ROYAL Bank of Scotland’s controversial branch closure plan has been branded a “betrayal,” which will devastate Scottish communities, says Unite, the trade union.
In a submission to the Commons Scottish Affairs Committee - which will examine the branch closure plan today and is expected to grill RBS executives Les Matheson and Jane Howard - Unite Scotland accuses the Edinburgh-based bank of manipulating figures and failing to explain properly the reasons behind the closures.
It claims RBS has breached the banking industry protocols for branch closures; never having had any intention to negotiate the proposals with either the UK Government, trade unions or local communities.
The announcement to axe 259 branches, 62 of which are in Scotland, came in December. Some 700 jobs are said to be at risk.
The union says the real reason for RBS’s decision is to make the bank more attractive to a City-led privatisation and calls on the UK Government to use its controlling share in the bank to force a change of mind on the branch closure programme.
When it announced its decision, RBS noted how since 2014 the number of customers using branches had fallen by 40 per cent while mobile transactions had increased by 73 per cent. It also said one in five RBS customers only used its services digitally.
The bank’s management is under pressure to cut costs and is expected next month, when it reports its results, to confirm that it has incurred a decade of full-year losses since its taxpayer-bailout in 2008.
Lyn Turner, the union’s regional officer, who will also be giving evidence this morning, said: “In the last decade the taxpayer paid out £45bn to bail out the failed executives of RBS in the financial crisis. The taxpayer still owns the bank and yet the pay-back for its rescue is now the proposed closure of one in three of its branches across Scotland. This is a betrayal of the people of Scotland.”
Unite said that it had discovered that the promised “community bankers,” meant to fill the gaps in the service caused by the branch closures, would number fewer than 10 to serve the whole of Scotland.
“From day one, RBS has massaged the closure figures on the scale of job losses in Scotland, on the quality of replacement services and on what this will mean for the devastation of local communities,” declared Ms Turner. “They like to tell us that RBS is the Royal Bank for Scotland; it actually appears to be the Royal Bank for smoke and mirrors.”
She added: “RBS has re-written the rule book for bank closures. The Scottish Affairs Committee must call the executives of the bank to account. After receiving billions from the taxpayer, the Chief Executive, Ross McEwan, must explain why RBS is prepared to close one third of its branches. Local communities are accusing RBS of ‘financial vandalism.’”
Many of Unite’s concerns echo those expressed by Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, who has clashed with Theresa May on the issue.
Before Christmas, the Highland MP called on the Prime Minister to "show some leadership; stand up for our communities" as he urged her to haul the bank’s chief into Downing Street to stop the closures.
But Mrs May argued that RBS’s branch closure plan was an "operational decision".
Meanwhile, the Federation of Small Businesses said its research showed that RBS had cut its branch network by 70 per cent in the last five years.
It urged the UK Government to step in to “stop hundreds of Scottish communities being left without a bank branch”.
Responding to the FSB research, Richard Leonard, the Scottish Labour leader, said RBS’s branch closure plan was “yet another example of big businesses putting profit before people”.
He added: “RBS closures, in particular, are an insult to all those who worked to rescue the company with the use of public money when it was in trouble.
“We, the taxpayers, own the Royal Bank of Scotland and if RBS won’t listen to reason and put a stop to the additional closures already in the pipeline, the UK Government must do the right thing and step in to stop the closures and protect these vital community services.”
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