Welsh Liberal blogs

  Commenting on Jeremy Hunt’s shock economic intervention Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds MS said:   “Hunt’s statement points to the despicable damage that the Conservatives continue to wreck on households, businesses and individuals. All his statement today has done is cause wider uncertainty for households and the businesses sector.   “The Conservatives are trashing the economy with every day that passes and creating havoc for peoples’ mortgages. Now they are planning to inflict even more suffering by raising energy bills, hiking taxes and slashing crucial public services. These service cuts will see knock-on effects to the Welsh Government as budgets for key departments like education and health may be squeezed even tighter.   “What’s worst is they are still determined to protect oil and gas giants from a proper windfall tax and they are still cutting taxes for the big banks.     “Truss and Kwarteng are symptoms of a wider problem....

The Liberal Democrats are pressing the Government to commit to providing additional funding in their upcoming budget in order to protect access to cash and free withdrawal services in rural areas. Jamie Stone, Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, has written a letter to the Chancellor with the support of MPs from Plaid Cymru, the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives to call for this additional funding to be made available. Research conducted by Which? has revealed that between January 2018 and December 2019, the UK has witnessed the closure of 1,203 local bank branches and around 8,700 fee-free ATMs. Meanwhile, the number of fee-charging ATMs has increased by 37% meaning last year alone consumers paid over £29million just in transaction fees. The Liberal Democrats have been leading the fight to protect rural banking services and led the cross-party campaign which made Barclays U-turn on their plans to stop customers withdraw...