A Home Office minister has said it should be “completely unacceptable” for banks to close accounts on “political grounds”, as the row over Nigel Farage’s claims of blacklisting intensified. Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, was speaking in parliament after the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, urged regulators to take action against banks that shut off access to people with controversial views.
Farage, the former Brexit party and Ukip leader who now presents on GB News, claimed last week that he was considering leaving Britain because his bank had told him his accounts were being shut down. He said no reason was given, but believed it was due to his past designation as a politically exposed person (PEP) and to claims made in the House of Commons that he had received payments from Russia.
Responding to former cabinet minister David Davis, who called Farage “only the latest of a number of people to have their lives wrecked” by the PEP regulation, Tugendhat said: “PEP is there to prevent the corrupt use of banking facilities by politicians in corrupt regimes. It is not here to silence individuals who may hold views with which we may or may not agree. Such a closure on political grounds, if that is indeed what has happened – after all, we have only the allegation of it at this point – should, therefore, be completely unacceptable.”
The Treasury confirmed on Monday that it was already reviewing whether banks were blacklisting customers with controversial political views. Under the new Financial Services and Markets Act, which received royal assent last week, the City regulator will examine how banks deal with PEPs within the next 12 months. A Treasury spokesperson said: “It would be a serious concern if financial services were being denied to those exercising the right to lawful free speech. We are already looking into this issue and have passed a law that requires the FCA to review how banks treat politically exposed persons – so we can strike the right balance between the customer’s right to free speech and the bank’s right to manage commercial risk.”
The Guardian understands that a government minister, City minister Andrew Griffith, met Farage some months ago and offered guidance on “avenues of redress”. The government first began consulting on freedom of expression and payment services earlier this year after being contacted by the Free Speech Union, the campaign group founded by Toby Young. Frazer told LBC on Monday that she was “quite concerned that people’s bank accounts might be closed for the wrong reasons”, while Charles Walker, chair of the Commons public administration committee, said he knew of MPs and their family members who had had accounts closed with little notice and without explanation.
