South Holland and the Deepings MP Sir John Hayes explains why he believes a cashless society would be bad

MP Sir John Hayes explains why he thinks it’d be wrong to move to a cashless society...

The year 1966 is marked in many memories by the England football team’s World Cup victory. For others, the release of two of the finest musical efforts of the era: Revolver by The Beatles, and Pet Sounds from The Beach Boys.

Arguably though, something still more significant happened in 1966 – the introduction of the credit card.

For the first time people had access to goods and services they couldn’t afford by deferring payment until some later time.

Credit cards – and debit cards, introduced in the 1980s – have made many lives easier in many ways.

Over the years, payment by card has become the norm, with the number of transactions by card overtaking the cash equivalent for the first time in 2017.

When the pandemic hit, it was immediately noticeable how much harder it became to use cash as many businesses stopped accepting it.

Disturbingly, as with so many ‘emergency’ measures, what ought to have been temporary became permanent.

Since then, the interests of consumers have been sacrificed as trying to pay for things in cash has become increasingly difficult.

All sorts of people rely on cash for all sorts of reasons.

For many it is the only means of payment for the goods they need, and given the multitude of sophisticated scams involving card payments, who can blame them?

An estimated five million adults in the UK still depend on cash, which, as a consequence, is used in six billion transactions each year.

Yet corporate powers, careless of consumer convenience, are determined to consolidate their influence and capture our data.

The uncomfortable truth is that every single card payment gives banks and big businesses more power over us all.

Multinational conglomerates persistently harvest information, selling it on to who knows who.

Numerous unaccountable corporations collect huge amounts of personal data, allegedly in our interests, but in fact use it to feed algorithms which identify suitable prospects who are then targeted with unrequested marketing material.

This is part of a broader trend whereby corporate behemoths, omnipresent in much of what we do yet rooted nowhere near us, determine what we spend, save and so how we live.

This domination can be seen in the pressure to move permanently to a cashless society, as big firms are getting more powerful and less interested in what is best for their customers.

Banks are amongst the worst culprits.

Having abandoned many high streets, claiming that the public don’t want branches, they simultaneously instruct that same public to bank online.

It is extraordinary that it is now almost impossible to open an account in a bank branch, and it seems that if you have the wrong opinions, like Mr Farage, it is impossible to have one at all.

Simultaneously, the bosses of major financial institutions of the kind that are doing all they can to foster our dependence on credit, along with chief executives of energy firms and supermarkets, have made an outrageous £100 million in pay and perks at a time when the rising cost of living is affecting their customers.

A desire for what seems easy may mean the inevitable decline of the use of cash, but the option to pay in notes and coins must remain.

Happily, the fact that support for maintaining cash payments comes from right across the political spectrum shows the breadth, as well as depth, of feeling.

A cashless society will inevitably exclude those marginalised or at risk of being so.

It will make our lives less free and hasten the transfer of power to those already dominant.

Credit cards and their like will continue to play a role in many lives, but knowing that with each card transaction, someone you might not want to is a little better informed about how you live is a very good reason to use cash whenever you can.