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HSBC has axed a dedicated customer phone line for Welsh speakers, igniting a row with nationalist MPs.
From January 15, the Welsh phone line will be shut down and customers will only be able to contact the bank in English.
Customers will be able to request a call back in Welsh, but this may take up to three days.
It has sparked a backlash from MPs across Labour, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, who have urged the bank to reverse the move.
Hywel Williams, the Plaid Cymru MP for Arfon, said staff at his local HSBC branch were able to address customers in Welsh or English, criticising the company’s management for scrapping the phone line. “It’s a disgrace that HSBC management don’t follow their workers’ exemplary good practice,” he said in a tweet.
Jeremy Miles, the Welsh language minister for the devolved Labour government in Cardiff, said on Thursday the country’s language commissioner had written to HSBC in an effort to save the service.
Samuel Kurtz, the Conservative shadow Welsh language minister, called the decision a “bitter disappointment” and the offer of a call back in Welsh a “token gesture”.
Liz Saville Roberts, the leader of the Plaid Cymru in the House of Commons, also said she had written to HSBC for an explanation.
The Welsh Language Commissioner, Efa Gruffudd Jones, told ITV News the offer of a call back meant Welsh speakers would have to put up with a “substandard service”.
She said: “In our discussions with HSBC we have been offering advice on how to recruit Welsh speakers and encouraging them to better promote the Welsh language line but there is no evidence that this has happened, which again is disappointing.” She said she had requested a meeting with HSBC to urge them to reconsider the decision.
The bank this week wrote to members of the Welsh Parliament insisting it was not a decision that had been “taken lightly”.
In a letter to the Welsh Parliament, HSBC managing director Oliemata O’Donoghue said: “Whilst we understand it is not their first choice, we have confirmed that all customers are able to bank in English.”
The Office for National Statistics reports around 29.5pc of people in Wales aged three or older are able to speak Welsh – around 900,600 people. That figure has been gradually increasing since 2010.
HSBC’s Welsh phone line receives around 24 calls per day, while its English line receives 18,000 on average. The decision follows a move by Duolingo, the language learning app, to “pause” its Welsh course in October, stopping further updates to the service.
It too came under fire, with critics claiming the decision would impact the growth of new Welsh speakers.
Duolingo said at the time its Welsh course was one of its “most comprehensive” and that it would “remain free for all”.
An HSBC UK spokesman said: “We are proud of our efforts to our Welsh speaking customers, but due to the extremely low level of calls into our Welsh-speaking line we need to make changes to telephone banking from 15 January. “If a customer does want to speak with a Welsh speaker, that still can be arranged. We will continue to have Welsh speaking colleagues in half our Welsh branches and will continue to respond to customer correspondence in Welsh.”