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Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has called on UK banks to “rethink” their policy of closing bank accounts of customers whose views they disagree with, after Nigel Farage released parts of a memo showing Coutts dropped him as a customer partly on political grounds.
Braverman slammed the “sinister nature of much of the diversity, equality and inclusion industry” on Wednesday, as a political furore grew over the reason why Farage — who formerly led both the UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party — was dropped by Coutts, a private bank owned by the NatWest Group and which is known for its wealthy clients.
“Apparently anyone who wants to control our borders and stop the boats can be branded ‘xenophobic’ and have their bank accounts closed in the name of ‘inclusivity’,” Braverman said on Twitter.
Amid growing concerns about “blacklisting” by banks, the government is set to recommend a more rigid notice period of three months if lenders want to close an account, as well as requiring them to provide more information about why action has been taken, according to officials.
Rishi Sunak said during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday that it “wouldn’t be right if financial services were being denied to anyone exercising their right to lawful free speech”. The premier added: “We are in the process of cracking down on this practice.”
The Treasury opened a consultation into blacklisting earlier in the year after rightwing commentator and journalist Toby Young complained that the Free Speech Union group he founded had its PayPal account frozen last September.
Farage revealed on Tuesday night that he had used a subject access request (SAR) to discover that Coutts took a decision to drop him after internal concerns about his “risk factors including . . . controversial public statements which were felt to conflict with the bank’s purpose”.
The 40-page internal memo mentioned Brexit 86 times, Russia 144 times, as well as support for Donald Trump and his views on net zero, immigration and the Covid vaccine, according to Farage.
However, the SAR did also confirm that Farage’s relationship “has been below commercial criteria for some time”. The Financial Times previously reported that Farage had paid off his Coutts mortgage earlier, reducing his business with the bank to below its official threshold of more than £3mn in savings or borrowings or investments of more than £1mn.
Farage said on Tuesday morning that the documents showed a decision being put in place by Coutts to drop him in November last year.
“At the time that decision was made, I was commercially viable. It is true that in the intervening months there was a dip in the account, but it is now back up to where it was,” he told the FT.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, former cabinet minister, asked during Wednesday’s PMQs whether Sunak shared his “unease” that a bank — which has taxpayers as its largest shareholder — should close the account of a senior opposition politician. Coutts’s parent, NatWest Group — formerly the Royal Bank of Scotland Group — has been partly state-owned since a bailout at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
Rees-Mogg called for a government inquiry, saying: “However much we may find them tiresome, members of the opposition deserve bank accounts?”
David Davis, another former cabinet minister, said the closure of Farage’s bank account was a “thinly-veiled political discrimination” and a “vindictive, irresponsible and undemocratic action”.
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