Bring back real bank managers

Last week's column was very much about the Westminster week, Monday to Thursday. It is an intense, surreal and often rather airless environment. Thank goodness for the oxygen of constituency work.

Friday surgeries in Maidstone and Cranbrook are always a highlight for me – a return to normality, a chance to do something practical and make a tangible difference. These sessions are warmly similar to my work as a legal aid solicitor and I am glad that I remain in touch with my profession. It maintains that essential reality check so easily lost amidst the smoke and mirrors of Westminster politics.

Last week there was a definite emphasis on our banks. Not the Goldman Sachs of this world, but our high street banks. Remember them? The ones that were there for the things that mattered to you and me, and local businesses. Where there was a manager who had a name, a contact number and some real discretion.

New propositions were once underwritten by a business plan, a careful look in the eye and a firm handshake. And existing customers needing a helping hand in a cashflow crisis would be treated with care and respect by a person who knew them and their business history.

It is now too often a thing of the past, smothered by box ticking credit checks and computerised risk assessments. Loans and overdrafts are frequently only available to those who neither need nor want them, or to those who are prepared to put their family homes up as collateral.

Banks should, and must, take a fairer share of risk if they are to deserve their profits. I have spoken on this in Parliament this week and will continue to lobby for a return to properly considered banking. Lenders must support our SMEs properly for it is they who will ultimately bail-out our country, with new jobs and with growth.

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