I don't know what's going on.  This is going to be kind of a primer, quasi, not really primer on hardware hacking as we see it in dealing with security appliances of all types. Am I echoing really bad or is that just me? Figured. So, dispense with the pleasantries here. Fork, if you'd like to take about five seconds and introduce yourself. I've been breaking stuff since I was six years old. I've been breaking things since I was about six years old to include things like my dad's radio, the TV, all sorts of other stuff, taking things apart. Women's hearts. Generally no, but taking software apart as well. I've been a reverse engineer since I was probably about ten or eleven years old taking part 6502 code on a Vic 20. Having a great time. Loving all the stuff, love technology my whole life and continue to learn. So we've gotten now to a point where it's much more fun and work for all sorts of people, all sorts of places, everything from driving pizzas to different government services. All right, we're done. That's it. All right, so. You can hear his live story later, I promise. So, I'm Evel Rob. I will be your quasi-MC. I love that word, quasi. So, I have been breaking things for quite a long time, mostly to everyone chagrin. I'm not going to tell you my life story, but be good, fire bad. That's about all you have to know about me. Before we actually get started talking about the equipment and what we're doing, we just want to point out some of the people whose research and efforts in this area have really helped us out and saved us lots and lots of time. I totally want to pimp the JTAGulator that Joe Grand is selling and making. It is freaking awesome. Go buy one. And it's extendable with new firmware, so get one. It's not going to just do JTAG, it's going to do all kinds of other stuff. And we'll talk about the JTAGulator a little bit if you don't know what it is. So, yeah, what we're going to be doing, we're going to walk you through the basics-ish of hardware attack and analysis based on some of the practical examples we've done here in the past couple months. We're going to discuss the tools and mentality you should have to be successful. Not required, but definitely good to have. We'll discuss some of the common attack techniques when you're dealing with hardware. A lot of this talk is focused purely around the hardware and the theoretical attacks based on hardware and not so much on the BSP or the firmware or anything else that is associated with that actual hardware. And a comment on this also, there is a larger set of material on the CD that covers this, but we have 45 minutes as opposed to the roughly three or four hours we would need to cover all the material in the slide deck. So if you look at your DEF CON CDs, they have a large quantity of material about each of the items, bullet points, what interfaces look like, what provisioning interfaces look like in a fairly detailed summary of how to get started doing hardware hacking. It's about a hundred and some slides of hardware attacking and how you do it and what you don't do and how people screw up and burn themselves with chemicals. So the last thing we're going to do is show you pretty pictures and attempt to point at those pretty pictures. I don't know if we'll succeed. So the tools of the trade, this is stuff we use, stuff we have laying around the labs, really handy to have any time you're messing with hardware in any way. Most of this stuff can be acquired for less than $1,000. Most of it can be acquired for under $500. It just, the more features you have, the more expensive it gets. A few of the big items, you know, we'll cover these in detail as we need them when we're actually talking about the hardware analysis.  It helps you control your body and it allows you to consume alcohol, food, look at things, possibly. A voltmeter surface mount soldering station, how to rework station. If you don't know what those are, Google it. Basically it's a soldering station and a tube that blows out 500 degree air. It melts things. And that's Celsius. It's really hot. It's really, really hot.  So. Pro tip.  Bus pirate, amazing little device. It is like the end all be all for raw bus analysis up to a certain Hertz range. Debugging interfaces, great to have spare ones around. We'll talk about some of the mistakes here in a second that hardware manufacturers tend to make. And I don't know if you know this, but just desoldering the header doesn't protect your board from having a header put back on. So pro tip. Yes, IDA pro, we'll cover the, we'll quasi cover this, quasi. More on the slides on the desk. Yeah, more on the slides on the desk. We'll talk about what you may be able to throw into IDA pro that you would have gotten out of the chips that we're attacking. And then other stuff you might need, chemicals, respirator, balls, also dongs. You know who you are. So security appliances. You know, what do we consider to be security appliances? I know a lot of people when I ask them, you know, what do they think about security appliances? They think of firewalls. They think of IDS. They think of all these actual things that have been categorized as appliances and sold to you by vendors who want to charge you lots and lots of money. What we consider to be security appliances is basically anything that can be used to secure something. So some of the examples we'll be looking at is securing people from themselves like a safe or a, we'll be looking at something like securing your data. So the encryption system that we'll be demoing, well, talking about here at the end. So it can be practically anything that has some kind of security setting and is hardware related. The steps that we generally take. Again, go consult a big massive deck of slides if you really want to break down all these steps or find me in a bar and I'll be happy to talk to you for a price. And there's an outline of a full methodology to do repeatable assessments on that slide deck as well. And again, we just don't have time to cover it because that takes 45 minutes by itself. Yeah. Pretty much. So generally what you want to do is you want to define the goals. You know, what are you actually going after? Why are you attacking this device? You don't ever walk into something, especially when you're doing any kind of reverse engineering and go, I'm just going to do this because. Because it takes forever. Because you will sit there going, oh, I'll look at this now. I'll look at this now.  So you want to define the device. And what we do, what we're talking about when we want to define the device is we want to look at it based on our goals. If our goals are to rip something out of the NAND flash, I don't have to sit there and mess with every other piece of that hardware to get that NAND flash. You know, I want to go directly to the bus. I want to do this stuff related directly to that chip. So when we're attacking something, we always have to keep the goal in mind as we define the parameters of the device and what hardware and what equipment we'll need to actually get that out. Gather all the open source information you possibly can. I know some of you may be decent social engineers and if you ever talk to a sales guy, they just love to send you crap.  Would you like chip specs? I've got some high res X-ray photos too. Yeah, seriously. Like, I got stuff from one guy. I was like, confidential company source information. I'm like, sweet. Thanks. No NDA. Thanks. Saves me from buying an electron microscope. It's in the budget, right? We're working on that. Yeah, exactly. You know, examine the device for entry. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of these companies that create these secure appliances, especially ones that deal with key management, tend to have case sensors. They tend to have something to a magnetic sensor of some sort or a light sensor or it just happens to be to detect case opening so that when you actually open the case, it theoretically dumps the keys. Say bye-bye to your SRAM. Yes. Say bye-bye to your SRAM. Yes. However, like the mistakes we'll be talking about here in a little bit, usually the implementation of those security mechanisms are terrible. It turns into a checklist. The security guys like, I need case protection and key protection and all this stuff and then the engineers like, done. And we all know how well that goes. So, you know, look at the best way and look at the way that's going to be the least intrusive in the particular device. And then analyze the device circuitry networks and device components once you actually open the case. Determine the most plausible attack vector for the actual hardware and then attack, like your life depended on it.  Toro, toro, toro. That would be tiger, tiger, tiger. But, you know. Well, whichever. Attack, attack, attack. So, common mistakes by the actual reverse engineers themselves. And I don't know how many times I have fallen victim to my own stupidity and my friends as well. Due to not taking copious amounts of notes and not taking pictures. Because when you're sitting in a pile of chips with a desoldered board in front of you going, I think it goes here is not really the best time. And orientation is always important because if you hook them up upside down, they tend to let the magic smoke out. Yeah, yeah. Powering up a board with a badly soldered chip just is a mess.  Fire bad. See, I've taught you all something already. You know, not properly prepping for ESD, you know, optical and magnetic isolation. If you need to work in an argon pressure environment, if you're dealing with nitrized chips, very, very important to have your test environment set up so that you're not actually going to ruin the thing that someone paid you or that you acquired to test yourself. Always, always, always take the time to make sure your environment is set up correctly and save yourself hours and hours of headache. And then my absolute favorite, get a backup device or a device of like make or something that's comparable to the chip set you're using because once you let the magic smoke out of the thing you should be testing, you have pretty much failed. So you can't put it back in. It just doesn't work. And the list can continue ad nauseam based on the stupidity of the reverse engineer themselves. You know who you are. So, common mistakes by the people who sell you the really expensive appliances. Putting your case sensor wires right next to the vents. So, a paper clip and a pair of vampire clips and I've just taken out your massively complex wire. And that handy dandy heavy gauge steel case too. Yeah, I love that. And the heavy steel case too. Yes, very impressive steel cases and then you put vents in it. You know, hiding your chips under epoxy. Epoxy is not a security mechanism for God's sakes. It really isn't. Like, you get this $30,000 piece of equipment with your security processor that holds your keys in it and you're like, I'm just going to put epoxy on it. It's cool. Nobody can get to it.  It's fine. You know, not using a built-in encryption protection mechanism on embedded processors. Big fail. Not setting the read write protect bits on the processor flash. There are fuses for a reason.  So if you set them, it'll only take me slightly more time in aggravation, but it's more time in aggravation. And if I get aggravated enough, I go find beer and I stop working on your device. You know, not limiting access to debugging and provisioning ports. We're talking about the protection mechanisms for a desoldered JTAG port is not an actual protection mechanism. So if you're actually going to do that, you know, think it out. You know, lock it down, use secure JTAG, use some kind of key mechanism, use authentication where possible depending on your chip set to actually protect said device. And then my favorite, Mark's favorite as well, running your ITC and SPI buses up to the user LCD then back into your really hard case with all of your security mechanisms where it directly attaches to the boot flash bus. Because then you just take the panel off and you're on the bus.  Yes. For those of you who would like to save me time, do that. And then, you know, there's so many more attack vectors and mistakes we can go into based on the way the devices are actually engineered. But for the sake of brevity and possible beer later, I won't go into this. So possible attack methods. There is voltage glitching, timing manipulation. You can Google these or go find that giant slide deck. Fuse resetting. If you can basically polish a chip in a clean room using a UV method, not for noobs. Just to warn you. Anytime you talk about chip saving and nitronized chipsets and everything else, not a first-time experience. Not good.  So if you can get on to those and mess with it and twiddle some bits and, you know, do other very dirty sounding things to equipment, you have a good chance of actually causing it to spill its beans. And then debug path manipulation using the I squared C. Switching flash pin, mutex attacks, which he'll get into when we actually talk about the boards. So the examples for the actual talk here. The thermostat in your secure hotel room. And you're like, why? Why does that thermostat matter? Well, most times these are actually tied into the central HVAC system. They're monitored. They're controlled by industrial control systems, which in most times, due to human laziness, sits on the same network as someone's admin network or something else because, you know, it's never true. It's never true. Hotel room safes. I love safes. I love electronic safes. They're the best. You know, encrypted storage device, which we're going to talk about here. And then Java cards, which we'll touch on because they relate directly to the encrypted storage device. So the thermostat. We attained a demonstration unit from some random hotel. It is an interesting device from this random hotel that has some really good prism loving features. It has an occupancy sensor on it, an infrared programming capability, a bus interconnect, and the centralized monitoring configuration station where you're talking about. And then the usual HVAC controls and relays and pushy buttons and display and what have you. So I'm going to turn it into, you know, Vanna White over here and he will talk about the attack methods. All right. I'm going to try to speak up so everybody can hear me. Is that good? Okay. Good. So we're going to cover this thermostat. Hang on. There we go. Very, very quickly. So I'm going to look, if you look at the slides here, you can see that we've got a communications module that uses something that's somewhat like X10 protocol. You've got automatic light switches at the house that you mess with using the RF interface to the little box that sits into the wall and the power system and it modulates signals on your power lines. Yeah, I'm trying not to. So we also have, let's go from top down then. So we have the HVAC controls and we also have network communications there. If you see that, there's a five pin interface and I'm going to try to shoot this with a laser but I'm not sure if I can hit it from here. Yeah, that's a big fail actually. I think the, oh, there we go. Okay. So up in here is where we're looking at right now. And we see that there's also an infrared module which is used for, I would assume, programming this device as well. Didn't have time to do a full reverse engineer on it.  I believe it's a, I think it's actually the same as the SAFE which is an ADC 51 type instruction set. Different manufacturer though, so it's Phillips. And an interesting note about this microcontroller is that it has a serial interface, an in-system programming interface which is always on, can't be turned off from the look of things. And it's not hooked up to anything. So these chips are pre-programmed before they're on the board but you can definitely, definitely do surface mount soldering and dump that firmware right out. Right out. We also have an SPI, or I'm sorry, actually that's mislabeled. That's an I squared C configuration flash. And there's an LCD controller and then down at the bottom you see a bus connector. And that bus connector actually goes into a bus driver that goes into the microcontroller and then probably with the right software out into the communications module. This is the infrared emitter which in this particular thermostat was broken and causing the room to heat up pretty nastily and was repaired accordingly. Yeah, I'm trying not to spit into the mic. So the thermostat was repaired accordingly and was suddenly much more effective and the room cooled right off. Recently borrowed. Right.  Sorry, the 8-pin dip there. All right. There-ish. Is the bus driver that we hook up to on those little 3-pin interfaces on the bottom. So originally I thought, oh my goodness, they actually put the serial interface to a port on the outside of the case for me so I can get straight to the in-system programmer and dump all the flash. Would have been kind of them, but they didn't. So this is the board as it's been decloaked as it were. Detached and actually pulled out of the case so you can get a good clean view of it. So there's a crystal, you can see the crystal, the CPU, the I-squared C-flash, the LCD controller, discrete components, a few other provisioning headers and the connectors for the infrared. Oh, sorry, the connectors for the provisioning infrared and all of that stuff. There's a close-up of the bus driver. All right. And so practically what we can do with this. All right. So what we can do with this practically, once you have the firmware, you have the keys to communicating with that X10-like protocol. It's an 8-bit micro. It's not hard to take apart. There's a number of registers in there, of course, and other instructions that do stuff. If you reverse engineer the subroutines and reverse engineer the communications protocol, you can get a very, very clear idea of how fast to send information to that module and exactly what to send to that module. Now, as an aside, the manual for the control software for this particular thermostat is freely available from the manufacturer on the Internet. It covers a lot of stuff, including a lovely diagram of exactly how it's all hooked up. So these thermostats, for example, might go to a floor controller, in which point they're networked into the rest of all the floor controllers and then back into the back-end office where the main control system can determine whether it goes into VIP mode or not, for example, or whether it gets to be 95 degrees in someone's room or not, for example. And yeah, some other things, too, but we can't talk about those. That would be regrettable. Very regrettable. And I'm going to turn it back over to Rob to talk about some Roman hotels safe. So we may have found this box somewhere. And I'm a big fan of Roman history, obviously, that's why that's on there. You know, some highlights of this particular device. It's a decent metal box that's been bolted down. It has a four- to eight-digit variable pin. It's manually operated for power conservation, usually by the hotel staff if they want something in it. Not saying anyone's bad or anything, but you know, don't trust the safe. So, about the hotel safe, looking sexy from a random Roman hotel. Do you want to talk about the board here? Yeah, I'll just stand up, that's fine. Okay, so, this is a sexy, sexy-looking safe. Got a control board, got a servo arm, got the actual bolt attached to it, and some lovely batteries. Copper tops, they last a little longer. So, a total of six bolts of power being supplied to this board. The main board is broken up into several discrete areas and several connectors. So we have, if you look up at the top of this board, you see the battery connector, which is also a, going back to the other slide here, also a connector for one of the switches. We see the front panel connector, which goes to the little pushy buttons and the latch register, I'm sorry, the LCD display circuitry. And we also see a motor driver, which is just the typical servo motor for, you know, for phase servo driver. Some switches that detect whether the switch, the safe bolt is open or closed, and whether the door is open or closed. And the second front panel connector. And we also have a 64K EE prom and a two kilobyte flash rom. And of course, the other red box that's not labeled, I'm sorry, the two red boxes aren't labeled, are a Dallas real-time clock module with battery included and a CPU module, which I believe, as I said, is again a 658, I'm sorry, a ADC 51, but of the Siemens variety as opposed to Phillips. So I'm gonna zip through the rest of the stuff. So there's some interesting things on this safe. So if you've looked under the handle of these safes, you'll notice there's an RJ5 interface and a small barrel connector, one 16th inch barrel connector. And the reason the barrel connector is there is because batteries die and people still need to get their stuff. So you can power this from an external source if you need to. Additionally, the RJ45 is connected directly to pin four on the controller, which is an attention pin. It says, wake up, I need to send you something. And directly the serial receive and transmit pins on the microcontroller.  And this is not a good thing. You can just repeat it over and over and over and over and over and over to other people's safes. Yes, you can. Now, there are a couple of distinctions. So I'm gonna zip back and look at this real quick as well. So if you see down here in the, let me see if I can hit that. So right in here, what that actually says is there's a code printed on it.  But that code is a uniform code per hotel from what our research indicates. So if you have this code and a couple of other elements which I unfortunately again can't tell you about because we haven't disclosed it to the manufacturer, then yes, you can open the safe right up. So if you look at the Siemens microcontroller, you see that the numbering is actually C501 on it. But if you pull up that particular data sheet, it says 8051 on it. So this is a variety. 8051 is a very old processor for anybody who doesn't know this. And it's a very prevalent processor in embedded devices. Fairly power efficient, 8-bit micro. So if you need something that lasts forever and can trigger a few servos or detect a few sensor motions, that's a great processor for it. Can we just take cover of this? Okay. So the SecureSan encryption board. In fact, do you wanna pop the case and get those out so you can pull them up? So, okay. So we have a couple of these SecureSan encryption boards and these devices were obtained from eBay. We had a reason to look into them. And we found that eBay is a great source for almost anything. You can usually get surplus chips, for example, that were actually from the manufacturer in China. They made an extra run of whatever. Some of them even have the same EEPROM version identifier numbers as the product you're attacking. So we've taken epoxy off. And then when we're looking for that particular chip model on eBay to go and sock it onto a carrier board and test it for different things, we find a picture of the sticker that was under the epoxy on the flash device on eBay. By the way, the greatest thing about eBay is when companies refresh all their equipment, some random guy in like Texas gets a $30,000 encryption device and then sells you these cards for 30 bucks. That is correct. It has no clue. And they'll also sell broken devices on eBay. Now these broken devices might go for 100 bucks for the weight of the component gold or whatever like that. Well, that's all well and good, but when it's a solder joint on the power supply that's broken off and you re-solder it, you've now got a $30,000 appliance that works just fine. And it allows you to research some really high-end components and really high-end stuff without spending much. Makes a personal research budget very happy. The Linux chips on the chip. Yes, and if you know where I can get a scanning electron microscope, come and see me afterwards actually. So some of the features, the device itself is actually very well put together. It's a heavy gauge steel and its purpose is to manage the keys are like the brocade encrypting fiber channel switches. So the way it works is it manages the keys, it sends that to the switch and says, I have this particular piece of media that I need to access and says, okay, well, here's the key that I want you to apply to that. So all your data is encrypted at rest. It's a great idea. It's a really great idea. It actually, the device does key management well, but they made a few critical mistakes with where they store keys and how they store keys and how keys are passed back and forth. And again, because we haven't disclosed it to the manufacturer, we can't tell you, I'm really sorry, check back in like a month, hopefully. This is probably more like a couple of years on this one. Check back in a couple year month things. But anyway, so it also has a lovely Windows Java front end.  So it uses Java cards to store the master keying material. I don't have time to rant, apparently, okay. Well, let me just say this then in calm tones. Don't include your Java card sources in the JAR archives for your admin interface. This is a very fire back idea. Part of the security through obscurity model with Java cards is they are EAL4 certified in most cases. That means that you're not getting the code out, but if you compile it to standard Java, you can use a tool called JAD, which probably most of you are familiar with, to decompile this code to clean source. So. Big props to them for that. Saved a lot of time. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. So this is our hardware formerly known as expensive, and its new symbol is the dollar sign, I gather. So you can see on the bottom the device with the epoxy on it. And we actually have these devices up here. Yeah, after the talk, you can come look at them if you'd like. Come and take a look. If they leave the table, I'll beat you. That sounds like an evil promise from Evil Rob. And these devices, as you can see, we're gonna zoom in on the epoxy version here a little bit, and then we're gonna look at this guy. And we have high res photos of these as well that I'll possibly bring up here in a moment. But the chip that you're seeing that has the cover peeled off, right here. Lovely polished silicon, it's a flip chip. If you guys remember that particular manufacturing technique. And there's a heat sink and the actual chip cover. That is a Zilinx Pro 2 Plus FPGA. And that particular chip loads its information from flash memory. So I'm gonna show you a chip picture of the board before we've removed a couple of the critical chips. I'm trying to hit it again, there it goes. Okay, so that is the actual flash chip that the Zilinx chip gets its information from. So it loads that every time it boots up. Zilinx supports an absolutely fantastic encryption protocol. And it stores the key internal to the FPGA. The only way to get it out is through well, but technically power consumption monitoring on the voltage pins on the FPGA. So you can hopefully get the key and it takes I think roughly 10,000 iterations to make statistical significance. So you can get a likely candidate. In case you're taking notes. Great. The other chip is a Atmel AT90S6464C. And anybody who's done Tivo hacking knows this chip as a 3232C. We don't advocate hacking your Tivo. Of course not. These two chips, so there was a fatal flaw in this. They did not use the Zilinx encryption protocol. So we were able to dump out the entire Zilinx configuration bit stream. Now, I didn't really feel like reverse engineering Zilinx bit stream entirely. So a very, very nice person named Casey Morford who did his master's thesis on this was kind enough to run it through his tool set. Now he wouldn't give us the tools unfortunately, but- His tool set is BA, seriously. It's very, very impressive. It does complete decomposition of the Zilinx bit stream. So it's very nice. Takes it right down to a tech stream and tells you what each byte does. So anyway, we're gonna cover also one more thing on this one, or a few more things actually, booby traps.  And what you see here, right beside that tiny Zilinx chip there, is a booby trap switch. Now, if that booby trap switch is not depressed, no current goes to the SRAM and the keys dump.  And that switch pops up. It's game over. The solution to not having the chip pop up is to not cut the epoxy around the chip. So, that's a really expensive mechanism can be stopped by being lazy. Just the way we like it. So in addition, one other thing I wanna highlight on this slide is, you see the row of six empty holes there. That is most likely the initial provisioning interface for the Atmel chip. However, because they're clever designers, they use some leveling capacitors and some other tricks to ensure that you can't really get good voltmeter test runs. Everything kind of goes to a middle voltage detection and you don't get the beep when you have your voltmeter set to beep when you touch the traces. So, it's good on them. It was a good try. And so that's a closer picture of the Zillings Pro FPGA. And I wanna thank Anders if you're in the audience. Stick here. Anders, thank you so much for the use of your wonderful camera and your skill at this. These recent pictures that you're seeing up here are all courtesy of Anders and he did a great job. Thank you. So again, we're gonna look at the provisioning interface there, that's just a quickie. And that one's only got a bit of the epoxy cutaway. And we have a movie of epoxy removal anybody wants to see it later, but not right now. It took about 10 hours and an exacto knife. Well, actually it was, I think it was between 12 and 14 hours with a hot air reworks station set to 500 degrees centigrade. And several exacto knives with thermally resistant handles. Firebat, firebat. Burnt off fingerprints worse. Be very good. Be very good. The other thing we're gonna highlight here is the Miktor provisioning interface. So there's three of these total on the bottom of the board. So if you guys can see this, the Miktor is the interface provided by Agilent for their super high end, super expensive, super awesome equipment. It's impedance neutral. It does all sorts of other stuff. You can run test points to it. You can run JTAG through it and everything else. It's spiffy. It's also extremely expensive. And there's three of these guys on the bottom of this board when you take the epoxy off. If you look at this region here, wait, wait, I'm trying to correct for relative spacing. Oh, there they are. Okay, up here. And then one up in this area. So there's three of these interfaces, three very expensive Agilent interfaces, all of which could be a candidate JTAG interface. And that candidate JTAG would talk to all of the memory devices, for example, on this, as well as, well with the exception of the NAND flash and the FPGA. So I'm gonna actually back up a few slides here to show you one other chip. So there's another interesting comment on this. So there's an I squared C flashable MUX involved in this. And what I mean by that is that you can take a set of pins, a MUX is a device that lets you set pins to other pins basically. So you can map inputs to outputs if you think of it that way. And there's a device just north of the Atmel chip that is an I squared C multiplexer, a flash multiplexer. And what that device does in essence is it prevents you from talking to that chip unless you've initialized it properly. So it's a very interesting way to protect another type, you know, protect your keying material. So something to think about. And I'm gonna turn it back over to Rob and then hopefully we have enough time for some questions too.  Firebad, beer good, and that's it. Thanks for coming now. So the architecture of the whole system is really considering complex environments. I mean this is pretty much across the board in computer architecture, software architecture, it doesn't really matter. However, with hardware you have to be especially careful because like we were talking with the security appliance and how they, the brocade decrypter, how it actually functions and how it stores those keys can entirely negate your very expensive box.  If you're not, or until the sun actually burns out. Right, exactly.   Look for humans being lazy. That is also one of my favorite comments because like we said, epoxy is not a security mechanism. So you know, it will normally be even in large engineering efforts, people cut corners, there's deadlines, there's things that people overlook. There's one point I do wanna interject for safety reasons, don't try it at home. You have to do certain steps to be safe around burning epoxy. All right, so heating it up is one thing. Some of the off gases from these things, I mean you have a whole variety of things. I mean the process of what's called homeopolymerization which is what epoxy uses. Tangent, tangent, tangent. But anyway, the point is it off gases bad stuff and can kill you if you're not careful. Yeah, don't do this at home. We're kind of professionals. Or we're a respirator. So chips don't lie. A chip will have markings on it, it will have manufacturing on it, it will be pinned in a certain way, it'll be soldered a certain way. It only goes in one direction. And if it doesn't, it burns out. So, you know, look for the placement of the chip, look what it's paired to, look what bus it sits on, and it'll be easy to determine the actual device you're working with from there. And there are chip databases out there that have all kinds of markings and how they're hooked up. And if it's SPI or I-squared-C, it just huge amounts of information. And then I need more beer. So with that, we may have what, five minutes for any questions? Yes, no? Yes, all right, fantastic. So, thank you for coming to see this. And if you have any questions, we'll be here.


to name your least favorite household chores dishes team one cleaning of the laundry doing the laundry scrubbing the floors Dallas team to a hundred of them to name a high school sport as long as you can paint bills paint bills survey says we're just gonna go with the work work up work slash job team one that's correct fiddle in the house having to be taken out go under the bed team one please officer you should not do try to bribe them take your hands off the steering wheel survey says I'm very sorry I'm very sorry Miller's plan that's correct place for Friday night fish branch is supper club team one team one sorry wrong sorry wrong the golf courses the golf courses Anthony Blue Harbor Blue Harbor the Kohler Museum the Art Center the surfing thing the white water surfing the fresh water surfing competition competition thing color design to name a favorite pizza time team one at the county fair team one team one I'm very sorry something you may find team one thing to do on a Saturday morning the paper sleep in sleep in sleep in on a Saturday go out for breakfast go out for breakfast on a Saturday team two MCs Dex sporting goods team one sorry wrong something they don't want their whole body something you do not wash is up use it as a phone that's correct shabuigan County


I am Captain Palmos around the middle, Commander of 591st MP Company, and I'm from Bliss, Texas. I'm so focused with my guys and gals is really just, hey, let's keep these people safe. You know, we want to give them a safe space to kind of get their lives back together because they've been through a lot and so we just want to let them know that we're here to help and we'll all get through this together. We manage the access control points along with our strike partners. Right now we are actively engaged in patrols around the area, just making sure everything's still safe and cordial. A lot of my soldiers are skilled. They've been working law enforcement for years now and so they're trained in knowing what to look for, you know, specific things that may be alarming, you know, things that we can prevent as we're roaming around. We execute random access measures to the actual DAV and off as well.  So they're ready to respond at a moment's notice.


The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 113 in the name of Ian Gray on the closure of the Royal Bank of Scotland press and pans branch. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. May I ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request-to-speak buttons now? I call on Ian Gray to open the debate and you have seven minutes, Mr Gray. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I have to confess that, in my time as an MSP, this is not the first time that a bank has closed a branch in one of the communities that I represent, but it is the first time that I have brought that closure to Parliament in the form of a motion and by debate. The reason for that is very straightforward. The RBS branch in press and pans is the last branch. When it closes, and the closure is planned for August, there will be no banks in the town of press and pans. That brings home a truth that we sometimes think in here forget, which is that Scotland is not a country of half a dozen cities but much more a country of hundreds of small towns. We should guard sustainability and viability with great care. There are certain institutions in any town that make it viable—a school, a post office, a doctor's surgery, a police station and a bank. To lose the last bank in a community is a serious matter. Indeed, it is a matter that the banks themselves understand, because until recently they had an agreement that wherever there was a branch in a community and it was the last one, whichever bank it was that ran that branch, it would not close it. That agreement has been simply banned. It is because of the seriousness and the threat to the sustainability and viability of the community that the closure has provoked such a reaction in the town of press and pans and the county of East Lothian. That is why the local Labour Party, the press and pans branch Labour Party, have mounted a petition against the closure and have been out on the streets in front of the bank collecting signatures for some weeks now. It is also why the first signatory to that petition was one by Jimmy Ewell, who is the chair of the press and pans community council, who has also made clear their concern at the closure of the bank. I understand that those institutions that I listed in our community, schools, post offices, are largely public sector or, in part, public sector or once were public sector, whereas RBS is, of course, a commercial operation. I cannot deny the case that RBS makes that fewer of their customers are using branches directly with more customers banking online and so on, but they must understand that that does not mean that no one uses this bank branch. In fact, I have a number of experiences sent to me, all in similar vein. Here is one. Unbelievable experience in the bank this afternoon. Cues constant. Average waiting time 20-25 minutes. The reaction from the members of the public was amazing, with people constantly coming up and wishing us good luck with the campaign. A few old ladies were explaining to me that they do not have computers, so do not bank online. People opened the door and said, oh, hell, the queues are out the door again and left. That is not a branch that has no customers who use it. Those customers do not understand why they are now expected to go to RBS branches in Trinent or Musselborough, because those are communities that are not easy to reach and communities that have several branches of different banks themselves. They also are reluctant to trust RBS, because they remember branches close by in Port Seaton and Long Nidry, closed many years ago, and commitments that were made then about ATMs and alternative facilities that were not kept. Above all, this is a closure of which will not suit elderly or disabled customers. One of those who signed my petition made that very clear when she said—on my petition, the Labour Party's petition—that my aunt is disabled and cannot get any further than the press and pans branch due to her disability and panic attacks when she gets on the bus to go further afield. That local branch is needed for the disabled and elderly. Another said that work is a care worker with the elderly and the press and pans. They are all so worried and stressed with the thought of the bank closing since receiving the letters last week, their conversation is about nothing else. This is a closure that does not suit small businesses either. A number of those who work in small shops in the high street and press and pans have expressed concern to me because part of their duty when they close in the evening is to take cash to the drawer in the branch, which is just across the road, and deposit it there. They certainly do not want to be asked to get on a bus and travel to another town altogether while carrying the days' takings. Curiously, though, it is also a closure that does not suit children. One signatory to the petition said to me, I use the bank regularly to pay in my account and also my four-year-old son, who likes to go weekly and pay in his savings account book. He loves his weekly routine of banking for him and then lunch from the baker straight from the nursery, which he will miss if I have to travel to another branch. That, of course, is the nub of it, because that four-year-old boy is RBS's customer of the future, and he is one of those who is losing faith in that branch. This is a bank that spends time, often, trying to promote a very positive image. In another campaign that I am involved in with Grace Warnock of Gracie's Sign, RBS has been very supportive of that new sign for disabled toilets and has installed it in their own offices. In the end, it is the way in which they treat their customers, which matters. Those are customers of many years standing who are angry at this bank. They are angry, too, because they know that it is not so long ago that the bank looked to them as taxpayers to bail them out when they were on the point of collapse. They promised that they would return to doing the things that we expect our banks to do. One of the things that we expect them to do is to be there on our high street when we need them. That is why RBS should change her mind about that decision. I now move to speak to her. She is off four minutes, please. I have Bruce Crawford, who will be followed by Rachael Hamilton. I begin as a customary by thanking Ian Gray for putting down that particular motion. Ian put across the position in regards to pressing pans and the proposed closure of the bank. They are very effectively. As you might imagine, the story that Ian has just told is a story that can be told in the small towns as Ian described them in many parts of Scotland. Indeed, there are two banks due to close in my constituency—one in Stirling and one in Callander. It is not good that the one in Stirling is closing, but at least there is another Royal Bank of Scotland and other banks for people to choose. As far as Callander is concerned, it could have a real impact on Callander. I want to come back to that. I think that Ian is quite right to reflect on the fact that there is a reality out there about new technology, online banking and, of course, more and more young people. If I am still classed as young, I certainly do my banking online. I do not think that I am chronologically challenged that I cannot manage to achieve that still, but there are many who are a generation older than I am who are not as able to access online banking. I know that they have opened potential for post offices to be involved in some of the banking for the older people, but that is not what older people want to see in their own high street. Ian is right about the issue of small businesses, particularly with the cash issue at night when they close their businesses. There is a real security fear around some of the small businesses if they cannot properly have the cash that they raised on that day, taking care of them effectively. Obviously, that is about the bottom line of how the bank works and whether it can be a profitable organisation following some of the real challenges that it faced a number of years ago following the crash in 2008. If I am right, the shareholders in this particular bank are still a majority held much of it by the Government, and therefore the shareholders are actually the people themselves who are being affected by the closures, whether it is in press and pan sterling or Callander, which we have already described. One of the things that I have certainly tried to stress to the Royal Bank of Scotland is that there may be a bottom line issue. Yes, the market may be changing, but you have also got social responsibilities to the customers that you have served over a long period of time. In those communities where you have been operating, you have been taking financial resources out of that and using them for profit in your own way, so you have got a bit of responsibility back the other way in those communities. That is particularly true when it comes to the town of Callander. It has been a town in recent past that has had some challenges on its main street. I spoke to the bank and tried to persuade it. First of all, please do not consider closing this particular branch because of the potential impact on Callander as it is beginning to try to redress its place in the marketplace. I think that that was probably a forlorn hope for mine and I probably have a forlorn hope for Ian, but I have asked him to consider extending his life of the bank at least until the main street in Callander can potentially find a better outcome for itself. Now, Ian talked to other issues in the area of press and pans and what holds a community together. If we take the bank closures alongside issues such as lack of connectivity in some small rural towns in Scotland or the fact that public transport is becoming more and more of a difficulty for people in these small rural towns throughout Scotland, a bank closure actually becomes a really significant issue in their lives. However, I am really delighted that Ian Gray has provided that opportunity today to be able to speak on this important matter. It has allowed us to highlight not only just press and pans, but others will do this evening to highlight the particular challenges in their communities. I thank you for that, Presiding Officer, and I thank Ian Gray again. Rachael Hamilton, to be followed by Jackie Baillie. RBS continued with its savage cuts, closing down more branches on our Scottish high streets, this time in press and pans. Only in banking could a company post a loss of £2 billion and hand out £370 million in bonuses to staff, then continue with its ruthless foray of branch closures. Banks should think more about how their social responsibilities to the vulnerable stand and not about profit margins. I am not sure if anyone remembers back in 2010 when RBS pledged never to close a branch if it was the last in town. So what has changed? They say that low footfall is to blame and a significant shift to digital services. A large proportion of residents in press and pans are pensioners, and contrary to the belief of senior management in RBS, they are not all adept with an iPad. Over-the-counter banking should still be available to those for whom internet banking is not an option. Business customers are as equally important, requiring daily banking services and change orders for which the bank charges handsomly. Competition from out-of-town centres is fierce, and small shops and businesses require essential services to survive and compete. Sadly, a similar, irretrievable pattern of closures emerged in the borders with new town St Boswell's recently shutting, shortly followed by Earlston. There is no mention on the RBS website about lunchtime closures at the Melrose branch, but they still religiously continue to inconveniently take a lunch break, perhaps covertly but purposefully weaning its loyal customers from its services. I remember when my old man enjoyed a whisky at the kitchen table on first-name terms with his bank manager. He knew the business inside out. Banks have lost the plot, and I urge RBS to reconsider its proposals. That brings me on to another contentious subject regarding East Lothian. Service supply issues are not just a problem associated with banking in East Lothian. More than 10,000 homes are expected to be built by 2024. Concerns have repeatedly been raised by communities over the impact additional housing will have on the county's infrastructure. Fears that schools and doctors' surgeries will be unable to cope, as well as the potential of thousands more vehicles on the roads and overcrowding on the trains, topped by the on-going closure of the high street banks, is not acceptable. I would hope that the Scottish Government will set out their plans on how best to deliver this growth. It is important that residents of East Lothian receive the best possible deal on infrastructure and the implementation of a strategy that best mitigates the impact of this population growth. There is an underlying assumption that the A1 in East Coast Mainline can accommodate this growth. This is untrue. Both are already at capacity. Our local train services are full before they even reach Walliford, with car parks overflowing. A Bello have said that it will be years until the increased capacity to meet current demand. How can we have any confidence that they will be able to meet this demand? Peak time rail services between Edinburgh and North Berwick are woefully overcrowded, and we are still waiting for the long-over-G re-opening of East Linton and Rest and Stations and the dualling of the A1 trunk road to the English border. The pressures on East Lothian continue. Many residents require a car to travel beyond Edinburgh, yet the trunk road network is already grinding to a halt, and that is before the massive, cumulative, predicted growth of Mid Lothian and Edinburgh. Old Craig Hall, Sheriff Hall, City Bypass and Beyond all need massive amounts of investment and forward planning, yet nothing has been done to address that. I end by saying to transport Scotland and Scottish Government, do not fail East Lothian like RBS staff. I urge them to outline how they are going to address the infrastructure issues, and I ask Royal Bank of Scotland to reconsider their closure. Before I call Ms Bailey, can I remind members that members' business should address the motion in hand and that the minister will only respond to the motion in hand? Ms Bailey, to be followed by Bob Doris. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Like others, I thank Ian Gray for securing this debate, because it is very clear that a number of local communities are affected by the latest round of closure announcements by RBS. Many of us will remember the television adverts that boast about the Royal Bank of Scotland's commitment to local communities. Forgive me for feeling just slightly bitter about that and wondering whether it breaches the trade description act, because that is clearly not the case. August seems to me the designated month for when those closures will happen. Light Preston pans and indeed calendar and sterling, the impact on my local community is centred in Alexandria. The proposal there is, of course, to utilise the post office and ATMs, or indeed, if people want face-to-face consultations, they need to travel four miles away to Dunbarton. However, accessible the bank attempts to make some of its alternative solutions, the reality is that this is about our towns and our town centres. I state for the record that the Alexandria branch, every time I have been in it, has been enormously busy. There is, of course, a UK Government protocol on branch closures, which all the banks signed up to last year. It commits them to finding suitable alternative provision for individual communities, to put in place alternative banking services where a branch is closed. I accept that they have tried to do this, but it is not adequate. However, it is the principal provision where they have to work with local communities to establish the impact of the branch closure prior to its closure. In my view, this has not been done. They have not been consulted in advance. The bank announced the closure of the branch and then said, we will talk to you about it. That is not consultation in my book, that is a fate, a comply, and I do not think that that is in the spirit of what was intended by the protocol. Local people have rightly been concerned, and let me just share with you two comments. Somebody said that I have been at a customer at their RBS Alexandria branch for over 10 years, and I doubt that I will ever switch to online banking because I do not even use cashline machines. I will introduce them to colleagues in the chamber after for instruction. Somebody else said that I have banked there since I was a child, and if it closes, I will be moving to another bank. It is not always suitable to go to Dumbarton. No consultation with clients, just a letter yesterday saying that it was closing and will be kept informed. However, this is so short-sighted because there are regeneration plans for Alexandria town centre. Some £6.5 million pumped into that local high street in Mitchellway, where the bank branch is situated. I simply note that the council has already invested just shy of £1 million to improve signage, which included improvements to RBS premises. The one thing that I know that makes me absolutely convinced that this is the wrong thing to do is not just the regeneration plans that are in place for that town centre, but the fact that RBS's actions have managed to unite the Labour group and the SNP group on Westin Bartonshire Council. Something that does not happen too often, but they have come together to urge RBS to think again, and I think that they are absolutely right to do so. Thank you, Ms Bailey. You do not sound very well. I now move to Bob Doris to be followed by Rhoda Grant. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I start off as others have done in thanking Ian Gray for placing his motion before Parliament and making it available for Members to debate this afternoon and giving MSPs from right across Scotland the opportunity to put on the record our deep concerns about local RBS branch closures affecting our constituency. Our constituency is across Scotland. In Maryhill Springburn, there are two branches set for closure in Possil Park on 9 August and in Maryhill on 17 August. I recently met with RBS officials asking them to review that decision, and I will say more about that in a second. At that meeting, there were representatives from Maryhill and Somerson community council, from Possil Park community council, from Parkhouse community council, Lambhill community council, from NG homes representing the social housing movement within the constituency. Some of our councillors in Patrick Rady MP and apologies for many more, giving the whole range of individuals and citizens concerned about the closures. RBS have put on record their low usage numbers, but when I met them, when we met them to discuss this, I said to them, do you know how many people in the area actually have bank accounts in the first place? They did not have that information. I do not know if they knew that before they made their decision. I asked them if they knew how many people were actually connected to the internet in the first place. They did not have that information. They did not do the very basics to identify the impact, not just of those currently using RBS in Possil Park in Maryhill. However, I am just as concerned, if not more concerned, in areas of Possil Park, for example, where people do not have bank accounts in the first place and as RBS has been the only bank in town there, the only hope that it has access to mainstream financial services is that RBS wishes to take that away from them. That directly contradicts their own corporate and social responsibilities, because RBS talks about people finding themselves at risk of financial exclusion and being unable to access the basic financial services that they need for day-to-day living. One of the risks is that people can end up borrowing from payroll-owned companies or doorstep lenders, which pushes them even further into difficulty as they struggle to pay back high-interest charges. That is from their corporate and social responsibility document. I asked them, did they know the levels of indebtedness in those areas? Did they know how many people seek alternative lending arrangements such as payday lenders? They did not have that most basic information. Their decision was made on a basic business model irrespective of the corporate and social consequences, and now their consultation with Jackie Baillie outlined as mitigating the worst effects of that. That was deeply worrying. Other organisations also contacted me. I would like to put some of their concerns on the record as well. Rockhill Credit Union gave me a very detailed submission on why it will directly impact on their organisation for time constraints. I will not read through that. A local church leader spoke about how it will devastate the local community. I have to say that we actually did have a pretty constructive meeting, believe it or not, after all that in Pawsill Park in relation to trying to save the branches. We thought about alternative thinking and co-location of the branches with other organisations. We met a brand-new building that NGHomes is an anchor tenant and is run by jobs and business Glasgow. They have capacity to co-locate an RBS branch in there if they had that blue sky thinking. They said that they would consider alternative co-location options in both Maryhill and Pawsill Park, and other suggestions that we were keen to make. The thing is that they cannot possibly consider them by 9 August for Pawsill Park, and they cannot possibly consider them by 17 August for Maryhill. We insisted in continuity of banking services across the constituency, and RBS have pledged to go away and consider whether or not they will give a state of execution to Pawsill Park and Maryhill on the basis that we are coming with alternative solutions. The consultation was flawed, but the meeting was positive, and RBS will be listening tonight. I know where they will, not just in Pawsill Park and Maryhill, but we can give all our communities a state of execution, go back to the drawing board and to think again. I hope that that is something that the minister will go back here this afternoon. Rhoda Grant, we are followed by Neil Findlay. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate Dean Grahame on securing the debate as well. I understand that it is a big problem for his constituents in Preston Pans, and I share his concerns with regard to similar action by RBS, causing problems for my own constituents throughout the islands and islands. Most recently, in Campbelltown, Beaumaud and Scaranish, the branches were having their opening hours reduced. The two island branches are only open two days a week. Therefore, to access an alternative branch, it involves a ferry journey outwith its opening hours. The people in Campbelltown and Preston Pans, albeit not in islands, cannot easily access an alternative branch either. Those service reductions from RBS follow closures in branches last year in the highlands and islands in the Finver, Stromnes, Invergordon and Leibster. However, it is not just a problem with RBS, because many of the other high-street branches are doing exactly the same in following suits, such as the Bank of Scotland closing branches in remote areas. It is simply wrong that those banks are taking a wholly business-focused approach, ignoring the needs of their customers. Those same customers are the very taxpayers that bailed out those banks not so long ago. It is simply wrong that they now ignore their duty to repay that by cutting services rather than with a debt of gratitude. They cite internet banking as the reason for the reductions in services, because they tell us that it is reduced footfall. In my area, that is adding insult to injury, the places that they are targeting for those service cuts and closures are the places where internet access is patchy at the very best. Faced by unreliable internet service, non-existent branch banking, those areas are not getting any banking services at all. Add to that the needs of elderly people who are less likely to bank online, and they are more open to fraudulent scams by phone banking or emails from their own banks. Those are the most vulnerable in our communities and their needs are being ignored. If we are going to help to protect them, they need to have access to information and services from branches of their local banks. We might need to look at credit unions and how we support them to open branches in those small communities to allow elderly people and people who do not bank on the internet, and people who do not have bank accounts to access financial services. It seems to me that banks have given up the role in the community altogether and we need to look at alternatives of how to provide that to people. Banks have a duty to their customers, the customers that bail them out. It is time for the Government to act and intervene on behalf of those customers to try and stop those closures. The last of the open speeches is Neil Findlay. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Rural Bank and the banking sector in general was going through mass evacuation from its branch network across the country. There appears to be a cull of branches going on. That cull is very clear evidence of a complete failure of planning and absence of managerial competence. On the one hand, we have a marketing strategy aimed at moving people away from branches and on to telephone and internet banking because, as well as being promoted as convenient for the customer, it cuts costs. On the other hand, we have a policy that, when it was launched, we pledged to stay open for business if we are the last bank in town. Since that policy was announced, we have witnessed bank after bank closed 600 since 2010, and many of those are the last bank in town. How on earth can senior banking executives have got it so spectacularly wrong? Is it not obvious that if you drive a policy that leads people away from banking in person to one where we use technology and rely on technology, it will inevitably run down the branch network? Promoting a last bank in town policy at the same time was either complete incompetence or a policy that deliberately sought to mislead customers and the public. RBS has never declared which of these is the case. In my region, many branches have closed, such as Falthouse, Armadale, South Gail, Tollcross, Royal Infirmary, Northbridge, Ballerno, Golden Acre, Newton Grange and more are planned at West Calder, Broxburn, Fairmailhead, Collington and Herriot-Watt. Indeed, there may be more. This is a bank that we control with a 73 per cent stake. I do not, as a shareholder in that bank, give my authority to close those banks. I hope that none of us do, because we are indeed the shareholders. Maybe the Conservative member who is here could have a word with the chancellor, because he has a bit of influence over what goes on in that situation. This is a bank that we had to bail out, where successive corporate failure has been rewarded, £17.4 million is awarded in shares to 10 of the senior management team, the chief executive on a salary of £3.8 million and £2.6 million worth of shares, and all the time public sector or indeed banking staff are lucky to get 1 per cent, reinforcing that view that there is one law for a certain group of people and another law for the rest. The closure programme is just another example of RBS's failings. There has been no discussion with loyal customers, no consultation, just corporate dictate from the boardroom, but they could do one thing to try and get their way out of things or try and gain some credibility with those communities. Of course, they could stop the closures or at least some of the closures, but they could also think about how they could give something back to the communities that they have profited from over the years. Where there is a desire to and where it is practical to do so, they could transfer the asset to the community, they could transfer the building to the community. That would at least go some way to doing something to reward those loyal communities. I have asked for that in my area and they have refused. The bank, despite closing over or around 18 months ago, still lies vacant. I think that this has been just another evidence of poor management by RBS and I think that the members of the public deserve much better. Bob Doris said in his contribution that RBS did not have the basic information on the numbers of people who would be bank accounts and on the number of people who had IT access. They do not have it because they do not care. They do not want to have it. They have a programme of closure and they are going to ram through this closure come what may. That is the reality of it. I have requested a similar meeting as he has. Unfortunately, I am still waiting on a reply. I now call Paul Wheelhouse to wind up the debate. Do you have seven minutes, minister? Thank you very much. I want to thank Ian Gray for raising today's motion. If I may, I am not sure if I have congratulated the Deputy Presiding Officer, Linda Fabiani, on her appointment since I have returned. I thank Ian Gray for bringing this motion before Parliament today. I think that it is an extremely important issue. The issue of bank branch closures is one that this Parliament has debated before. I appreciate that members have raised genuine concerns as Royal Bank of Scotland and other banks continue to close branches. Not only in Mr Gray's constituency in East Lothian but across Scotland, as we have heard. I am trying to do a rough tally and I apologise that this may not be accurate. In the current year, we have nine closures from Clydesdale bank, 13 from Bank of Scotland, eight from TSB and 13 from Royal Bank of Scotland. That gives a sense of scale as to the change that is happening at a local level. I am aware of a number of closures in both East Lothian and Scottish Borders, including the loss of historic branch in my own village, Aiton, which was hard felt locally. However, concerns have been raised again today about the impact of branch closures on our local communities and some very important points that were made by members. Many highlighting branches across the chamber have appeared to be busy when they have gone into them in recent times, so it is sometimes difficult for us to understand the business driver for closure of banks, but I will come on to that later. Banks have an essential role clearly in Scottish society, and members across the chamber have recognised that, but they are particularly important in our local economies. We all rely on banks in order to conduct our daily lives. The Scottish Government is absolutely clear that customers must be at the heart of what the banks do and the decisions they make. Ian Gray made a very important point about the Preston Pants branch being the very last one in the town. That is the particular significance in that particular community, but clearly that is also being experienced around the country. The decision that is taken by RBS to close those branches will have an effect on everyone in the local community, not least on the staff employed at those branches. Let us not forget that. Staff who have often, for many years, provided a much-valued service to their customers, and Ian Gray hit on the sense that there was a very much-valued branch in Preston Pants. I am not liberty to give details out, but I understand that there are no plans for compulsory redundancies, so that is at least something that is positive to take from the discussion. However, as Ian Gray identifies, there are commercial drivers, and we all accept that banks must address their long-term financial sustainability. RBS, in particular, is undertaking a process of restructuring to bring the bank back to profitability and ultimately to take the bank out of public sector ownership. In doing so, RBS has made clear that cost savings must be made, and unfortunately difficult decisions must be made. We understand that. However, it is clear from today's debate and from our previous debates that members do not feel that RBS gives sufficient weight to the views of customers and the wider community in deciding to close a branch. As Jackie Baillie has highlighted, there are concerns as to the engagement of local communities in communities such as Alexandria. Alexandria clearly is a community that could all afford to lose vital employment at this stage. The closure of a branch should be seen as a last resort and should only occur where customers, both personal and business, will still have ready access to the banking services that they need. Rhoda Grant set out in some detail where they would impact on rural areas, and I think that that was an important perspective. Where a decision is made to close a branch, there is a three-month period between announcing a closure and the closure itself. That has been agreed by the banks, by consumer bodies and by the UK Government, and set out in a branch closure protocol. RBS and other banks are clear that this 12-week period is a notice period, not a consultation period. However, this time can and should be used for genuine engagement with customers. Alternative arrangements should clearly be explained at any particular difficulties resolved where possible. There appears, as members have highlighted, to be no opportunity for customers and communities to influence the bank's decision. When a closure is announced, the decision has effectively already been made. It is, as Jackie Baillie put it, a fate of complete. That is a matter of great regret, I think, to us all. As Mr Gray highlighted in his motion, there is no doubt that many bank customers are increasingly using alternative methods to access banking services. RBS reports, for example, that branch transactions have declined by 40 per cent since 2010. Although online and mobile transactions have grown by more than 400 per cent in that same period, Bruce Crawford talked very effectively about the impact on older customers of perhaps the over-reliance that we have in looking at branch closures on online banking as a solution. RBS notes that only 9 per cent of their total transactions are now branch-based, down from 25 per cent in 2010. However, clearly, when people seek to go into a branch, they are often wanting face-to-face contact because they may have a more complex issue that needs to resolve. Indeed, that may be very important for them to seek advice and support at maybe a time of distress. As internet banking and increasingly mobile banking continues to grow in popularity, there is an inevitable impact on the number of customers who actively use a local physical branch. However, such solutions do not and cannot suit all customers. Not everyone has easy access to an internet or mobile banking—that was a point that was made by Rhoda Grant and others. Face-to-face banking is still considered essential by many customers, and a physical branch presence will continue to be a requirement for many years to come. Banks must therefore consider access to suitable alternative service provision in any decisions that they make about the delivery of branch services. As members have highlighted, disabled and elderly customers will be disproportionately affected. Small businesses and cash-generative businesses, including hospitality in other areas, might—actually might—and Rachel Hamilton will have for me. Neil Findlay I agree with me that it is absurd to pursue a policy of moving people on to the telephone and internet banking at the same time as promoting the last banking town policy. That, to me, is absolutely crazy. Paul Neil It is not for me to criticise the decisions about how banks go about their business in terms of promoting telephone banking or online banking, but I agree with the member that it is very important that they understand the impact of a branch closure on customers who cannot take advantage of telephone banking or cannot take advantage—they may not have a telephone for a start—but those who do not access the internet. The impact on those who are disadvantaged in a digital sense is absolutely essential to taking that on board. I listened with great attention to what Bob Doris was saying on that point, but I will give way to Mr Doris. Bob Doris You may actually answer the question, but you talked about a modal shift away from high-street banking for areas that possible part of significant deprivation. They have never made the modal shift from financially excluded to financially included. As the bricks and mortar bank is no longer on the high street, we are writing that area off for generations to come. Do you think that RBS should think about that before deciding to close a branch also? Paul Wheelhouse, we have some time in hand. Oh, thank you, Presiding Officer. I do believe that that is a very important point. I was going to return to that. I think that Mr Doris, in his speech, made some very important points about his own constituency. I commend him for the action that he has taken on engaging with RBS to discuss the impact on his local community. He is quite right.  That has obviously not helped if the only local branches that they may be physically able to access are being closed at this time. The banks perhaps are missing an opportunity, perhaps to customers that they would be gaining or not necessarily ones that would be high net worth individuals, but they are potentially customers that could be of value to the business going forward. I do regret that that does not appear to have played more of a part in their decision making process. I think that it was Bruce Crawford that was talking about cash generated to the businesses. I apologise to other members who may have mentioned that as well, but I think that that was a very important point, whether it is a local farmer or a local hospitality business, certainly in an area such as Mr Crawford's constituency, where many tourism businesses are taking a lot of cash on a day-to-day basis. They need somewhere where they can safely deposit that cash and know that it has been deposited as it is needed. RBS is maintaining its continuing to invest in its mobile van branches. Those are providing services in many areas where local branches have closed, as well as visiting communities that previously had no branch presence. However, that is very much a supply-led approach. It is not necessarily as flexible for consumers as a physical branch, because you can choose the time at which you decide to appear at the branch, not necessarily the time at which the branch is available to you. However, I do welcome the increased use of post offices as an alternative location for banking transactions, although clearly that network has also contracted in recent years and seen major changes, so it is not necessarily in a particularly stable place yet either. However, there are other providers of financial services in Scotland. The Scottish Government has long recognised the valuable contribution that is made by credit unions. I will touch on credit unions, but I will give way to Mr Doris. Minister, you mentioned post offices as an alternative, but a post office cannot open a bank account. It cannot set up a direct debit or a standing order, alter either of them, get loans advice or get mortgage advice. Post offices just do not cut it, do they? Minister, can you wind up fairly quickly? I will, Presiding Officer. I do not want to criticize post office network. I merely make the point that, as a fallback in the absence of a local branch, it at least does improve the access for people to be able to obtain the funds. However, I take Mr Doris's point on board about the services that are provided. However, there are other providers, including credit unions, who tackle financial exclusion of the kind that Mr Doris mentioned. I was pleased to see him make reference to credit unions in his speech. They provide vital financial services to a wide range of customers. However, as I said, I was very struck by his own intervention in relation to his own local branch, and I wish him success in that campaign. I appreciate members' concerns about the impact of those closures on our communities, whether it is the borders, as Rachael Hamilton said, or as Mr Gray said, and all across the country. I appreciate members' concerns. In my new ministerial role, I will have the opportunity to meet regularly with representatives from the banks. I certainly undertake that I will raise those issues when I have opportunities to do so with the branch and make sure that the banks are aware of the strength of feeling across the chamber today. I urge RBS, which Bruce Crawford, Ian Gray and Neil Findlay also pointed out, which is 71 per cent publicly owned by the taxpayer, to listen to and work with local communities and the representatives in ensuring that banking services remain readily accessible to all and meet the needs of the Scottish communities, and to ensure that it does not do harm to the common good in closing branch branches in remote and vulnerable communities. I hope that a positive outcome can come from discussions that Mr Doris will have with RBS regarding his constituency. Indeed, if Mr Findlay has given an appointment that there may be opportunities to look at alternative models and that the Government will be supportive where we can be of those. Thank you very much for your patience.