Left behind by the decline of cash

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Should the government force banks to guarantee everyone access to cash?

Age UK warns that despite the rise of digital payments, millions of people still rely on cash and the charity says it should be seen as an essential service - like electricity, water, or the post.

Barclays bank is to repay millions of pounds to customers miss-sold loans to pay for a timeshare scheme in Malta, but hundreds of others say they should be getting their money back too.

The UK’s biggest insurance firm and a major housebuilder have agreed to refund customers who have overpaid for freeholds and ground rents. It’s a major breakthrough for some leaseholders but will the industry follow suit.

And one listener tells us his story of emerging from the black hole of debt.

If you've been affected by any of the issues in this programme, you can find a list of support organisations at bbc.co.uk/actionline

GUESTS: Joel Lewis - Policy Manager Age UK Sian Williams - Director of Policy at the anti-poverty charity Toynbee Hall, Sebastian O’Kelly - Leasehold Knowledge Partnership

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Production Co-ordinator: Janet Staples Researcher: Stefania Okereke Producer: Joe Kent Editor: Alex Lewis

Transcript

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0:00.0	In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers.
0:08.0	But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA
0:12.0	was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife.
0:18.0	Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? When lies are still being told to this day,
0:24.0	who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start and I'm with the IRA.
0:28.5	Steakknife. Listen first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast.
0:40.2	Barclays will refund tens of millions of pounds to nearly 1,500 people
0:44.5	for loans it provided to buy timeshares in Malta.
0:48.4	There's a major breakthrough this week in the rights of leaseholders,
0:52.1	and one man tells us his story of emerging from the black hole of debt.
0:57.1	But first, cash is under threat.
0:59.6	Lloyd's announced this week it would close another 44 branches, adding to the 3,000 which high street banks have shut over the last five years.
1:07.4	A fifth of free cash machines, more than 10,000 of them, have disappeared in the last
1:12.1	two years, and some shops and cafes are refusing to take cash on health grounds. Many of those
1:18.4	who depend on cash are pensioners, and today, Age UK, is demanding that cash is seen as an essential
1:23.6	service like electricity or water. It's calling on the government to give us a legal right to access to cash.
1:31.3	With me is Joel Lewis, Age Concerns, Age UK's policy manager. Joel Lewis, how would this right to cash work?
1:40.0	So we've seen, despite the impact of the pandemic, how essential cash is to all of our lives.
1:45.3	In January of this year, despite us being in a national lockdown, far few places to spend cash, a lot of businesses shut, a lot of people shielding at home.
1:52.9	25 million adults aged under 65 still use cash at some point in that month.
1:58.0	And we believe we need this universal obligation to maintain
2:02.2	what is basically an essential piece of the country's infrastructure. So on a similar level
	...

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