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00:03:
A new trend has conservatives in the U.S. and abroad sounding the alarm for the sake of free speech.
00:09:
D. Banking.
00:11:
Several banks and financial entities have recently refused service to people and organizations
00:16:
over their political views, and even some high-profile figures have been caught up in the process.
00:21:
In this episode, we talked to Sir Jacob Reese Mog, a member of British Parliament about
00:25:
the debanking trend in the UK and abroad in what action he's proposing to address it.
00:31:
I'm daily wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe at Saturday, August 12,
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and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
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Joining us now to discuss the debanking debate in the UK is Sir Jacob Ries Mogge, a conservative
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member of Parliament and the host of State of the Nation on GB News. Jacob, welcome.
00:51:
just over a week ago the head of net west bank was forced to resign after it was
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revealed that she discussed a private clients banking details with a bbc
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reporter that client was naijel farage most here in the u.s. know him as the
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architect of brexit can you tell us what happened there
01:07:
yes naijel farage was told by his bank which was the bank of the late queen
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most distinguished bank in the united kingdom that they were no longer willing
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to give him an account. The head of that West, which owns Coots, then told the BBC that this
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was because he didn't have enough money. But he, very cleverly, this is Nigel, used a data
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access request to find out the real reason. And they'd had a very long committee meeting,
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but it said that they didn't like his political opinions. Actually, one of the things they didn't
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like about him was he was a friend of Donald Trump, so being a friend of a former president of
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the United States means you get debanked in the United Kingdom.
01:45:
No.
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It's not just Farage.
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Other customers appear to have had their access to banking cut off.
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For example, Reverend Richard Fothergill says he had his bank account shut down after
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he complained about the bank's promotion of LGBT ideology.
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Can you tell us about other instances that you've heard of in this banking trend?
02:03:
Well, since Nigel Farage's case, a number of people have come forward and they have been
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charities that have been advocating views that aren't necessarily mainstream views but
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are perfectly legal. And a free speech organisation about a year ago had its facilities taken away
02:21:
by PayPal. So that was the first time anyone had heard of it. And that created quite a
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fuss at the time and PayPal relented, but it's gradually emerged that this is more and
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more of a problem. A Nigel Farage has set up a website for people to contact him to say
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I-2 have been debanged and he tells me he is getting hundreds and hundreds of messages.
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After the closing of Faraj's account with Koot's bank and the subsequent scandal, even
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his concern that people's bank accounts were being
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shut down because of their political opinions.
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We've seen apparent examples of this in the US and Canada as well.
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How common is debanking in Western countries?
03:01:
Well, I think it's become more of a problem than I've heard about cases from the United
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States that Chase Manhattan has closed bank accounts down and it seems that if you don't
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hold politically correct views, you can be closed down on the basis of ESG, essentially
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environment, social and governance, which I used to be an investment manager and it was
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coming in whilst I was still active.
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And it's actually a means of not investing to make money,
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but investing to promote your political opinions.
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And this seems to me to fail in its fiduciary duty
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if you are an investor or if you're on the board of an endowment or a charity.
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But it also means that you will say that you won't invest in things like defense.
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And this becomes really serious because one of the other
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things that's been in the British newspapers in last
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days is that defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine haven't been getting the investment
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they need because of ESG. So it's this approach of political correctness via ESG to get people
04:05:
debanked and stop investment in defense and indeed in oil and gas. So ESG is something that has
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repeatedly come up on this show. Why do these banks believe they should be involved in social
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engineering and not just the business of money. Is it ultimately these ESG scores?
04:23:
Well, it's been promoted by the regulators, so the financial conduct authority,
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which is part of the regulatory system for banks has encouraged them to sign up to ESG.
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And it's interesting because ESG started to something relatively informal. It wasn't
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compulsive through it was just a statement that you would bear these things in mind.
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And then it evolved into something that had regulatory approval and became a standard that you were expected to apply.
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And then, if people weren't doing what you said, you took away investment from an off-nantial service facility.
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So I think there is a regular tree as you hear.
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And then, of course, there is a corporate culture
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that seems to be putting the desire to appear to be
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behaving politically correctly ahead of actually making money.
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Though sometimes this is pretty shameless
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because if you look at HSBC, HSBC,
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adopts ESG when it's in the UK, but it's quite happy when it's in China to do business with some pretty unsavory people.
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So we have the overlap here of the government and various industries.
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On a government level, I know you've been heavily involved in this and you're an influential member of Parliament.
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You've introduced legislation to stop this kind of practice.
05:39:
Can you explain what you're seeking to do?
05:41:
Yes, I've introduced an amendment to a bellgain through Parliament to ensure that
05:47:
banks cannot take away banking facilities for people because they disagree with them.
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It's essentially a freedom of speech, amendment to protect consumers.
05:56:
That banking is such a heavily regulated industry that it's not like providing ordinary services.
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If you are a baker and you don't like your neighbor, you don't have to sell your neighbor a cake.
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But if you are a bank that is effectively regulated by the state and indeed bailed out by the
06:15:
state, then you shouldn't be imposing your political views on your customers. I'm banking
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in the UK, as you probably know, and your listeners probably know, is heavily concentrated.
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It's not as competitive as it is in the United States. There are any small number of banks
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that provide a UK-wide service. And therefore, if you are debanked, it can be very hard to get service from anybody else.
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How does your amendments seek to ensure that underhanded practices aren't used? We've
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seen various sort of discreet forms of redlining in banks, quietly black listing individuals
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or entities. How do you ensure that doesn't happen?
06:53:
Well, you start with the assumption that the banks will by and large try to bait a law.
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So you make it clear in law that they are not allowed to take my banking facilities
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for people whose political views they don't like. And then it's the provision of information.
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Initially, Nigel Farage was told by Coots that they were taking away his account and that
07:12:
wouldn't say why and they were only giving him 30 days notice. What my legislation would
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do would raise that to 90 days but insist that the banks give a reason. And whilst interesting
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with the net west scandal, the banking scandal is that as soon as the reason became apparent,
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everybody thought it was wrong and therefore the bank has had to change its mind and is now offering
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Nigel Farage's facilities back. So openness is a key way of ensuring that the law would be followed.
07:41:
What about other forms of business? Do you see trends in other industries that are also troubling
07:46:
that are similar to debanking? Well, I think it is an issue across politics at the moment that
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there are views that you are not encouraged to hold, that people who were skeptical about
07:58:
lockdowns have found that those views weren't politically correct, that people who question
08:03:
the green agenda have been told that those views aren't suitable. So there are areas and the
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The whole trans debate is extremely toxic and people have to tread very carefully there
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to avoid being de-platformed or having protests against them and so on.
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So this has been a creeping problem and you're so lucky in the United States, I can tell
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you how jealous I am with the First Amendment, that absolute protection you've got a freedom
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of speech, which we don't have in this country and therefore we are constantly trying to bolster
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freedom of speech from my political point of view.
08:42:
Yeah, for the sake of our largely American audience here,
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can you discuss the differences between the US and the UK
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where you have no First Amendment protection?
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Do you have to address free speech laws issue by issue?
08:53:
How does that play out practically?
08:55:
I would love to have a conversation
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about the difference in our two constitutions,
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because I think the US and the UK have the two most beautifully constructed constitutions in the world,
09:05:
both of which have a very serious problem,
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which is the merit of image of each other.
09:12:
As does not have enough protections,
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and therefore we have no problem to the First Amendment,
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but we have a very strong historic tradition of freedom of speech.
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And we have absolute freedom of speech empowerment.
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So as an MP in parliament, I can say anything,
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even if it's in front of a court or in other ways restricted.
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And that's very important.
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So MPs have a role in this country
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in maintaining freedom of speech, particularly against the mob, if there is a mob mentality
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which there has been on some issues recently.
09:43:
In the US you've obviously got the First Amendment protection, but you've got a print
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media at any rate that is pretty much of the liberal turn of mind and therefore what
09:57:
they decide people ought to read is constrained.
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And so it's not that there's any legal impediment, it's just how the press operates.
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So you end up with similar difficulties to us, but from a different region.
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In general, in the UK, do you sense that this free speech debate is trending in a more conservative direction or more progressive?
10:17:
I think in terms of freedom of speech, that people are realizing how dangerous this is,
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and that in the end, freedom of speech is important, whether you are on the left or the
10:26:
right at politics because sometimes it will be your view that's unpopular and you need
10:31:
to be able to express it otherwise how do you in elections, how do you convert people
10:36:
to that opinion and we're also seeing that the collective opinion can be wrong.
10:42:
There's this historically being true that people have believed in all sorts of things
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historically that as human knowledge evolves we discover were mistaken but look at things
10:52:
like lockdowns which were thought to be the wisest thing to do. Look at New Zealand and
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all the lockdowns New Zealand had, which then turned out to be a terrible mistake. And
11:02:
therefore you've got to be open to freedom of speech to work out where you go next and
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anything that stops freedom of speech deters the development of mankind.
11:12:
Yeah. Final question. From your perspective as an MP, is there anything you've found
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to be a crucial takeaway from your experience dealing with these high stakes issues.
11:23:
Well, I think that's a crucial point. I think politicians should be braver. But what I've
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discovered in mind, not enormously long political career, but I want to parliament in 2010,
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is that when you hold back, you find that actually you're failing as a politician. You need
11:41:
to speak out and express your views, because you will often find that there is a significant
11:46:
number of people who share those views. I was in the cabinet when we were agreeing to
11:52:
all the lockdowns in England and it was done on a 12 basis. And looking back at it, I
11:58:
wish I'd been much more outspoken than I was against them. I was not enthusiastic about
12:04:
them. I thought they were in the stake, particularly after the first one. And I think it would have
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been better if I had been even more outspoken than I was. And I was quite clear at least
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within cabinet circles that I thought was a mistake.
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And now once again comes back to the crucial freedom of speech.
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Jacob, thank you so much for talking with us.
12:23:
That was Jacob Rees-Mog, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
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