and never thought to tell them I would want a cheque book. I rang up to complain they had not sent one and they told me I had to go in to the branch again to ask for one in person. The world nowadays is full of prat organisations.
Tony Greaves
@Sean “Has the party’s press machine been so Tory tamed that it won’t be finding a way of articulating this undoubted vote-winner ahead, for instance, of next Spring’s local elections?”
Simon Wright MP got some good coverage for his support of this in the very well read Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evenning News. No doubte Mark Hunter, David Ward will be getting into the MEN and Yorkshire Post and other MPs likewise on this issue.
“In fact the total number of cheques written out each day is close to 4m – that amounts to over 1.3bn in a year.”
What I have never seen is this compared to the number and value of cheque transactions in, say, 1967 – which just happens to be the year my father retired from his job in a bank.
The banks make much play of the fact that that other transaction types have an increasing share of the market, but I believe that the cheque share is still substantial.
The other big gap in the successor systems is how transactions which require two or more signatures would be organised – widely used for by organisations such as schools, scout groups and trusts.
Cheque volumes peaked in the UK in 1990 and have been in decline ever since. I cant think of an enormously compelling reason to keep them around considering very comprehensive banking services are available free of charge in this country and facilities for making payments in an almost instant fashion are available.
Thomas
“in this country”
For Brits who live or spend time abroad the cheque is still useful.
@Simon
Yes, local press coverage of an issue like this can precipitate awareness through word of mouth and the ripple effect. I remember the Eastern Daily Press from when I worked in Cambridge and its reporting seemed to be well regarded by those who bought it.
Let’s hope press releases are flying out of Cowley…..sorry, Downing Street to all regional press groups in and around the party’s constituencies.
A bill? Really?
This should be a matter for the issuer (e.g. the bank), not for parliament. If people want cheques, banks will have an incentive to offer a cheque-account. If they don’t why pile a pointless cost/regulation on them.
(Cue out-pouring of anti-bank fury largely unrelated to the issue)
Even if there was a need for cheques now, this regulation would hobble banks years after cheques had ceased to be in demand.
Why-oh-why must MPs (and all-too-often Lib Dem MPs) table such pointless, meddling, centrist legislation?
I last wrote a cheque in 2005.
Fed up with “the-cheque’s-in-the-post/lost” type excuses, I decided to educate the reluctant world around me to electronic banking. The first few months were, er, interesting, but once sort codes and account numbers had been exchanged without anyone being mercilessly embezzled as a result, it was all plain sailing.
These days I flag up my paperless banking to new contacts and give them the option of an electronic transfer or cash and it’s amazing how accommodating people are when they want your money.
In any event, by 2018, everyone will either be banking online or have gotten the hang of using ATMs for everything.
This bill is an embarrassing pointer to the atrophy that exists in corners of our party and does not befit a modern, progressive force for change.
Tom Papworth wrote:
“A bill? Really?
This should be a matter for the issuer (e.g. the bank), not for parliament. If people want cheques, banks will have an incentive to offer a cheque-account. If they don’t why pile a pointless cost/regulation on them.”
This really is the sort of consumer protection activity that a government should take action on, as it is the banks’ joint trade organisation itself that is proposing to phase out cheques with, as yet, no 100% replacement. Also, the use of cheques really requires a system of “exchange”, where banks getting cheques to deposit can promptly and straightforwardly get the funds from the drawer’s bank. If High St. banks are allowed, or choose to, opt out if the system, it will be less effective.
Kirsten wrote:
“I last wrote a cheque in 2005.”
I too am a widespread user of electronic banking, but I still write or countersign a number of cheques each month. It is true that I withdraw cash at ATMs, whereas at one time I cashed cheques at my then employer’s cash office, and that I make many payments electronically that I used to make by cheque – either by post or over the counter at a bank. But there is still a residual hard core where a cheque is best, or there is no option.
On the other hand, consider my late mother. After my father died, when she was 72, she had the full financial management of the household. She wouldn’t use credit cards or ATMs, because she was afraid of mislaying the card or PIN, or being shoulder-surfed, but she managed fine for the rest of her life with cheques, in spite of progressively poorer eyesight. There are still plenty of people like her around. If the government doesn’t step in to protect them, there will be increased age or disability discrimination.