Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]

As promised, I will opine in a little more detail regarding the calamitous prospects arising from the proposed closures of post offices in my Constituency and neighbouring constituencies. I am especially pleased that my hon. Friend Peter Bottomley is in the Chamber, because he is a joint victim of the proposals. I am delighted that we have no less than two hours and 12 minutes in which to impress on the Minister the seriousness of what faces our constituents.

If ever there was a subject for a topical debate, it is this, because exactly five weeks ago, on 13 November, the Post Office published a list proposing the closure of 49 sub-post office branches throughout Sussex. In one week, the so-called consultation on the proposed closures will end. That consultation period of just six weeks closes on Christmas eve. This is not the best time of year genuinely to ascertain the views of local people and businesses that will be affected by such devastating closures. The situation is certainly not the best Christmas present for my constituents who are faced with losing post offices that they have been used to using for many years. It is particularly disgraceful that, contrary to Cabinet Office guidelines, which say that it is good practice to provide a consultation programme of at least 12 weeks, we face a truncated period of just six weeks in the run-up to Christmas.

That is not genuine consultation, and it contrasts starkly with the consultation on the reconfiguration of West Sussex hospitals, which ended just a few days before the consultation on post offices started. The consultation launched by the primary care trust—which, as I say, finished just a few days before we were faced with the shattering news about the post offices—was not six weeks long; it was not even 12 weeks, although it started off as that. It lasted for 18 weeks. It was a genuine consultation that took into account the views of thousands of our constituents across Sussex, who feel strongly about losing vital hospital services—at least I hope that it took their views into account; it certainly provided the opportunity for that to happen. The hospitals and the primary care trust ran an 18-week consultation on hospital services—a period with which we are all satisfied; there were certainly no qualms about the length of the consultation period and the opportunities for people to have their say. Why do local post offices merit only six weeks, and that in the run-up to Christmas?

On 13 November, we were given the news that no fewer than seven sub-post offices in my East Worthing and Shoreham constituency faced closure. We have already lost about 11 branches in the past few years, so we thought that we would be relatively immune to further closures. Of the seven proposed closures, five will be in the district of Adur, which covers roughly two thirds of my constituency, and two will be in east Worthing. That total of seven is the highest number of closures proposed anywhere in the Sussex Division. A further two branches face closure in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West. That is the highest number in Sussex by far. Why are we singled out for such treatment?

That is not the best Christmas present for my constituents, particularly coming on the back of recent news that Worthing borough council and Adur district council face a shortfall in excess of £600,000 in the money needed to run the bus concessionary fare scheme—a scheme that we all support and want to flourish, but for which central Government are not properly remunerating us. It also comes on top of the news, announced just a week ago, that West Sussex will yet again receive the lowest increase in Government central grant of any shire county. It is also on top of the news that we face downgrading of our local hospital services, as I have mentioned. We feel rather put upon in West Sussex, but particularly so in East Worthing and Shoreham, now that we are threatened with post office closures, too.

My constituents say to me, "What have we done to deserve being treated so unfairly by this Government? If it's not the hospitals, the bus concessionary grant, or the post offices, it's something else. What will we be faced with in the new year?" This year, people in Sussex, who are usually fairly genteel and law-abiding, have taken to the streets and written letters in their thousands to protest at their treatment at the hands of the Government, whether it be in respect of the health service, the transport system, or what is happening to the Post Office.

It is no surprise that I have just presented a petition signed by no fewer than 5,002 people. Many more signatures will be added in the next week or so, and I shall present them to the Post Office before the consultation ends on Christmas eve. In addition, many hundreds of letters have been written to the Post Office; my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West, and I have been copied in to many of them. They concern real-life experiences, and they show that when we talk about the post office closures, we are not just talking about some Post Office number-cruncher dealing with figures in his office, but about real-life experiences and examples of hardship that will be inflicted upon my constituents. It is no surprise that the public meetings that we have held on the subject so far have all been packed out.

Does my hon. Friend share my mystification about what appears to be the Post Office's lingering death? I refer to outreach services, which have been proposed as a way not of closing post offices but of downgrading services in many parts of the country, including mine. Does he share my concern that people cannot really know what those outreach services will be, and so cannot contribute meaningfully to any consultation? That is symptomatic of the cult of consultation, in which the Government are involved in a major way; my hon. Friend mentioned the health service.

To paraphrase Monty Python, "Outreach services? You were lucky!" We are not getting any of those. The prospect of 500 outreach services replacing static, well-used post offices is apparently not on offer in West Sussex. Those 500 will not be a compensation to my constituents. In other parts of the country, people may be able to use mobile or temporary services, but apparently not in West Sussex. My hon. Friend may face the prospect of losing post offices, but if he at least gets something in their place, he is doing well compared to our constituents in West Sussex. I urge him to seize those outreach services with enthusiasm.

I have mentioned that Adur and Worthing councils, and West Sussex County Council, have all debated the issue and passed motions condemning the action of the Post Office and the way in which the proposals undermine our local communities. My constituents have been on a number of impromptu marches. Last Saturday, I joined a group of constituents in North Lancing who had arranged to walk from a post office that is threatened with closure to the nearest alternative post office, which is just under a mile away as the crow flies. However, my constituents are not crows and have to take a safer route. In monsoon conditions, no fewer than 80 people marched, including many people who are well into their 80s, just to show the strength of feeling about the closures.

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case on the difficulties in his part of West Sussex. I am sure that his constituents will find it some comfort to know that they are not alone, and that we face precisely the same problems in Cheshire. I have just delivered four petitions, amounting to more than 600 signatures, which were collected in a matter of a few days. We are talking about people who live in what the Government describe, rather patronisingly, as the shire counties. The Government seem to think that for such people, community life is automatic. It is not; it depends on local post offices and a local commitment to community life. Have he or his constituents noticed that there may be victimisation of shire counties, in the way in which closures are allocated across the country? My constituents have been telling me that they think that the Government despise shire counties, and that the proposals are one way of getting at them.

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, he has form on the issue; I followed with great interest his comments in a recent Westminster Hall debate on the Post Office. He mentioned Cholmondeley and other local branches that face closure, and he has just presented, on behalf of his constituents, petitions that are slightly thinner, but no less heartfelt, than mine. He mentioned the Post Office's divide-and-rule tactics. It has tried to pitch one post office against another, on the basis that a set number of post offices are due to close, and if it is not one that closes, it will be the other. Those are despicable tactics. Post offices provide a service to local people; they are not in competition with each other. My constituents are not terribly concerned about whether one branch does better business and is more profitable than another. They are concerned about their branch being there to offer the services on which they greatly rely.

My hon. Friend makes a good point which applies particularly to rural constituencies. However, that is not the case in my Constituency, which is largely urban. The same is true of my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West. The half of my constituency, roughly, that is rural and in the downs has very little population. It is mostly populated by sheep. The post offices are based in the urban coastal strip of Sussex, so the closures are not a rural constituency phenomenon, but we are a shire county and seem to be treated unfairly by the Government.

I do not want the debate to be about the post office closure programme per se. That was covered by my hon. Friend Mr. O'Brien and many other hon. Members in a Westminster Hall debate on 29 November, to which the Minister replied. It was a very good debate, responding to an excellent Select Committee report presented by my hon. Friend Peter Luff at that time. I share the reservations expressed by many hon. Members across the Chamber during that debate about the arbitrary number of 2,500 post office branches which the Government, in their wisdom, have deemed to be subject to closure and instructed the Post Office to close. We share the concern, as we did a few years ago, about whether this is the end of the programme, or whether we will be back in a year or a few years, facing yet another wave of closures We have already cut to the bone. The present round of closures represent cutting into the bone and the bone marrow. Goodness knows what still can face us.

I also have reservations, which I share with those who took part in that the debate, about the lack of transparency about the financial viability of individual branches. Are we closing the 2,500 least profitable branches, or are some only marginally loss-making? In which case, what has been done to see how the deficits could be narrowed, subsidised from elsewhere or helped by future expansion of services? The figures are clouded by the way in which central costs are apportioned, which seems to be some mysterious calculation to which we are not allowed to be privy. Always, when we try to get to the bottom of the figures, we are told that they not available owing to commercial confidentiality.

I share the concerns that were raised in that debate about the lack of transparency about other hurdle criteria that are being used to justify closures, such as house building forecasts. There seems to be no mention of the fact that in West Sussex we are facing a substantial centrally imposed Government house building target. Thousands of extra homes are due to be built in our constituencies, regardless of the sustainability of the infrastructure available to service them.

There is also a lack of transparency about population growth accompanying that house building, and a lack of transparency about how deprivation figures are used. Many of us have wards that are among the 20 per cent. most deprived in the country. Furthermore, there is a lack of transparency about how the high pensioner populations that we have in coastal Sussex figure in the calculations.

I share the concerns expressed in that debate about the sustainability and capacity of existing public transport links to the post offices suggested as alternatives to those that are being closed. In West Sussex we face severe tightening of our budget for subsidising bus links. Invariably, the greatest subsidies go to rural links. In our towns we face the biggest squeeze on those subsidies. Some of the bus routes that, we are told, are perfectly viable alternatives now, may not be there in a year. People will be told, "It's simple. You jump on the No. 9 bus and go to the alternative branch," but in a number of months or years they will not have that luxury, even if it is a practical alternative at present.

I sympathise with the concerns raised during that debate about the effect that the closures are having on communities. Those communities have already seen wide-scale closures of post office branches. In many cases they have seen a retrenching of bank branches and a reduction in other businesses reliant on those financial concerns. I thought that the Sustainable Communities Bill, which the House rightly passed in the last Session, was about the Government standing up for such vital community services, but it appears to feature not at all in the proposals being put forward.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way a second time. He is discussing the evidence base for the present round of closures. It seems to emanate from a remarkably round number—2,500—of post offices that are destined for closure. He mentioned the invidious practice of setting one sub-postmaster or postmistress against another, so that if one is saved, another has to go, because there is some absolute determination—almost gesture politics—to get those 2,500 branches closed. I have not seen the evidence base for that, despite the debate that we had on a Select Committee report, no less, in Westminster Hall recently, which my hon. Friend so rightly referred to. In preparation for his remarks this evening, which I am following with great interest and support, did he establish whether evidence has at last been adduced by the Government to show that that 2,500 is anything more than an arbitrary figure to make sure that they get where they want to get to, without any regard for local communities or their services?

I have researched long and hard—not only for this debate, but for conversations with constituents, for public meetings and for meetings with Post Office representatives, Postwatch and the National Federation of SubPostmasters—and I cannot find an evidence base for most of this. When one tries to ask questions about an evidence base, the issue is clouded by all the commercial confidentiality garbage. If there were a serious evidence base—if we were given the figures and told that if a certain branch could make x thousand pounds in additional revenue it would be saved, or that if it had x hundred additional customers per week it would be viable, that would be different.

However, we do not know such things; we are not given the data on which we can make proper value judgments on whether the Post Office is just dutifully doing what the Government tell it and adhering to the completely arbitrary figure of 2,500 branches. We are told that the figure is "up to" 2,500 branches, but the Post Office makes it absolutely clear that if certain branches are saved—in the unlikely event of decisions on branches being reviewed—additional victims will be found in the next wave to fill the void. It is worse than decimation, which involves one in 10; what we are talking about affects 18 per cent., or nearly two in 10. That figure will be stuck to.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the evidence base is vital. Does he perceive any adherence to the evidence base in respect of rural-proofing the closures? Notwithstanding his comments about the coastal strip, about which he is particularly concerned, the rural-proofing on which the Government are so keen is completely ignored in the proposals. Furthermore, attention has not been given to indices of deprivation in deciding which post offices are threatened with the axe. I share my hon. Friend's concern about the lack of attention to the evidence base. Does he perceive that Ministers have given any attention to it?

I do not perceive that, which is why I am keen to give the Minister time to address some of those questions.

I turn to the subject of deprivation. I cannot answer for the rural side, because my Constituency is primarily urban. I understand why the issues may be more difficult for rural areas, in which lots of villages are dotted around and justify a larger number of post offices, but I am talking about a densely populated area that is losing more post offices than many rural areas. That is a phenomenon particularly of shire counties, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury mentioned.

I turn specifically to the branches in my constituency that are faced with the Christmas present of closure. As I said, in May the Government instructed the Post Office to embark on a closure programme of 2,500 branches. On 13 November, after a lot of prevarication and false sunsets for postmasters, the details of which branches were targeted were published. I received advance warning of that list just four days before, on 9 November. That was hardly a courtesy; Members of Parliament should be fully engaged in the process. The details came as much of a shock to me then as when they were published fully the following Tuesday.

I gather that only a few weeks prior to that, individual postmasters were told their fates, presented with a fait accompli and sworn to secrecy in an intimidating way. All the postmasters to whom I have spoken—and I visited every one of the seven faced with closure within days of the announcement—were hesitant about speaking out, even to me at first. However, most have now taken up the cudgels and have been at the forefront of some of the protests and marches, because they resent being intimidated by the Post Office in that underhand way.

As I have said, my constituency is largely urban, so we are not dealing with a problem of far-flung villages. The reason why my constituency is being hit disproportionately is not the way in which the constituency boundaries fall, either. For some reason, the Post Office has been told, or has decided, that the closure programme should be announced constituency by constituency, rather than by district council, borough council or county. In my case, the Majority of the closures fall in the centre of my constituency rather than merely happening to be a few hundred yards across the border from the next constituency where closures are not faced. The fact that we are being hit disproportionately is not down to the way the constituency boundaries are drawn.

In Adur, which makes up two thirds of my constituency, we have wards of deprivation that are among the most deprived in the whole of west Sussex and feature in the bottom 20 per cent. of deprived wards in the whole country. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West, which neighbours it, we have a high pensioner population. I shall come back to that in a minute.

In Adur, we have 12 post offices, including three Crown branches. Of the nine sub-post offices, five—more than half—now face closure. That is in excess of the 18 per cent. average across the country that the Post Office has reassured us will be the figure for the areas affected. All those post offices are popular, well run, efficient and well used. So I was surprised when the Minister responded to the debate on 29 November with the following comments:

"We have 800 post offices that serve fewer than 16 customers per week. In those offices, the subsidy per transaction is around £17. We have 1,600 offices that serve fewer than 20 customers per day—the subsidy per transaction in those offices is £8. There are around 1,000 sub-post offices in competition with six or more branches within one mile, and customer numbers have shrunk by around 4 million per week in recent years."—[ Hansard, Westminster Hall, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 181WH.]

That is a fair comment. In a response to a written question from me, he wrote:

"In taking a strategic overview of service provision in areas of over-provision, Post Office Ltd. will ensure that people will be able to find an alternative branch nearby and the vast majority will still be within walking distance of their nearest office. With the least used offices, the numbers of people affected, will, by the nature of the offices, be low. I understand from Post Office Ltd. that under the area plan proposals for Sussex, 99.6 per cent. of the population will either see no change to the branch they currently use or will be within one mile of an alternative branch."—[ Hansard, 5 December 2007; Vol. 468, c. 1339W.]

How can it be that 5,002 of my constituents so far—substantially more than the 0.4 per cent. that would be left out of that figure given by the Minister—have signed a petition, written letters, come to public meetings and started to march? We are being hit disproportionately.

The picture that the Minister painted in the debate to which I referred does not represent any of the branches faced with closure in my constituency. It is certainly not a picture that any of the sub-postmasters who face closure would identify with at all. I visited all those branches several times, and I want to concentrate on five of the seven branches faced with closure. Two of the sub-postmasters have resigned themselves to closure. They have had enough. They have had enough of seeing their business taken away from them by the Post Office. They have had enough of intimidation from the Post Office. They want to secure what they can by taking the compensation now, because their future is uncertain and their retirement largely relies on it. One cannot argue with that.

My hon. Friend is making a comprehensively good case for a fundamental review of the closure programme in his Constituency. It resonates entirely with the experience in my constituency. In addition to the intimidation involved in the whole process, one sub-postmaster was unable to secure any assurance that there would be any chance, if they survived the cull on this occasion, that they would be offered the same compensation for giving up their business on a future occasion. They are rational people and, quite understandably, they have decided that it is in their best interests to take the compensation and reinvest the money. So they are now going to have to pull down the Post Office section in their premises and restock the area, which will now form part of the shop. Thank goodness we still have the shop, in that instance. The problem has been the intimidatory nature of the proposal, the suggestion that there will be no compensation in future if it is not taken now, and the way in which attempts were made to silence these people—although they have come out fighting—and to suggest that it was impossible to obtain evidence to support them. There is a real sense that everything has been deeply intimidatory and done by cloak and dagger.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many of these sub-postmasters are between a rock and a hard place. They have seen the loss of TV licences, car tax and passports, the reduction in the remuneration that they get for their business post, and the furore over the Post Office card account. They have seen these things being taken away from them, and they have seen their revenues shrink as a result. The Post Office then makes the case that they are much less profitable than they used to be.

Many of these people have built up and run their businesses over many years, and they were to have provided for them in their retirement. One of the first things that the Government did was to take away retirement tax relief. Those businesses, like many other small businesses, were thus severely hit because they were run by people who had not been able to set up their own pension funds but who had bought into and grown their businesses to use as a pension fund. They hoped to sell them to provide a nice nest egg, and to reinvest the funds for their retirement. They are now faced with a very uncertain future. Understandably, some postmasters—although not the Majority in my Constituency—have decided to take the money and run.

I am not saying that I am against all change. Because of competition and the way in which post office services are evolving, those services need to be rationalised. No one denies that. My party has put forward proposals for rationalisation that would secure the sustainability of many post office branches for much longer. However, my constituency has been disproportionately targeted. These post offices are the wrong target in the wrong places. In contrast, the three next-door constituencies that make up the city of Brighton and Hove—a city of about 750,000 people—face a total of five closures. In my constituency alone, the total is seven.

The closure map that the Post Office has helpfully provided is marked up with red crosses to show proposed closures and green stars to denote the branches that are to be kept. If only this were the hospital proposal map. It has lots of nice red crosses all over it, where I fear that hospitals will be downgraded. The number of red crosses on the map is very alarming. The seven remaining post offices in Adur will serve populations of 8,500 each, on average. That is way above the average for populations in other parts of the country. In contrast, the 15 remaining branches in Worthing—a much larger borough which is also being hit particularly hard—will serve populations averaging 6,666 each. Why should Adur have fewer post offices to serve larger populations?

I want briefly to touch on those five branches in my constituency which I believe to have been wrongly targeted. The first is the Mill Road branch in North Lancing, an urban community that is set aside on its own in the centre of my constituency. The postmaster is Ali Nahid, who is known and respected by many people. He is one of the postmasters who have been supporting the protests against the closures. He runs a post office that has been there for 138 years.

The North Lancing residents action group, a particularly well organised and fearsome bunch of local residents who really gauged the feeling of local people, leapt into action and carried out a survey, to which I will return in a few moments. The group had someone standing outside that branch every day for quite a long time. The survey results revealed not 20 customers a week or a dozen a day—which is the case at the sort of post offices to which the Minister referred—but 133 customers using the shop in which the post office is located every single day, of whom 100 use the post office. That is 100 a day, six days a week, using a post office now faced with closure.

The second post office in my constituency is in Bowness avenue, Sompting. It is run by Carol and Brian Attwater, who were again at the forefront, literally and physically, of the protests of recent weeks. They have two full-time post office desks in the shop as well as the post office counter, and every time I have been there I have seen that both those desks have a queue. The postman who picks up the post from that branch says that he picks up more post there than goes to the main branch in Lancing—the alternative branch, which will be the only Crown post office left serving that whole district. This is not a branch where somebody occasionally ambles in to buy a stamp and ambles out; it is a very busy, well-run sub-post office.

The third branch, the Downlands sub-post office in east Worthing, is run by Michael and Rosemary Wilkins. That branch won the post office of the year award in 2004 and a Royal Mail innovation award because it was obviously doing so many things right in the eyes of the Post Office. Over the past few years, business at that post office has increased, not decreased, even with all the different aspects taken away. The business transacted at that post office has increased and considerable investment has been made in reinforcing the counters and the whole post office paraphernalia—not least because we have had some violent raids in some Worthing sub-post offices in recent years. Again, we are talking about a well used post office, but once again that was not reflected in the Minister's comments in the debate of 29 November.

The fourth is the Old Shoreham post office run by postmistress Karen Crook. Again, it is a busy branch. There are several sheltered accommodation blocks just across the road, and the number of over-85-year-olds in the ward is 50 per cent. above the national average. I remind the House that in neighbouring Worthing, 4.6 per cent. of the population is above 85. This is the highest concentration of over-85-year-olds in the whole country, if not Europe, if not the universe—perhaps. We have a very high concentration not just of elderly but of very elderly people whose mobility is limited and who rely greatly on post offices like these. Campaigners trying to save that post office have also cited provisions from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, as we believe that those people are being discriminated against in the lack of access they will have to the alternative post office branches.

The fifth branch is the Broadwater Road Parade branch in Worthing, run by Mr. and Mrs. Myring. I said earlier, and my hon. Friends interjected on the same subject, that we are concerned about the quality of information used as the basis of these decisions. I found those concerns to be justified when I first visited this branch. Furthermore, the official posters issued by the Post Office for display to notify customers of the closure proposals referred to the Parade branch in Worthing in East Sussex, yet Worthing is in West Sussex. Clearly, the Post Office does not even know the location of its own branches. I have to say that its decisions are based on some rather dodgy data.

We are also greatly concerned because we were told by the Post Office that researchers—we do not know when; perhaps in mufti at the dead of night—had been visiting these post office branches to do their research on viability. Not a single one of the postmasters I spoke to had met any of those researchers. None of the researchers had revealed themselves to the postmaster or any of his staff in the branches concerned. Nobody had been spoken to locally. What sort of research are those people supposedly gathering?

Although the full figures are not published because of commercial confidentiality, postmasters tell me that more than half the revenue in the branches I have mentioned comes from the post office part of the business. All those branches are situated in shops. It is a common claim of the customers that the quality of service at those sub-post office branches is far better than that at the main Crown post office branches, which they will now have no alternative but to use, and that their accessibility is also greatly superior.

I will now hone down to the Sompting-Lancing area in the centre of my constituency. It is faced with the closure of not 18 per cent. but 60 per cent. of its post offices. Lancing—the largest parish, and technically the largest village in the whole of England—and Sompting, which merges into it, have a population in excess of 29,000 people. The vast majority of those people will now have access to one main Crown post office, in the middle of a very busy urban village. There will also be a sub-post office out on a limb servicing another part of Adur. That Crown post office is already overwhelmed, even without the extra business that it will have to subsume from the three post offices faced with closure.

That branch is the alternative now put forward by the Post Office. Last Monday, I was told that the typical waiting time in queues at that branch was at least 25 minutes. The Post Office was also surprised to hear that the policy of that main branch is that nobody is allowed to bring more than five parcels in one go; if they do, they must rejoin the queue and present the rest of their parcels 25 minutes later. Just down the road, however, is one of the largest business parks in West Sussex, with no fewer than 160 businesses with a lot of parcel post. What are they expected to do? At the moment, they are well served by the sub-post offices.

The main branch in Lancing also has very limited parking, which is already at a premium, particularly within close walking distance of the post office, and no disabled parking close by. At the branches threatened with closure, particularly at Mill road in Lancing and Bowness avenue in Sompting, parking outside is easy. As I said, nearby Lancing business park has a lot of business postage that relies on those sub-post offices. Not surprisingly, every single one of those businesses that was approached to sign the petition that I handed in earlier this evening, signed it readily.

The closure of those sub-post offices also has a knock-on effect on surrounding businesses. That issue has been discussed by those involved in Sompting village hall, who are filled with horror at the prospect of losing post office branches locally. They say, in reference to the Bowness Avenue branch, that the Bowness Avenue retail precinct is Sompting's only significant neighbourhood shopping centre, and that it is already in decay, with one unit vacant and three occupied by businesses usually associated with run-down facilities—printers and janitorial supplies. They also say that the loss of the post office would further greatly reduce the appeal to and income from local shoppers, while a reduction in the cross-selling that arises in such centres would further threaten the businesses themselves and hence the communities that they serve.

On the effect of the closures on communities, Adur district council has produced a detailed paper which was discussed at a full council meeting at which resolutions were passed objecting to the closures. Let me quote from one paragraph in the paper that refers to the impact of the last wave of closures on my constituency in the Adur district.

It states:

"There have already been branch closures within the Adur District in 2004/05. One of the areas the impact of this was most marked was in Fishersgate", which is on the border with Hove and Portslade. It continues:

"The loss of such a vital service has fuelled concerns by the community about the general erosion of community based services affecting the social and economic life of neighbourhoods and has been further compounded by the withdrawal of public transport from the area. There is a fear that future Post Office closures may catalyse the degeneration of neighbourhoods. It remains important to local communities and local businesses that Post Offices are not closed where they are needed most."

What happened in Fishersgate, probably the most deprived part of my constituency, and a community that felt really put upon? Last year, its school faced closure. Fortunately the county council saw sense, and after a fantastic campaign by staff and local parents, in which I was involved, the decision was overturned. A few months later, the school went on to win the title of school of the year in the south-east region. That was an important sign for the community, because the previous year it had lost its post office, the shop in which the post office was sited, and most of the shops neighbouring the post office. Residents felt that the heart of the community had been ripped out.

That is what happens when a post office goes. People do not merely say, "Oh, we have lost a post office; now we'll have to drive a mile to a new main post office." It means the loss of the heart of a community to people who have relied on the post office as a community focus, and to businesses which have relied on it for their purposes. That is what happened in the most deprived part of my constituency, and history will repeat itself if the closures proceed in the form that is being suggested.

Let me say more about the deprivation factor. According to Adur council's paper,

"the access criteria accorded to deprived urban areas...are disappointingly only with regard to the 15 per cent. most deprived Super Output Areas (SOA's). Adur does not have pockets of deprivation at these levels but however we have several SOA's which fall into the 20 per cent. most deprived. Most notably the communities of Churchill Ward"— in Lancing—

"and Peverel Ward"— in Sompting—

"who would access Bowness Road in Sompting. This is particularly an issue for Adur given that areas of urban deprivation generally exhibit isolation, poor transport links, and poor provision of and access to local services, and are therefore the places in which Post Offices can perform the most valuable social and economic role."

The citizens advice bureau has produced an interesting paper giving figures relating to usage. According to a survey that it conducted:

"Thirty nine per cent. of respondents visit the Post Office several times a week or more. This rises to 47 per cent. amongst those receiving means-tested benefits and 50 per cent. amongst people aged over 65".

Members can imagine the impact on the communities that I have described. The survey also found that the

"majority of people (74 per cent.) currently walk to the Post Office branch that they use most often".

That is the sort of exercise that the Government, and indeed all of us, wish to encourage, but many people will now have no alternative but to seek less healthy modes of transport.

The Post Office is also guilty of citing misleading travelling distances when it tries to claim that the vast majority of people will still have access to a post office branch within a mile of where they live. That would be all very well for someone who lived in the post office at Bowness avenue, Saltdean, or in the post office in Mill road, Lancing, but many people live to the north or the west of those branches. A large number of my constituents in parts of Lancing and Sompting will be faced with round trips of not 0.9 miles but up to four miles, not as the crow flies but as people walk—safely, we hope, but crossing main roads. That is what will be required of a population containing higher than average numbers of elderly and deprived people. That is the reality of what the Post Office seeks to do, notably in the case of the Mill Road post office branch in Lancing. I hope that the House is forming a good picture of my constituency, particularly the part of it that is in Adur. The North Lancing post office branch is up a steep hill.

To access the surviving main post office in Lancing, people will have to cross the A27—one of the most congested roads in Sussex—and also one of the most dangerous, until a few years ago, when the Highways Agency saw sense and built a pedestrian crossing. In the previous 14 years, 13 people had been killed, many of them students at the school that abuts on to the A27.

Using that footbridge will add another mile to the journey, or one can take one's life in one's hands and use the zebra crossing. Ivan Fallon, a resident of North Lancing, and his volunteers surveyed the alternative routes to the main post office. They found that 134 customers used the shop every day, of whom 100 used the post office. Those 100 were asked what they would do if the post office was not there. Eighty-four said that they would drive to the main post office; only 16 could face the prospect of walking.

Those people would have to use a pedestrian crossing at which, it was calculated, up to 40 vehicles are held for 20 seconds on average. There will be quite an impact on the traffic flow of that main road. Mr. Fallon and his team also calculated that those additional car journeys to the local post office would generate an extra 25 tonnes of greenhouse gases per annum. Offsetting that environmentally would require the planting of 31 acres of trees every year. Mr. Fallon is a bright man and I would not challenge his figures.

Such environmental considerations feature nowhere in what we have heard from the Post Office. What environmental criteria have been used? The answer apparently is none. The Post Office appears to be immune from climate change and to have no responsibility, liability or duty of care to consider the carbon footprint of its proposals. That is bizarre. At a time when we have seen so much about the progress made at Bali, at home in the real world people are faced with increasing their carbon footprint because, apparently, the Post Office does not give a damn and does not have to give a damn about environmental considerations.

What discussions has the Post Office had with the Highways Agency about the extra traffic on the A27 alone? We do not know; we have not been told. What discussions has the Post Office had with the highways authority, the county council, regarding the extra parking that will be required? We do not know; we are not told. What discussions has the Post Office had with Adur district council on the provision of extra car parking and disabled car parking? We are not told, we do not know and Adur does not seem to know how it features.

What discussions has the Post Office had with the police? At one of our public meetings, two local police community support officers came along and, unusually for people in uniform, were moved to get up and say that if the Mill Road post office went, it would seriously impact on their jobs. These closures have implications way beyond some people having to walk a bit further to buy their stamps.

This is happening without any guarantees about the capacity of the remaining post offices, particularly the North Road post office in Lancing, to cope with the existing demand. A common cry at the public meetings has been that the 400-odd Crown post offices are losing about £70 million. Most of my constituents would rather close the Crown post offices and keep the sub-post offices open, because they provide a better, more efficient service in places where the public actually want to use them—but we are not given that option. Can the Minister tell us why this is so weighted towards closing popular sub-post offices?

All this is happening without any guarantees about the accessibility of the North Road branch to customers, the availability of parking and the sustainability of public transport or any consultation on disability access. As I said earlier to my hon. Friend Dr. Murrison, apparently we are not to benefit, either, from the 500 outreach services that are being offered as a sop to other parts of the country faced with losing their post office branches. All this is happening without the Post Office having any obligation to consider environmental factors in relation to the closures. What has been the impact of the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, under which the Government are to consult local authorities about promoting local sustainability, including maintaining local services such as post offices? Was it all a waste of time?

I also want to quote further from the excellent Adur study prepared by Natalie Brahma-Pearl of the healthy living department. She truly gets to the nub of some of the problems we face.

"The access criteria has fundamentally been applied to mislead. It makes no reference to the fact that some residents in existing Post Office catchments are already travelling a mile to the proposed closure Post offices and the reference to distance to alternative in the consultation plans is misleading. For example if a resident were to live in Cokeham Ward or North Peverel Wards in the Sompting area of the district then for them to actually access their nearest proposed alternative in North Street Lancing would in fact be nearer 2 miles and not the 0.90 miles quoted."

We should also consider the demographics of those wards affected by the sub-post office branch closures. In the St. Nicolas ward in Shoreham the proportion of over-65-year-olds is 23 per cent. compared with the England average of 15.9 per cent. In the Sompting wards it is 21.7 per cent. In the South Lancing ward of Widewater it is 27.7 per cent. Areas with well above average age demographics are affected by the proposed closures.

Let us also look at how these post offices interact with the local council. The payment of council tax and rent is one of Adur district council's largest services, available at local post office counters through the use of payment cards as well as at a number of local shops. That is consistent with Department of Trade and Industry—as it then was—proposals, as detailed in another part of the report.

"In the first six months of 07/08 approximately £1 million of Council Tax has been paid this way and £500,000 rents have been collected using this method. Approximately 25 per cent. of Adur's Council Tax transactions are paid over the counter. Should more Post Office branches close in the District, this may impact on the Council's ability to offer our own services in local neighbourhoods."

Again, there will be an impact on the local council, when it is trying to do what the Government are urging it do—use local post offices. There will be an impact on the council's ability to service its tenants and its council tax payers properly.

The final paragraph of the Adur report states:

"Following previous closures in the Adur District, the access criteria determined by the DTI, suggest that the network as it now exists, is the barest minimum needed to provide a proper and effective Post Office counter service to our local residents. Further closures are not substantiated or justified in any part of the district as these would result in a significant loss of essential local facilities for a large proportion of our resident and business population. This is especially the case for Post Offices in the Sompting/Lancing areas, in particular Bowness Road, Sompting."

Those are the words not of a politically motivated local council, but of an officer of my local council in Adur who does her job well and knows her area particularly well, and who knows the impact that closures will have on our populations.

Similar comments have come from Worthing borough council. It recently passed a motion that reads:

"This council further notes the social importance of local Post Office outlets to the well-being of individuals and communities in Worthing. It believes that the latest closure programme is unnecessary and calls on the Government to"— among other things—

"Remove the Royal Mail restrictions on the Post Office to open up further business opportunities for the network".

So these proposals have no support. Until now, I have not relied on the perhaps more emotional testimonies of my constituents and individual people within Worthing and Adur. I could have done—I could have quoted from scores and scores of letters that I have been copied in on, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West. Up to now, I have relied on the practical considerations of these post office closures for my constituents, my communities and my constituency, such as traffic and parking, alternative destination distances, environmental concerns and the impact on communities.

However, I want to read out a few of the comments received in those letters. Perhaps, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will indulge me. These are real-life experiences of people who are not politically motivated; in many cases, they have never written to their MP before, or to the Post Office. The first states:

"I am in my late seventies and am the sole carer for my eighty four year old husband who has Alzheimer's Disease, Fibrosing Alveolitis and Heart Failure. He is on continuous oxygen so is totally housebound and cannot be left for more than a few minutes. The Post Office is an absolute lifeline for me. I can only walk a limited distance and would have to drive to use the main Lancing Post Office. Queues there are long, with no place to sit and there is no convenient parking."

Another one from Lancing says,

"the return journey"— to North Lancing—

"is all uphill, in many cases very steep, and the buses do not venture 'up the hill'.

If I am to continue to live independently, the only way I will be able to obtain any cash, will be to take a taxi, or ask one of my friends or neighbours for a lift to the village" every week.

Another one from Lancing states:

"Parking is a nightmare in Lancing plus you need to pay for parking if you can't find a place on the road, which I never can. The bus service does not come up the top of the hill where I live, also again the cost is already expensive."

Another one states:

"The shop" in which the post office is sited

"provides a service available to all the residents in North Lancing along with the shops in Manor Road. Without this shop the area will be degraded and certainly downgraded."

Another one, from a pensioner:

"Many might queue for 35 minutes in the Post Office and then find that they have missed their half-hourly bus home and have to stand for another 30 minutes."

A further one states:

"I am an 86 year old lady who is registered blind and with limited mobility...To use this Office means that I will have to cross the very busy A27 road to catch a bus. The crossing allows 75 seconds for pedestrians to cross, unfortunately due to my problems I have difficulty crossing in this time.

I have all my money in the Post Office and my pension is paid into it. Due to there being no Banks in close proximity, I cannot make alternative arrangements to have my pension sent anywhere else so I am forced to use the Post Office."

Another one, from Sompting:

"There are five sheltered housing complexes south of the line as well as large estates of bungalows mainly lived in by pensioners...there is no public transport to North Road from the main South Lancing area."

Another states:

"North Lancing is on a hill which means walking up the hill to get home as the bus service only comes just into North Lancing and does not come up the hill. This will cause hardship to a lot of people."

Here is one from a business:

"It seems the Royal Mail are trying to accelerate, and not reverse the 'falling customer numbers, decline in traditional services such as Government based business, changing consumer behaviour and rising losses in the Network'. I for one will have no choice than to do my bit and hasten your demise."

Another one, from Worthing, states:

"I am horrified at the thought of closure of the Downlands Post Office and the impact it would have on the neighbourhood...Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins give an outstanding service to the community and deservedly won one of your national awards in 2004."

Another one from Sompting:

"This is the only Post Office in a large area where it is possible for disabled drivers to park."

Another one from Lancing—I am almost finished, Mr. Deputy Speaker—says:

"The waiting time in the queues is already often 20 minutes or more at busy times, even when all the counters are open".

So how are the remaining post offices going to have the capacity to cope?

Another letter from Sompting states:

"We do not want to see another parade of smart well kept shops reduced to flaking paint, battered shutters and vandalism."

Another letter states:

"No wonder that the local community spirit is dying and people are becoming more and more isolated."

Finally, someone from Sompting comments:

"To close a branch whilst spending huge amounts on television advertising, calling it 'The People's Post Office' is pure stupidity."

The "people's Post Office" advertising campaign adds insult to injury, as does advertising the Christmas club that the Post Office is going to offer, when my constituents face losing the majority of their sub-post offices and will not be able to access such services. Everyone is up in arms, including the local media. The Shoreham Herald and the Worthing Herald have as usual played a fantastic part in covering and supporting this campaign, and Splash FM, the Worthing radio station, has, as ever, been supportive of the local communities.

People are in shock over these proposals. Local residents, businesses and the sub-postmasters are shocked. Even Postwatch and the National Federation of SubPostmasters, which is based in Shoreham in my constituency, admitted to me that we are being hit disproportionately. Postwatch was very unhappy with the way that the proposals affected my constituency and believed that it had almost been misled in the way in which the evidence had been put forward to it. Even the Post Office representatives who came to see me when the closures were announced admitted to the disproportionate effect that the closures are having on my constituency.

The fate of these post offices is in the hands of the Minister. The Government have instructed the Post Office to make 2,500 closures, so he cannot simply pass the buck to the Post Office. I hope that the consultation programme, albeit truncated to six weeks, is a genuine one. I say that because a recent letter in Brighton's The Argus referred to the previous time that the closure programme was threatening post office branches—in that case, Brighton was affected. The writer stated:

"The Preston area of Brighton had three post offices closed in 2003."

He then mentioned a public meeting held to try to save those branches, saying:

"The Chairman of Postwatch and Post Office managers were at the meeting. They said all the letters and petitions would be carefully considered. However, there was a reporter from The Argus at the meeting who revealed that the Post Office had already released a press release giving details of the final closure dates for all the threatened post offices...All of this happened within a few days of the final day for objections so there could not have been any meaningful consideration of the objections from residents."

I hope that the Minister will satisfy himself that I am being too cynical in suggesting that the decisions have already been made and that the consultation exercise is a token box-ticking exercise. Such an exercise would be an enormous insult to the 5,002 people who signed the petition that I just handed in and to the many hundreds who have written letters and turned out in support of these post offices. I am not optimistic, because a similar exercise took place in Kent earlier this year. I believe that only two decisions have been rescinded in respect of the 58 Kent post offices faced with closure, and that only two decisions were rescinded in respect of 71 in the west midlands.

Is the consultation genuine or not? Does any of the information presented and the case that I have made in the past hour and six minutes count with the Post Office? Will it count with the Minister? Will he at least give a guarantee that he will ensure that the Post Office is not just sifting through these letters and petitions rather laboriously and taking no notice of them, but is genuinely taking into account the very special reasons why some—not all—of the post offices faced with closure in my constituency should have their decisions reviewed. If the Post Office is genuinely to be called the people's Post Office, the Minister owes it to the people to give ownership of some of the decisions to the customers who use and rely on those post offices. They have a right to continue to rely on a very important community service.

I hope that the Minister will take these comments on board fully and give my constituents, who are faced with losing their post offices in East Worthing and Shoreham, a happier new year than the bleak Christmas prospect that they face as this consultation ends a week from today.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend Tim Loughton for letting me join in his debate and I am delighted that the Minister has been listening attentively. If he is free on Thursday, will he come to the meeting with the Post Office at the Broadwater parish rooms in the centre of Worthing? My hon. Friend and I will be there. I am sorry that the Post Office has not been able to come to an earlier meeting, although two of their representatives did join my hon. Friend and me for a discussion at the beginning of the proposals.

Can the Minister confirm that one of the reasons why the Post Office network is under such pressure is that a former Secretary of State for Social Security agreed with the Treasury to give up the £400 million income that the post office network received for helping to pay out money? One of the reasons why that matters a lot in Worthing—although it could be copied in 300 other pairs of constituencies as this terrible programme rolls out—is that people over 85 are not those who get their car licences on the internet or who can get their money conveniently when they go out to work. At 85, relatively few are working. They are the people who are well represented by my hon. Friend and by our local media. I join him in paying tribute to our local papers, the Worthing Herald, the Lancing Herald, the Littlehampton Gazette, the West Sussex Gazette and The Argus, and the radio stations. Local people buy their papers at the post offices, as well as doing their transactions. Most of them do not take out fistfuls of £20 notes. They take their money in £5 and £10 notes because they do not want to be mugged on the way home.

I shall not repeat the points made by my hon. Friend, but I wish to add one or two points. First, I remind the Minister of Pythagoras. If one walks east for 0.6 miles and then north for 0.8 miles, that gives 1 mile because the Post Office measures distances as the crow flies, but it is actually 1.4 miles—c⁽²⁾=a⁽²⁾+b⁽²⁾. As my hon. Friend points out, a person may already have walked to the first post office. When we walked with his constituents from the Bowness Avenue post office to the next nearest, we had to go north then east, because we could not go north-east. It took well over half an hour and we walked past two closed post offices on the way.

This is not a new process: it is the continuation of a process that has closed seven post offices in my Constituency. There are still people in Ferring, Rustington, Goring and central Worthing who deeply regret the decisions that were made then.

My hon. Friend joined us on the march from Bowness avenue to the main Post Office in Lancing North street. The most direct route was through several twittens—as they are called in Sussex—and across a park and lanes. Many of the elderly ladies said that they would never do that route on their own, especially not after dark. They only did it on that day—and many were only just able to complete it—because there were 100 of us with a police escort.

Other people are concerned by the proposals, including Henry Smith, the West Sussex County Council leader. He says:

"Of these closures, three are rural post offices, the others are in urban areas, with a concentration on the coastal strip."

Why are we targeted the whole time? It is not only that the constituencies have Conservative Members of Parliament. I am glad to say that the Liberal Democrats locally have an online petition and in the end supported the all-party motion on Worthing council.

John Livermore, the chairman of the Worthing county councillors' committee, says that the proposal will cause extra congestion on the roads. If it is true that three quarters of the people who use our post offices walk to them and if it is true that fewer than a quarter will walk to the alternatives, the Minister will deliberately be creating extra traffic. He should say to the Post Office, "You have the freedom, if you judge it right, not to close the Heene Road post office." That post office is in the centre of not just the Constituency that has perhaps the highest proportion of over- 85-year-olds in the country—it is what the whole country will be like in 20 years' time—but probably has the highest proportion of any ward in Worthing. The area has a very high proportion of people who are reasonably active and who can get to the local post office, but who will find going along Rowlands road much more difficult. The Minister may say that the distances involved are not the greatest, but let us remember that most of the pensioners who go to the Heene Road post office come in from the west and have probably already walked half a mile to get there. They are within the limits of how far they can easily get.

There are different arguments for The Strand post office, which is sited where a post office really matters. It is near to Worthing college where many young people go for their sixth-form and further education, to Lloyds TSB Registrars where 2,000 people work, and to the headquarters of the primary care trust. Just over the railway, 800 people work on Inland Revenue business both directly for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and for the consultants who are developing its software. In addition, there are many people in that residential area and they will have to go from the Strand to George V avenue in Goring. I will go with the Minister if he would like to volunteer for that walk, but if he comes down on Thursday, he will have to allow extra time because of the traffic jams that already exist. It is not an easy walk from the Strand to George V avenue, and the first person I consulted when I left the Strand post office was blind. He said that he would not be able to go to the post office at Limbrick corner on Palatine road or to 292 Goring road, which is another option suggested by the Post Office. The alternatives are totally impractical for the people in that residential area or for the people who come to the Strand because their work or education takes them there.

Will the Minister kindly tell the Post Office that it has the freedom to make decisions based on a judgment of the local circumstances? It may have been required to put forward an average of four closures for each constituency, but it does not have to carry them through if he will allow them that option.

I have referred to local people and I wish to quote from a letter from Judy, who lives in Goring, an area where the local Liberals did most of their petitioning. Goring does not have a post office under threat at the moment, but Judy says that, although her own post office is not threatened with closure, she is concerned about those in my constituency and in east Worthing. She says:

"The nation is being encouraged to use motor vehicles less and to walk and cycle more for health. Closing post offices within walking distances, particularly for those who find walking difficult, will lead to people returning to motor vehicles. Some may cease to go out at all, increasing their dependency on either friends or Social Services.

Worthing, in particular, was planned to have separate parades of shops providing facilities for each small community."

That is the kind of "sustainable community" language that the Government use as propaganda. I do not think that they believe in it; we used to do similar things without using the propaganda terms. Judy says:

"These parades have largely survived...they should now be coming back into considerable use."

We have heard about banks closing their branches, but Judy says that she uses her local post office more and finds that there are frequently queues and not just in the run-up to Christmas. I remind the Minister what happened when the post office in Bath place in central Worthing closed, people had to queue even in the rain for 20 minutes at the main post office at the corner of Chapel street and Union place. That post office is between the constituency office and my home in Worthing, and it is a crying shame to see people getting drenched in an area where they cannot park. However, if they have parked their car, they have to ask themselves whether to put money in for 10 minutes, half an hour or for 40 minutes. That is the sort of question that people have to face.

Judy ends by asking how the remaining post offices will cope with more customers and notes that the staff will probably lose the knowledge of those who require special attention: the deaf, those with learning difficulties, people who are physically slow and those who have no

"obvious sign to mark themselves as needing consideration from strangers."

The Minister has a bit of explaining to do, but he should realise that what he has heard in this debate may be repeated in all the other constituencies around the country. East Worthing and Shoreham and Worthing, West are leading the country not just in the number of elderly people that they have, but in the fight that we have described. I hope that the Minister will join us and give us words of comfort and then say to the Post Office, "You can rescind these decisions. Let the people on the south coast and in Worthing and district have the facilities that they want."

I congratulate Tim Loughton on securing this debate on Post Office closures in his Constituency and I congratulate Peter Bottomley on his short contribution.

As I said in the debate on this issue a few weeks ago, I understand that this is a difficult process that causes concern in local communities. It has been a difficult decision. Like the hon. Members who have spoken, I appreciate that the Post Office provides an important and valued service in local communities. It is also a service that has evolved and changed over time. As the hon. Member for Worthing, West said just a few moments ago, the number of post offices has been falling for some years. There is a reason for that—however difficult this matter is. The service is being used by fewer people than before and is losing significant amounts of money. There are 4 million fewer people going through the doors of post offices every week than there were just a couple of years ago. The network loses several million pounds a week. Of the just over 14,000 post offices in the network, three out of four lose money.

If the network were run on a purely commercial basis, which we do not believe it should be, the number of post offices would be about 4,000—not 14,000—with perhaps some more living on the margins of commercial viability. However, that is not the way that we think the Post Office should be run. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate, there are also some 1,000 sub-post offices competing with six or more branches within a mile of them for the declining number of customers.

So why is the number of customers declining? Why is the Post Office losing money? A big part of it is down to lifestyle change. People gain access to their money in different ways from before. They often pay Bills in a different way. Particularly in the last few years, the way in which people communicate with one another has gone through a technological revolution. Let us take the example of pensions. Eight out of 10 pensions are now paid directly into bank accounts. For new pensioners, the figure is more like nine out of 10. Reference was made to some of the online services—for example, paying car tax. The option of paying car tax is still available in several thousand post offices, but now that the service is available online, it is used by about 1 million people a month. Almost half those people use the service outside normal office hours.

Such changes are unlikely to be reversed. Of course, as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, and as I entirely accept, they do not affect everyone. Not everyone is online. Not everyone chooses to pay their bills by direct debit. But the changes are real and have an impact on the pattern of custom at post offices. They are part of the reason why customer numbers have been in decline.

I acknowledge that there is also a cost element. It costs the taxpayer about 1p to pay a benefit or a pension directly into a bank account. It costs the taxpayer about 80p if the same transaction goes through the Post Office card account, while it costs the taxpayer about £1.80 a time if that is done by girocheque. A Government of any colour would look at those figures and add them up for the millions of pensions and benefits that are paid every week and every year.

As I said, the Government do not regard the Post Office as a purely commercial service. In fact, they are investing some £1.7 billion of taxpayers' money until 2011, including an annual subsidy, which did not exist in the past, of about £150 million. However, even with that large public subsidy, it was necessary to reduce the size of the network. That point was recognised by the National Federation of SubPostmasters. At the start of the process, its general secretary said:

"although regrettable, we believe that these closures are necessary to ensure the remaining post offices thrive in the future".

Reference was made to the compensation paid to sub-postmasters and mistresses leaving the network as a result of the programme. I do not accept the notion that the payment of that compensation somehow represents intimidation.

The point that is being made is that the sub-postmasters and mistresses got the impression—as was the case last time round—that if they did not accept the terms available now, those same terms would not be available if they were pushed out of business in one or two years.

While I am on my feet, may I ask the Minister to confirm that the Post Office will take account of not only the petition presented today by my hon. Friend Tim Loughton and that which I added to the petition bag, but others that have been handed in, such as that of Councillor John Rogers, the councillor for Castle ward, and, to be non-political, what the Liberals have done? Will the Minister ask it how many representations it has received?

The hon. Gentleman raises two points. I am making the point that I think that it is right to recognise people's service though the financial compensation process. That is a managed process for reducing the size of the network, and it is in contrast to what happened in the past, when people were leaving in an unplanned way, without access criteria, and thus leaving holes in the network. He also mentioned petitions, and I am sure that the Post Office will take all representations on the process into account.

I spoke a bit about the lifestyle trends behind declining post office customer numbers. Those trends are unlikely to go away; in fact, they might well intensify. That creates a challenge for the post office network. The answer will be not turning back the clock to the situation some years ago, because these technological changes will not go away, but giving people new reasons to use post offices and offering a range of services that will make them the local provider of choice.

I recognise that the process is difficult for the local communities affected, but even after the programme is over, the post office network will be bigger than that of all the banks put together. The network will still be some three times bigger than the top five supermarket chains combined, and it will still have an unparalleled reach into every corner of the UK, both urban and rural.

We can have a separate debate about the impact of supermarkets.

The Minister has been speaking for 10 minutes, and while I agree with much of what he is saying—a lot of it is what I quoted him as saying on 29 November—the debate is about Post Office closures in Worthing and Adur, yet he has not mentioned Worthing and Adur once. I want a response to the severe proposals that will affect my constituents and those of my hon. Friend Peter Bottomley. Will he turn his attention to that?

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I shall reply to the debate in my own way, rather than with the speech that he wishes me to make. The Post Office management have been trying to develop new products and to rise to the challenge of innovation, in order to attract new customers. For example, the Post Office is now the biggest provider of foreign exchange in the country. It is a major provider of car insurance. It has launched a new broadband service, for which people can pay in cash. It has introduced 4,000 free-to-use cash machines, often in the most deprived areas. It has also begun to exploit the potential of internet shopping and mail order through its local collect service, which allows customers to collect deliveries at their local post office.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham criticised the Christmas prepayment scheme, but I welcome its launch. Given what happened to Farepak, there is an appetite for secure Christmas prepayment schemes. The scheme will be in place for next Christmas. I welcome that kind of innovation. Innovation is taking place, and it is important that it does, because for post offices, the future is dependent on increasing customer numbers.

The hon. Gentleman asked about process, the consultation and the implementation of the closure programme. The plan covering his Constituency is one of 47 area plans, based on groups of parliamentary constituencies. The plans have to comply with the access criteria announced in May by the Secretary of State. Even though the network will reduce in size, the access criteria are designed to ensure that unacceptable gaps are not left in the network. The hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham and for Worthing, West asked about the access criteria; I shall go into a little more detail on that point for them. Under those criteria, 95 per cent. of the population in urban areas should be within 1 mile of a post office.

As the crow flies.

Yes, as the crow flies. Deprived urban communities were originally defined as the bottom 10 per cent., but as the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham rightly said, it is now the bottom 15 per cent. Some 99 per cent. of the population in such areas should be within a mile of a Post Office. In rural areas, 95 per cent. of the total population should be within 3 miles. We are talking about the nearest post office within a radius. That is how the access criteria are worked out. I hope that that gives hon. Members clarity on the points that they raised. The Post Office is supposed to take into account other factors, such as whether there are motorways in the area, public transport availability, local geography and so on. It has to take a number of factors into account in applying the access criteria.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham asked about the length of the consultation period. The Government consulted for 12 weeks on their overall proposals for the post office network, which were published a year ago. The consultation considered the principle of whether there should be post office closures, and the new outreach proposals. The hon. Gentleman asked about the six-week consultation period; the same period was used in the last round of planned closures, during a process called urban reinvention. The consultation is preceded by discussions between Post Office Ltd, local postmasters, local authorities and so on. So the whole process in each area takes significantly longer than six weeks, and the process of pre-consultation helps to frame the proposals before they go out to consultation. The process across the country will take about 15 months from start to finish.

The Government were mindful of the views of the National Federation of SubPostmasters, which said:

"To minimise distress amongst sub postmasters, it is important that the local consultation process is carried out sensitively and speedily. Prolonging decision making regarding sub post office closures will blight the business as well as creating a stressful environment for sub postmasters".

Uncertainty has been a factor. That is why we have come up with a timetable.

The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham described a number of ways in which the proposals will affect his constituents and his Constituency. In addition to the access criteria, there is an important role for Postwatch, which he mentioned. There is the possibility of a three-stage review process for contentious cases, which will take place when Postwatch and Post Office Ltd disagree about individual decisions. He implied that that was the case with one or more of the proposals affecting his constituency. Post Office Ltd announced recently that in cases where no agreement can be reached between Postwatch and Post Office Ltd a review process will take place through several levels. At the final stage, Allan Leighton, the chairman of the Royal Mail Group, will review the issues before reaching a final decision. If it is helpful to the hon. Gentleman, I am happy to send him the press release announcing the review process, which was issued a couple of weeks ago.

With reference to the consultation and its boundaries, the basis of the process was set out clearly by the Post Office before the process began in the letter circulated to MPs. That letter stated:

"As you will understand, the consultation in respect of the Local Area Plan will not concern the principle of the need for change of the Network, nor its broad extent and distribution... Rather consultation will be seeking representations on the most effective way in which Government policy—as set out in the Response Documents—can be best implemented in the particular Area in question."

The Post Office was clear about the nature of the consultation even before the process began.

The first area plan went out to public consultation on 2 October. Eight consultations have now closed and four are currently open. The first final closures were announced last week, although none will take place until after the Christmas holiday period. Under the current timetable, the final consultations are due to be completed by October 2008 and it is intended that the whole process should be concluded around the end of next year.

With the greatest respect to the Minister, he has now been speaking for almost 20 minutes. I entirely accept that he wants to answer the debate in his own way, but the debate is about Post Office closures in Adur and Worthing. The speech that he has made so far, which may be informative, although I have not learned anything new from it, could have been made about post office closures in Kent, the west midlands or the north of England. I hope that his own way of responding to the debate will include talking about the subject of post office closures in Adur and Worthing, which he has signally failed to do so far.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but he knows that, although the Government have set the framework for the closure programme, I do not as a Minister take decisions about individual post offices. I do not seek to deny the Government's role in the decision; I would not do that. The decision was based on the consultation document released a year ago and the announcement was made by the Secretary of State in May. However, I do not make the decisions on the individual post offices in the hon. Gentleman's Constituency. That is a matter for Post Office Ltd, which has published the plan that the hon. Gentleman has spoken about, and is consulting on it.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to ensure that representations would be taken into account. I can do that, but I cannot avoid the difficult decision taken as part of the programme: to reduce the size of the network by the proportions that we have set out; to try to put it on a more stable basis for the future; to compensate the sub-postmasters affected; and to try to develop with Post Office Ltd new products that will attract more custom in future. I want to be clear to the hon. Gentleman that I do not have a role in decisions on individual post offices.

rose—

I give way to the hon. Gentleman—for the third or fourth time, I think.

I am grateful; the Minister is being very generous. However, he will understand my frustration about the specific issue affecting my constituents. Notwithstanding everything that he has just said, he mentioned proportions. May I prompt him in this way? If his Wolverhampton Constituency were faced with losing not the average 18 per cent. but more than half its sub-Post Office branches, and if in the central part of his constituency no fewer than 60 per cent. were to be lost, would he think that he had a case for saying that his constituents were being treated unfairly and being hit disproportionately? That is certainly what mine are saying.

The plan that will cover the area that includes my Constituency has not yet been published. That will happen in due course. I accept that the process is difficult for local communities and I accept the hon. Gentleman's genuine feelings about it. However, I repeat that I do not have a role in deciding which individual post offices stay open or close. I have set out how the process is decided and the review process, which may or may not be available depending on the views of Postwatch and Post Office Ltd.

The House can understand the point that the Minister is making; we may not think it the right one, but he has put it clearly.

May I put this question to him? Suppose that, having heard the representations from local people, councils and MPs, the Post Office decided to keep the Strand or Heene Road post offices, or Bowness Avenue post office or one of the others in my hon. Friend's Constituency. If it decided to keep three of those proposed for closure, would it then have to close three others that it would not otherwise have closed?

We have set the overall framework to reduce the size of the network by about 2,500, so that would happen in some cases. It would not necessarily happen in every case; reference has been made to the proposals for elsewhere in the country where one or two decisions have been changed. Sometimes that will happen. The point to remember is that the costs to be considered include the costs of the individual sub-post offices and the support costs for the whole network. The Post Office is seeking not only to close the number of branches that has been set out, but to reduce its central costs as well. If the number changed hugely, the Post Office would continue to face the losses that it currently faces.

As I said at the beginning, the process is not easy and I understand the concerns that have been raised this evening. I have to inform the House that I am afraid that I shall have to decline the invitation extended to me to visit the Constituency of the hon. Member for Worthing, West on Thursday. Post office closures have been happening for some years and they are also happening in some other countries. However, we have tried through the process to manage the reduction in the size of the network, and to ensure compensation for the hard-working sub-postmasters who have served communities so well.

I hope that the new access criteria and the investment over the next few years will mean that the programme, while it reduces the size of the network, will give the post office network some financial certainty as it goes forward to plan its future.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Ten o'clock.