On Thursday, July 6, 2023, I wrote about the closure of Nigel Farage’s — and other Britons’ — Bank accounts.

These are mysterious, because the letters from financial institutions to their customers on this matter rarely state the reason why.

Nigel took the rest of the week off from his GB News show in order to decide what to do next about his problem.

Update

On Wednesday, July 5, Patrick Christys guest hosted and spoke with Justin Doherty, who is a reputation and crisis adviser. He is currently representing Alexandra Tolstoy — yes, she’s a descendant — who has had her Bank Account unceremoniously closed. More about her below. Doherty says there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Britons in this situation. He stated that banks do not care about their customers. He also thought that Farage’s former bank, Coutts, should not have said their reason for closing his account was because he could not maintain a minimum balance and then stated what that figure was. That would appear to violate a person’s privacy:

On Sunday, July 9, Alexandra Tolstoy, who is a British citizen, appeared on GB News to tell Angela Rippon her alarming story. NatWest, the British bank that closed her account and is Coutts’s parent company, had all sorts of false information about her based on newspaper articles. She has never lived in Monaco and she is separated from her husband, who left the UK in 2015. The fact that he is Russian has not helped. That said, he has never paid child support or made any payment into her account.

Tolstoy runs an adventure travel business and has three dependent children. Not having a bank account has proved to be an ‘Orwellian nightmare’ for her. She is astounded that NatWest did not review her transactions for proof that she lives in London. She said they could have also checked the Electoral Roll for her residence.

What further astounded her is that five million people have had their bank accounts closed in recent years. They are on what is called a World Check data list and are unaware they have been blacklisted, for whatever reason, through a company called Refinitive which she alleges has an extensive data repository of material derived from Google searches rather than official sources, e.g. HMRC (tax office). She said that she was able to access this list with help from ‘the media’. When she contacted someone connected with these lists, they said that they would delete the false information from her record. In the end, she has a new active bank account with another bank. Not surprisingly, she is still nervous. An unnamed lawyer — perhaps the aforementioned Justin Doherty? — is doing work for her pro bono, because there could be other data companies with spurious information about her on their records. She said she is still terrified, especially as her work takes her overseas, and she needs access to a bank account on those trips:

On Monday morning, July 10, Nigel Farage gave us an update from his home. He said that he was heartened by the many emails and phone calls he received from people who had also had their accounts closed. He still didn’t have a new account, but he is happy that this is out in the open. He is unhappy with Coutts for telling the BBC that he had fallen below the £1m limit. This prompted Coutts customers to tell Farage that they, too, had fallen below the £1m limit — with no negative consequences! Farage concludes that this limit is ‘pretty arbitrary’.

He said that these account closures are because of an EU directive which is still active in UK law. The Government says that, in order to rectify this, they will distinguish between a foreign and a domestic PEP — politically exposed person — although this will not happen until 2024. Farage said that there is a bigger issue at play here, however, and that is the use of cash in business. He heard from many small business owners who partly deal in cash, e.g. window cleaners, pawnbrokers. They have had their accounts closed because they are suspected of laundering money. Unlike Farage, however, they have been able to find other banks. He mentioned the new GB News campaign, launched last week: Don’t Kill Cash. He said that government or bank control of people’s money, especially through digital currency, would ‘be the ultimate form of tyranny’. Too right:

That evening, he said much the same thing on his show, saying that, despite it all, he had a lovely week in Normandy. He is not at all happy with Coutts. He is currently researching his ‘world compliance profile’, which, as was the case with Alexandra Tolstoy, based on news reports. He said that he was deeply dismayed to find that his family members were listed on his profile. He advised small business owners to contact him if they have problems with their bank accounts. He also applauded Jacob Rees-Mogg MP for an amendment to the new finance bill making having a bank account a guaranteed human right, which it used to be before the Post Office was privatised by Vince Cable, a former Liberal Democrat MP who was part of the 2010-2015 Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government. Those who could not get bank accounts through a financial institution could obtain one through the Post Office. A guaranteed bank account is the law in France and Germany, by the way:

Rees-Mogg discussed his amendment to the new finance law which would guarantee that banks cannot arbitrarily close customers’ accounts, including on the basis of their political opinions (start at the 37:00 mark). He discussed the matter with Ben Habib, a businessman who was a former Brexit Party MEP. Both observed that bank closures do not happen to those on the left. They then discussed how important ESG scores were becoming to businesses, including banks. Rees-Mogg then discussed bank account closures with Dr Henrik Nielsen, a former Brexit Party MEP who has since returned to practising dentistry. In January 2020, Metro Bank had closed Nielsen’s account for no reason that they were willing to state in a letter to him. Nielsen found another bank, but, in 2022, he said that his daughter tried to get a mortgage with Metro Bank, which refused her application. He thinks that was because he was the co-guarantor. Nielsen says that if this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. He does not consider himself to be a PEP — ‘I’m an NHS dentist and a trade unionist through the British Dental Association’:

The EU law

Here is the EU law in question, the one that is still part of UK legislation. It appears to offer the guarantee of a bank account (emphases mine):

(38) Member States should ensure that the number of credit institutions offering payment accounts with basic features is sufficient to ensure the reach of all consumers, to avoid any kind of discrimination against them and to prevent distortions of competition. When determining the sufficient number of credit institutions, the factors to be taken into account should include the coverage of the network of the credit institutions, the size of the territory of the Member State, the distribution of consumers on the territory, the market share of the credit institutions and whether payment accounts with basic features represent only a small part of the payment accounts provided by the credit institution. In principle, payment accounts with basic features should be offered by as many credit institutions as possible, with a view to guaranteeing that consumers can open such accounts at premises of a credit institution that is within close reach of their place of residence and that consumers are in no way discriminated against when accessing such accounts and can use them effectively. In particular, Member States should ensure that there is no visible discrimination illustrated by, for example, a different appearance of the card, a different account number or a different card number. However, it should be possible for a Member State to envisage that payment accounts with basic features are offered by a smaller number of credit institutions, but this should be justified on the basis that, for example, those credit institutions have such a widespread presence on the territory of that Member State that they could serve all consumers without forcing them to travel too far away from their home to reach them. Moreover, consumers accessing payment accounts with basic features should not be stigmatised in any way, and that objective can be better achieved if a larger number of credit institutions are designated.

(39) Member States should be able to put in place mechanisms to assist consumers with no fixed address, asylum seekers and consumers who are not granted a residence permit, but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons, to fully benefit from this Directive.

ESG, PEPs and the social credit system

On Friday, July 7, Dr Radomir Tylecote explored bank account closures for The Critic in ‘How to stop banks’ new social credit system’. He wrote this after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he would look into these closures. Hunt himself had been refused an account a few years ago by Mondo, a bank which is unknown to me, and Lord Clarke — Kenneth Clarke, a former Conservative MP — felt forced to give up his American Express card after 50 years because the company presented him with so much paperwork.

Dr Tylecote wrote:

So, the Government has noticed: banks have turned against free speech. Nigel Farage can’t open a new account, and vicars are being purged for responding to a request for customer feedback and urging them to drop the woke stuff …  

Banking is a market, but banks are licensed by the government. People expect the government to step in when banks fail in their obligations, as we saw with the bailouts that British banks received during the 2008 financial crisis. Banks received support because they have reciprocal duties to the British public. The closure of accounts for non-commercial reasons reflects a failure to honour that duty, owed both to their customers and to the public at large. This is sometimes justified on the grounds of “suspicions” regarding the client, but since when have suspicions been enough to condemn people? This breaches Britain’s longstanding legal presumption of innocence. 

Intervention to prevent banks discriminating against free speech should not be needed, because we are supposed to live in a high-trust society. The British people still know what this means, but our corporate Establishment increasingly does not. The “de-banking” trend is a sinister new form of cancel culture. British banking cannot provide services only to those willing to submit to the banks’ preferred ideologies. 

The outrage about the illegitimate closure of accounts is justified. We now need new legislation to stop the purge. This legislation must do two things: create a requirement for banks to respect their customers’ right to lawful free speech, and a transparency obligation. Put simply, this will mean that customers cannot be denied an account or other banking services for saying the “wrong” thing; and that whenever a customer has services removed for any reason, the banks must explain why — a financial Habeas Corpus, if you will …

Lenin understood that a totalitarian society required the politicisation of everything, an idea our institutions are taking up with gusto. As the demands of woke activists have become increasingly divorced from reality, the imposition of their beliefs on a restive population is becoming draconian.  The British people are free to live their lives as long as they don’t say anything the progressive elite objects to. If you disagree, you are to remain silent — or else! This needs to be challenged everywhere.

The Government announced today that it may scrap EU laws on “politically exposed persons” (PEPs), which have supposedly helped banks remove people they don’t like. But this doesn’t go far enough. There will be nothing to stop them doing it anyway and it isn’t clear why a vicar was considered a PEP (though they may have made him one).    

Access to a bank account must now be enshrined in law, just as when the Post Office used to be obliged to provide everyone with a post office savings account.  Banking has become an essential service, like a public utility, and should be available to every creditworthy person, unrefusable other than for criminal convictions like fraud, with banks’ reasoning subject to challenge. Decisions made on ideological grounds must be proscribed (application should not be fishing expeditions to determine whether prospective customers are aligned with the bank’s “values”). The same needs to apply to debit card and banking services like savings, transfers and payments — as well as payment processors like PayPal — and banks must also explain any refusal to provide credit facilities and mortgages. It’s not good enough for people to have accounts in name only. One approach is to stipulate that banks may only “de-bank” someone with a court order or final adjudication, unless the customer has separately been convicted of a financial or other relevant crime. We also need a statutory right to sue banks, beyond regulatory review. In the US, decisions after review by the regulatory body may be appealed with a judge at a federal court, so this is hardly an unprecedented idea. 

The abuse of banking discretion must end. That will create a burden on banks, to be sure, but it is the inevitable consequence of their collective failure to uphold freedom of speech. Their decision to get into bed with organisations like Stonewall and enforce their ideology is leaving their customers increasingly baffled and justifiably angry. In a high-trust society, without reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal activity, banks’ customers should be left in peace. It’s a pity we now need legislation to make this happen.

 I could not agree more.

GB News cash campaign under attack

Also on Friday, July 7, Guido Fawkes reported that Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, were investigating GB News’s Don’t Kill Cash campaign, launched on Monday, July 3:

Guido told us (emphasis his):

Ofcom has opened an investigation into GB News following a complaint relating to its recently launched “Don’t Kill Cash” campaign. Ofcom say they are investigating a potential breach of

Rule 5.4 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code requires all broadcasters to ensure that their programmes – whatever their genre – exclude all expressions of the views and opinions of the person providing the service on matters of political and industrial controversy or current public policy. This reflects the statutory requirements in the Communications Act 2003 as set by Parliament.

GB News are getting a lot of Ofcom complaints from people who are obviously politically motivated. The “Don’t Kill Cash” campaign is a classic tabloid newspaper style campaign, though it is new thing for a regulated broadcaster to run this type of campaign. GB News will argue that it is not a partisan campaign, citing support from the left and right on the issue. Surely they just need to give airtime to some digital currency zealots to provide balance. Isn’t Matt Hancock now a campaigner for digital currencies?

Matt Hancock and digital currencies: that says it all.

As Mark Dolan said later that evening, ‘Cash is king’:

I wish GB News all the best with their campaign as well as MPs fighting for the British consumer with regard to bank accounts.

Let us hope the Government gets changes enshrined in law before Labour get in. We haven’t a moment to lose.