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Mr. David Drew (Stroud): Does my hon. Friend and close neighbour agree that one of the fundamental problems is that sub-postmasters must sign an agreement that ties their hands and prevents them from marketing? That is certainly true of banking facilities. The agreement is so daft that they are not even allowed to put up signs in their windows to tell customers that they can cash a cheque. That must be changed.
Mrs. Organ: My hon. Friend is right; sub-postmasters do not have the time to market or advertise, they are not allowed to, and certainly do not have the resources to finance it. The Post Office and the Government need to invest in a national advertising campaign to make people aware of all the facilities available. It is difficult when there is a queue on a Thursday morning for rural sub-postmasters to tell each person at the counter, "We do this; we offer that service." They do not have the time and people do not want to hear of such services in that way. There must be a national advertising campaign.
Finally, I shall address the thorny problem that a third of Post Office business comprises benefit payments. Many people are concerned about the changes that will come into effect in 2003. I have had assurances from my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Social Security and my hon. Friend the Minister for Competitiveness, in letters and in the debate in Westminster Hall last Wednesday, that there will be the choice of having benefits paid in cash over the counter. That will be warmly received, but what exactly does it mean? What is meant by "cash"?
Will there be the same counterfoil system as at present, or will payments be made by cheque, which must be cashed? Not everybody can get or wants a bank account.
Poor pensioners do not want one and would not be able to get one, since banks would not want them as customers. An 85-year-old would find it very confusing suddenly to have to run a bank account. Such customers just want their benefits paid to them through a counterfoil system and to receive cash in their hands.
The Post Office needs effectively to become the rural banking network, which could be a benefit of the Horizon project. Several banks--the Co-operative, Lloyds, Girobank and Barclays--have already signed up to links with the Post Office. To enhance the Post Office's service provision, it is important that people use the Post Office for such banking facilities. The Post Office should become virtually a bank in its own right.
Mr. Richard Page (South-West Hertfordshire):
I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words.
I genuinely believe that Labour Members sincerely wish to see the preservation and prosperity of the Post Office network, but I think that that is about as far as it goes. Before going any further, I should confess--perhaps confess is the wrong word--that I am one of those Members who has borne responsibility for overseeing the work of the Post Office. I was a Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry. I can admit now that I fought and lost some of the battles with the Treasury, although I am glad to say that some I won. Today, we have had a clear indication that the DTI team, personified by the Minister for Competitiveness, has lost the battle to the Treasury.
Leaving aside all the bluster and rhetoric, I have sympathy with the Minister. He is having to play a very poor hand of cards that the Treasury has dealt him.
I am committed to the modernisation of Post Office services and to the introduction of new technology to facilitate the changes, such as Horizon and ACTs, provided that both sides of the equation are in place. We have heard tonight that the second part of that equation--how those changes will be delivered--is not there.
However, three positive things have come out of the debate. First, it is good that we have had an opportunity further to discuss this matter. I have a strange feeling that we will discuss it and discuss it until eventually the Government accept that they must do something about it. They cannot allow the Minister to stonewall time after time.
Secondly, there is a benefit to the Minister, because all he need do is read into the record the speeches that he has given several times already. I have a feeling that he will be asked to come back to the House and to keep giving a
repeat performance until he is allowed to say what will happen to solve that part of the equation. I hope that when he winds up the debate he will have a go at the motion, and, I hope, erode the beautiful friendship between the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats that has existed for a number of years.
Thirdly, and more importantly, as many hon. Members have said, the motion refers to the impact that automated credit transfer will have on a large number of people. If each Parliament had to design its own coat of arms with a motto underneath, the Government would have in their design a large pencil eraser with the motto--in Latin, of course, to ensure that it is not easily understood--that in English would be, "It seemed a good idea at the time." If I had to characterise the Government's actions, I would say that to them it seemed a good idea at the time but they did not work out its long-term effect. This proposal is a classic case of, "It seemed a good idea at the time."
This measure is attractive to the Government, especially to the Treasury. We have heard that £400 million will be saved, and that is a lot of money. As has been shown time and again, there has been little recognition of the effect of the proposal on a substantial number of people who will have to use this system. The Minister is a nice chap, but nothing he has said so far reassures me that the second half of the equation is even half way towards being in place.
Mr. Letwin:
I hope that my hon. Friend is not subscribing to the thesis that the net saving will be £400 million, given that we have not the slightest clue what it will be. We know only that the gross saving will be £400 million. A huge amount of unspecified money is to be paid to the banks.
Mr. Page:
I ask my hon. Friend to hold his horses. As night follows day, my views will gradually unfold. Given the time, I may have to truncate my speech, but I shall touch on my hon. Friend's perfectly valid and genuine point.
It goes without saying--the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ) started to make this point--that many of the people who collect their benefits from a sub-post office are among the most vulnerable--people who are old, frail and do not use information technology. For the Government to make this announcement without fully thinking through the consequences is exceedingly worrying for those people. It is difficult to understand how a Government can try to push a legitimate cost of looking after those vulnerable people on to financial institutions without clearing it with them first.
Would it not have been better to have joined-up Government--to use their oft repeated phrase? There could have been a statement by the Government and those financial institutions explaining how the system will work.
My sympathies are with the banks, because undoubtedly a number of people receiving benefit will not want or will not be able to handle this extra dimension. Automatic transfers of this kind will be welcome to Members of the House, but for a percentage of our people they will be worrying, frightening and confusing.
We all know constituents who fall into the category to which I refer. Technology may be pushing us towards a cashless society, but there is a generation to which that
will never apply. I look the Minister in the eye when I say that that generation will never be able to handle it--and it is composed of the old, the frail and the vulnerable. I welcome that part of the motion, and hope that it will increase pressure on the Government to announce the second part of the equation to which I have referred.
The debate, however, extends beyond postal services. If we exclude them from what we have been discussing today, we see that they constitute only a small part of the activity of sub-post offices. What we are really considering is the possibility--indeed, the probability--that we shall create areas of potential deprivation. Deprivation is not exclusively financial, of course. I am talking about maintaining communities and services--especially in rural areas, although the same applies to constituencies on the urban fringe. The removal of such services will be the straw that breaks the back of local shops and forces them into redundancies and closure, thus hastening the death of small communities.
What will the individuals affected do? It will mean a long drive--or a bus journey, at a cost--to some larger population centre to obtain the necessities of life. To people who have lost their village store, this will become a form of social exclusion. Moreover, the Government's announcement that they will save themselves £400 million--this brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin)--may well relate just to the gross figure. The Government may ultimately have to find more than that to prop up the communities that they have gone some way towards destroying.
I think that the Minister is receiving a clear message from the debate. The thousands of people who run, and work in, sub-post offices throughout the country need answers to specific questions. They want to know how the new Horizon project will affect them if 30 per cent. of their income disappears when automatic credit transfer is introduced in 2003. There are 8,000 sub-post offices in rural areas that will have to face the challenge, and several thousand more in suburban areas. It is not enough to say that they will be able to diversify--that, for instance, they can become lottery agents, if they are not lottery agents already; there is plenty of competition there. How they will survive is the great unanswered question.
I am even less convinced that the Cabinet Office performance and innovation unit will come up with convincing answers when it reports next month. Let us hope that it will, but I think all Members know that post offices and sub-post offices make a vital contribution to the vitality of their communities. We do not need the spin doctors of Whitehall who tell us what we already know, and what has been repeatedly acknowledged today.
According to what the Minister for Competitiveness told the House on 12 January, the study would reflect on how the post office network could best contribute to the Government's objectives for the future,
"and, in the process, . . . formulate objectives for the network itself."--[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 12 January 2000; Vol. 342, c. 67WH.]
We immediately find ourselves involved in an argument, however. On the one hand, Ministers are saying that they will not become involved in the day-to-day running of the system; on the other hand, they are establishing a basic strategy and primary objectives for any organisation, which means that they must be involved in how that day-to-day running takes place.
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