Post Office Closures

Part of Deferred Division – in the House of Commons at 4:47 pm on 19 March 2008.

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Photo of Tim Loughton Tim Loughton Shadow Minister (Children) 4:47, 19 March 2008

I am delighted to have been called. I am particularly delighted to follow Michael Jabez Foster, and perhaps to represent the voice of sanity at the other end of Sussex, where we stand up for our post offices and for our constituents. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that he will not have "done great" himself this evening unless he supports the motion tabled by members of my party.

It is extraordinary that the focus of the Liberal Democrats' attack today has been not on the Government or their closure programme, but on the Conservatives. The same happened in my constituency when we were fighting for our post offices: the Liberal Democrats' attack was entirely based on what the Conservatives were doing, which was standing up for the post offices. It is the Liberal Democrats who are merely playing politics, and who have the audacity to claim otherwise.

I think I should declare an interest. I am pleased to speak soon after Mr. Cawsey, because earlier this week I was told by someone investigating my family tree that one of my ancestors, Joseph Loughton, and his father-in-law Ebenezer Easting ran a sub-post office in North Somercotes near Hull, just outside the hon. Gentleman's constituency, in 1892. Perhaps a more relevant interest for me to declare, however, is that my constituency contains the headquarters of the National Federation of SubPostmasters. I must say in response to what has been said by the Secretary of State and other Members that there is considerable disquiet among many sub-postmasters about the way in which they are represented by that organisation, which appears to have caved in and almost taken the Government's shilling in going along with the exercise. The new general secretary has certainly not been as robust in standing up for the future of our sub-postmasters as his predecessor, who lived in my constituency. He lives in Scotland, and comes down to Sussex every week.

On 17 December, I spoke at length on post office closures in Adur and Worthing. I was able to go on for 63 minutes, because of the collapse of business. The Minister responded to that debate and, despite three interventions from me, failed to mention the subject of post offices in Adur and Worthing. I hope that he will have another stab today, because in my constituency we are not losing one, two or three sub-post offices but seven—more than anywhere else in Sussex. It is not 18 per cent. of the sub-post office network—the average across the country—that will be going but 50 per cent. of my sub-post office branches. Mine is a predominantly urban constituency with a high pensioner population— 4.6 per cent. of Worthing's population is over 85, which is the highest percentage in the country—and those people rely disproportionately on the post office network. However, they must now travel to the few remaining crowded and overworked branches.

In Lancing and Sompting in my constituency, the post offices are all to be closed, with the exception of the Crown post office, which has to provide a service for 28,000 people, although it is already struggling to deal with its increased business. The impact of the closure programme is not about nimbyism but about unfairness and unsustainability. Despite the petition signed by 6,200 people that I presented in the House, the hundreds of letters, the marches and public meetings, and the consultation exercise, which ended on Christmas eve and was truncated to six weeks, we got absolutely nowhere. On 29 January, it was confirmed that every single one of those seven branches would close. At the same time, MPs were invited by the Post Office to inspect the new state-of-the-art outreach mobile post offices, but we will not have any of those post offices in my constituency or elsewhere in Sussex. At the same time, our constituents have been serenaded with adverts for a new Christmas club, which is available at 14,000 post offices branches, if they can find one. At the same time, we have seen the multi-million pound rebranding exercise for "The People's Post Office". If that is how the Post Office thinks it will earn that title, it deserves all the criticism that is coming to it.

I have never dealt with a more duplicitous, bullying, self-serving, incompetent, arrogant and out-of-touch public body than the Post Office proved itself in the consultation. I do not use those terms lightly, and I am happy to justify my claims. You will judge, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Post Office is off my Christmas card list, although those cards would probably only get lost in the post in any case. It is duplicitous, because it has proved itself a willing henchman following the Government edict that set in train the latest closure programme of 2,500 branches, based on spurious, ill-conceived and self-destructive criteria. Its duplicity is exceeded only by the actions of Government Ministers and Labour Back Benchers, who are happy to pose for the cameras in front of post office branches in their constituencies, pleading a special case for keeping those branches open.

Will the Minister confirm this whole question whether the Government told the Post Office that it had to close up to 2,500 branches; or does the Post Office really have to close 2,500 branches? That is a serious question that has not been answered. Let us not forget that the closures of those 2,500 branches, in contrast with what happened under previous Governments, are compulsory. They are not voluntary—they are compulsory closures. The Government and the Post Office are duplicitous in saying that they have to close those branches because business has reduced. That has happened because the way the Government have instructed the Post Office has taken business away from post offices, following changes to the payment of pensions, the post office card account, about which the Government have dithered, and the changes to car tax discs and television licences. They are bullies, because they have virtually blackmailed sub-postmasters into accepting compensation terms at the outset, otherwise they may end up getting nothing at all. Those postmasters have, under this Government, already lost retirement tax relief, which was often based on their business. Their life savings are based on those businesses, and they cannot afford to lose that compensation if their business closes. They have been sworn to secrecy and scared out of lobbying to keep their post offices open, and, as we have heard, the compensation is linked to their not providing any competing services for at least a year: no lottery tickets, no foreign currency, no accepting payment for utilities. How is that acting in the interests of the people, rather than of the post office network, which is supposed to be there for the people? As every Member has said, the consultation was a complete and utter sham.

On the county council negotiations, I pay tribute to Essex, which has led the way, and my own West Sussex county council is currently trying to negotiate with the Post Office. I say "trying" because the Post Office is being very tardy in producing information that will allow the negotiations to go forward. All the while branches are closing down, however, and the equipment will be taken out of them, and it will be very hard to get them back up and running again if there is an eventual deal. The Post Office is clearly dragging its feet and not producing the necessary facts and figures, despite the Minister's warm words that he wishes to encourage such negotiations. Will the Government support a moratorium on closures while negotiations go forward? That is a crucial question.

I also accused the Post Office of being self-serving. It is supposed to be a community service. Its services are located within shops that are the heart of our communities, but there has been a complete lack of transparency in the consultation and closure programme. We just do not know which are the unprofitable branches, how unprofitable they are, or how much money it would take to make them profitable. Sub-postmasters have offered to take cuts in their remuneration, but, again, they have been completely rebuffed. The reasons for this lack of information on closing branches and for the Post Office dragging its feet on negotiations with other providers are that it is interested only in maximising the profitability of its remaining branches and it wants to get rid of the rest of the competition. Profits before people and public service is the hallmark of the whole enterprise.

The Post Office is incompetent because many of the facts in the consultation documents were full of holes. In the response to the consultation, in respect of one of my branches, there was a reference to the problems of crossing busy roads such as the A27. However, the A27 runs nowhere near that branch—but that was in the "facts" the Post Office used to justify the closure of that branch. When it was notified of the branch closures, one of the Worthing branches was described as being in East Sussex, but it is in West Sussex—and that from an organisation that specialises in addresses. That is completely bizarre. The response to this consultation was a total sham. In only a few lines, the future of our community post offices, the livelihoods of sub-postmasters who have dedicated themselves for many years, and the hopes of hundreds of thousands of pensioners who rely on them, were dashed without any come-back at all.

Serious question marks hang over all the access criteria as well. People are supposed to be within a mile of alternative post offices. That is all very well for a crow who lives in the post office that will be closed down, but many people live a mile the other way from the post office that will be closed down, so that could mean a two-mile trip, as the crow flies. Those criteria are also full of holes.

The consultation also ignores deprivation figures. During the consultation in Sussex, the new deprivation figures came out and they showed that my councils had slipped further down the deprivation league and that they now ranked above average for deprivation. All such factors were ignored.

The Post Office is arrogant, too. It seems to believe, with the connivance of the Government, that it should be above the scrutiny of Parliament and the parliamentary process on behalf of the people. All the claims are about the survival of the post office network. It has stuck two fingers up at pensioners, local businesses, the communities of which many post offices form the heart, environmental considerations, councils, councillors and Members of Parliament—yet it has the temerity to call itself the people's Post Office.

This whole consultation has been about blackmail and bullying. If we give in now, that will be a form of appeasement, and in a few years the Post Office will come back and say, "We need to close yet more branches in order to make the network sustainable." It is not on, and it is not fair, and we should continue to object in the fiercest terms.