First Direct and Natwest closing bank accounts for political reasons inc being gender critical

[Snorkers]

Apprently First Direct have closed the account of the Wings over Scotland founder for his beliefs (He's Gender Critical), and Coutts, owned by Natwest, closed Nigel Farage's account.
Whatever you think of Nigel Farage he is entitled to a bank account.

This is really worrying.

I bank with First Direct. I am gender critical. Do I need to hide my beliefs to keep my bank account? Will tey stop me getting access to my money?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12249755/Nigel-Farage-claims-three-loved-ones-bank-accounts-closed-Brexit.html

When you use such words as "odious" to describe someone simply on the basis that they have views on things you don't personally like or agree with - then we're in trouble. The problem is this is now the norm - especially for people on the perceived right.

Suella Braverman comes in for so much denigration and abuse - it has become like a sport for many. I find it very concerning. Words like 'fascist' are thrown around, and she is portrayed as some kind of evil sub-human creature.
She is there to do a job, and to achieve what she was elected to achieve, whether you agree with that or not.

🤣🤣
DH brought this up yesterday but his total commentary on it was 'Farage is an arse' and 'It's a private company, it can do what it likes'.

If it had been, oh, dunno, a bien pensant leftie rather than Wicked Nigel, he would have been up in arms about civil rights.

I may be revisiting that conversation.

and 'It's a private company, it can do what it likes'

Which stacks up as an argument to the point where he personally is disadvantaged in some way; and Nat West/Coutts isn't a private company. It's partly taxpayer owned (after being bailed out).

And private companies can't 'do as they like.' They're still subject to any relevant legislation such as employment law.

They can't do what they like. It's why we have legislation that says you can't discriminate.

Seeing that Farage is now calling for the whole board to go. I don't think that he'll get that far, but it will be very interesting to see how far the ramifications of this spread.

I hope that a lot of companies, not just banks, start thinking a bit more carefully about what they perceive as their right to punish/exclude those who don't agree with their "values" (values they themselves conveniently forget about every time they want to do business in countries like Qatar...).

(values they themselves conveniently forget about every time they want to do business in countries like Qatar...)

Ethics are conveniently flexible when there's profit to be made.

Seems likely Rose hadn't got her hands dirty with the dossier (people on £5 million p.a. seldom have dirty hands...though obviously shouldn't have briefed a journalist, however tacitly). Key questions are who was on the Reputational Risk Committee and what were they thinking when they wrote that dossier? And how much are they paid to moon around Twitter like that? (Or is it "X".)

Oh, and who stood in judgement of the Gervais joke?

Well, precisely. He is well aware of who owns NatWest (he's done work for that sector). He also knows about the law and banking regulations. He's letting his dislike of NF entirely cloud his judgement.

I did ask something along the lines of whether large companies should be moral arbiters, but he had a few glasses of wine inside him and it wasn't worth pursuing.

Well, Alison Rose at least won't be out on the streets, bless her. She can sit on her mountain of money instead.

Thank you @ResisterRex that's very interesting. And all very murky.

When you think of all the dodgy, human-rights-abusing individuals and organisations, and ditto firms and their leaders who are manifestly destroying the planet - yet still somehow manage to bank - it looks like a massive distraction operation.

Its absolutely pitiful that they think they are somehow either 'doing the right thing', or (more likely) convincing the public that they are doing the right thing, by these petty acts.

Its a shockingly unprofessional and pathetic way to run a company, apart from anything else. What a shambles!

Well, Alison Rose at least won't be out on the streets, bless her. She can sit on her mountain of money instead.

Yes. Will she be given a substantial golden goodbye, I wonder? (Or maybe a peerage by Keir Starmer).

I wondered that too. I didn’t read the article very carefully but it looked something like the deputy whose area it was has got her job temporarily. So she hasn’t been sacked because of the decision to close Farage’s account but because of talking to the bbc.

I suppose using the bbc interview as the reason is very easy to justify as only she was involved in that; whereas it was the organisation’s policies, procedures and systems which led to the account closure decision and presumably part of the board’s job is to make sure the bank has appropriate policies and assurance / governance mechanisms.

Well I would have expected better of Rachel Reeves. Obviously unable to read the room.

twitter.com/OldRoberts953/status/1684258821751832585?t=xR2g5QhinpughWhCHP1cyQ&s=19

One of the comments: "well she knows what a female is".

But yes, let's look past it all because she's a woman. Erm no.

That was pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

"I don't know what this case was all about"

How can she not know?

No matter how awful Farage might be Rose's behaviour was a gross breach of client confidentiality.

Is Reeves really so stupid she thinks this is about defending Nigel Farage?

I caught about a minute of Wes Streeting talking to Kay Burley this morning where he was having a good laugh with her about this. He was saying something like “Sorry, Nigel, but I won’t be getting out my violin for you not having the £3 million needed to bank with Coutts” and, like Rachel Reeves, saying people struggling with cost of living wouldn’t care about this. I was a bit shocked as I thought he was smarter than that and wouldn’t open himself up to accusations of only wanting to govern on behalf of those with the correct, remainer opinions. It was a very short bit of the interview though so maybe the rest of it was more nuanced.

From Twitter - if Reeves is too stupid to understand this, heaven help us should Labour win the next election.

Principled folk on both left & right see where political de-banking leads. But the hard-of-thinking like RR can't see past "Farage".

Banking is a highly regulated state protected cartel, they should no more be allowed to do this than de-bank people for being Blacks or Jews.

Nigel Farage. It’s quite simple, really. You can disagree with everything he stands for. You can hate him. AND you can still disagree with how he’s been treated by the banks and some sections of the media because you understand the principles at stake. If you don’t defend the principle because you hate Farage, you're an idiot. Unfortunately, if it happens to you next, I’ll be forced to defend an idiot (you) because it’s the principle that matters not the person

I'm a solicitor. If I had breached client confidentiality the way Rose did I'd be sacked, disciplined by the Law Society and possibly even struck off.

Yes, this. The breach of confidentiality alone was a resigning matter, never mind the lies and obfuscation.

https://register.fca.org.uk/s/individual?id=003b000000LVyYMAA1

Not sure what the FCA will do.

Excellent 👌🏿

It's deliberate ignorance on the part of people like Streeting and Reeves. I actually think that is much worse than just being a bit thick. But Left side of politics is pro this sort of big business control now. Quite shocking departure from what it used to be about. I think people still haven't woken up to this, even with the example of Covid in front of us, for which I am convinced had Labour been in power, we'd have had something akin to Trudeau and Ardern style lockdowns, Big Brother style politics, aiding and abetting Big Pharma.

There's also the patronising: 'The poor are only capable of caring about their poverty and day to day struggles and nothing else'.

This case in the DM today is also shocking. HSBC behaved disgracefully and debanked vulnerable elderly, the reason why was never confirmed, they had £30K in the account and regular pension payments going in so would seem to be ideal customers.
They were left with no money to live in as they couldn't access any of it from December to July when eventually HSBC opened a new account for them under pressure from the DM journalist.

And then had the nerve to say this:

"An HSBC spokesman said: 'Our focus is on helping people build financial health, including those in vulnerable circumstances.
'We're glad that we were able to help [these customers] access the banking services they need.'"

Instead of a fulsome apology, a generous compensation payment and a promise to improve systems in the future.

My vulnerable parents in-law were 'debanked' by HSBC

https://mol.im/a/12340459

So really it could happen to any of us.
Our joint account is with HSBC though I have my own account elsewhere.

I just read that, terrible story...that couple could have died from cold or food deprivation had they not had a relative to help them! Something does need to be done.

Apparently according to GB news, Coutts have had 850 million pounds knocked off their company share value. I don't know if that's wholly correct but the point made was who would open an account with a bank who was caught going through a customer's personal social media accounts and divulging how much money was in a customer's account with a journalist no less.

Chairman Sir Howard Davies has previous form:

The London School of Economics accepted a £1.5m ($2.4m) donation from the family of Muammer Gaddafi that may have been raised from bribes paid to the dictator’s family by companies seeking “business favours” from the regime, an independent report into the college’s links to Libya has revealed. The report, written by Lord Woolf, former chief justice, was commissioned by the LSE in the wake of Sir Howard Davies’ resignation from his post as LSE director in March over the controversy. Sir Howard was personally responsible for some of the failures that led to the scandal, the inquiry found.

The new story is shocking.

Banks should have rules like utility companies which prevent them from cutting off services to the elderly/vulnerable, and an obligation to provide help when needed.