A MAJOR bank’s “ignorance” of Scots law has left a father furious while trying to reclaim more than £300,000 gambled by his schizophrenic son.

Iain McKechnie*, 53, has had continuing and welfare power of attorney over his son Lewis since he was sectioned due to his severe mental health problems last year.

He temporarily had the power to freeze his son’s accounts but Lewis has since overturned this – allowing the 29-year-old to spend thousands on online betting shops.

When Iain had approached Santander about closing the account, he says he had been met with responses peppered with English legal terms that do not apply in Scotland.

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Iain has been able to claim back just under half of the sum gambled by his son and is pursuing scores of online bookmakers to claw back the rest.

Continuing power of attorney granted Iain control over his son’s finances while he is “incapacitated” and allowed him to freeze Lewis’ bank accounts when he realised he was gambling huge sums.

When Iain has tried to freeze the accounts again, he claims Santander has told him he must obtain a Court of Protection order – which does not exist in Scotland.

Iain, from Edinburgh, said the ordeal has been “extremely taxing and exhausting”.

His psychiatrist has noted Lewis’ access to online gambling as “slowing down” his recovery from psychosis, Iain added.

“As a family it’s just been chaos,” he said.

“I’m supposed to be looking after his welfare and looking after him and has been interrupted with this ongoing hassle with Santander.

“They say they understand it’s causing extreme stress but it really doesn’t matter, that’s just words from them.”

Lewis served in the Royal Scots Borderers from 2015 to 2019, when he was medically discharged due to an eye condition.

Since then Lewis has struggled with his mental health, being diagnosed with psychosis and depression before he was sectioned at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in March 2021 with schizophrenia.

Before that time he had never had a gambling addiction but afterwards he “went wild”.

Iain said: “He was delusional. He was attracted to sequences and he was able to collate numbers, colours and they were feeding back sequences to him.

“It just got out of hand. If you went into his hospital room, it was filled with random codes and pictures.

“[Lewis] sent Santander an email in March, clearly incapacitated, talking about higher elites and simulating money and stuff but it was ignored.”

Iain has taken the issue up with his MP Tommy Sheppard, who said it was time companies recognised “that there is more than one legal system on this island” and pledged to take the issue up with the bank.

Sheppard added: “It’s shocking that a business that presumably has thousands of customers on this side of the Border seems to have no idea of the differences between Scotland and England.

“In this case, that ignorance is directly hurting a vulnerable person.”

Top law firm Thorntons Solicitors said the English Court of Protection had “no jurisdiction” in Scotland.

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Thorntons legal director Chris Gardiner said: “It is unfortunate to see that a major bank such as Santander does not have systems in place to deal with the differences in the systems in Scotland and England in relation to Powers of Attorney.

“We have always had a separate Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland and the Court of Protection is a component of the English system that does not have jurisdiction here.”

Santander insists they are aware of Scots law but would not confirm whether they have asked Iain to seek an English court order.

A spokesperson for the London-based bank said: “We appreciate this is a very difficult situation and have been in contact with Mr [McKechnie] as we continue to investigate the complex issues that he has raised.”

*Names have been changed