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Mr. Letwin: Is not there a critical problem with that option? Given the complete lack of a plan, does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the period between now and 2003 is not sufficient? Should not sufficient time be allowed to put in place a proper plan, to ensure that people know that problems will be solved in time?
Mr. Borrow: I have made it clear in previous contributions in the Chamber on this matter that, as a matter of urgency, the Government must come up with the details of how the system will work after 2003. They have a responsibility to ensure that post office network representatives can work out business strategies for sub-postmasters and mistresses over the next few years.
Recently, I addressed the annual meeting of the Preston branch of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters. About 60 or 70 people attended a lively meeting, at which it was clear that federation members were not averse to change. Change is part of small business, and many post offices have had to change over the past 20 or 30 years and develop new lines. However, problems arise out of uncertainty.
That uncertainty cannot go on indefinitely. If the nuts and bolts of the proposals cannot be put in place quickly, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consult his colleagues in the Department of Social Security and to re-examine the time scale of the transfer. I have always made it clear that I support the transfer principle, but I want to ensure that my constituents in Lancashire villages have a viable post office network through which they can get their benefits and so on.
If it takes a bit longer than 2003-05 to achieve that, then so be it--that would be a small price to pay to ensure that the network is retained. In the months ahead, we must focus not on keeping things as they are but on ensuring that a robust new model for the sub-post office network is introduced. That model must be capable of being sustained, not for three or four years but for 30 or 40.
6.4 pm
Mr. David Prior (North Norfolk): I begin by thanking Keith Nicholls, who runs the post office in Stalham, and John and Christine Page, who run the office in Cromer, for coming to lobby me today. They appreciate the seriousness of the Government's proposals, even if the Government do not. They recognise that to lose 30 per cent. of their income, and possibly more, will damage the capital value of their businesses, put new entrants off going into the business, and lead to widespread closures of sub-post offices.
Many other people have written to me over the past two months. Many do not have bank accounts. Even when they have them, many want to take cash out every week and spend it in their local villages. In addition, many of them have a real understanding of and sympathy for those who live in the countryside.
A Miss Rowe from Gimingham in my constituency wrote to me to say that, over the past 35 years, her local village school has been closed, and the local shop. The local policeman no longer lives in the village, the resident priest has gone and the forge has closed. All that is left in that village--and in many others in Norfolk and elsewhere--is the post office. The post office is a vital hub of local services, especially in rural areas.
I want to draw three key facts to the Minister's attention. First, 2 million adults in this country, most of them pensioners, do not have bank accounts. If they live in the country, the frail, the elderly and those without access to transport often cannot get to a bank. Many of those pensioners are worried that they will not be able to get their weekly cash because their local post office will no longer be there. What choice do they have?
Secondly, 19 million people receive weekly cash benefits from local post offices. If they are forced to go elsewhere, much of the business that they currently
conduct in their village, or locally, will go with them. As Mrs. Browning from the small village of Langham in my constituency put it:
- The weekly pension I collect gives the cash to pay the milkman, the coalman, and buy my paper and bread. If the Government's proposed changes are implemented, I will have to travel 12 miles to the nearest bank, which means I will spend less money in my local shop.
In the country above all, poor transport means that local post offices are crucial for local people. Online banking and travelling long distances are not options for many, especially for old people.
My third fact goes to the heart of the debate. Most sub-post offices receive at least 30 per cent. of their income from benefit and pension payments. The footfall effect in offices that are in shops or which provide other services may increase that to more than 50 per cent.
How will that income be replaced? Nothing that we have heard today gives me confidence that the Government have thought through the implications of having to replace as much as 50 per cent. of the income of a sub-post office. We have been offered only the Secretary of State's vision for the future. There have been no concrete proposals, and those who run sub-post offices cannot exist on his vision. They need to know where the income is to come from, and how much it will be.
Many sub-post offices operate on the bread line, and are run more for love than money. People run such offices because they want to contribute in a practical way to their local community.
Two sub-post offices in my constituency have closed in the past year, at Tunstead and Saxthorpe. There is a growing suspicion that the Government are closing sub-post offices by stealth. The magazine Saga stated:
- There is a time bomb currently ticking away in Britain's villages and towns.
The uncertainty about the future caused by the Government's proposals for automated credit transfer is undermining the confidence of sub-post offices, destroying their capital values, putting off new entrants and accelerating their closure. That will have significant knock-on effects on local communities.
This project should be put on hold until the future viability of sub-post offices can be assured.
6.10 pm
Mr. Desmond Browne (Kilmarnock and Loudoun): I cannot compete with the large number of sub-post offices that the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) has in his constituency. Nor can I compete with the years of experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) and the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), nor
with the experience of the Post Office that my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Miss Smith) brought to this interesting debate. However, I can articulate some of the concerns of my constituents. I welcome the spirit of all-party good faith from the hon. Member for West Dorset. We must put aside recriminations and move forward together on an all-party basis to get the best for our network of sub-post offices. Many right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about sub-post offices in glowing terms this afternoon and we all support them, or else we would not be here.Talking down the network is damaging it. I know that there are concerns about a crisis of confidence among sub-postmasters, and I accept that that means that people make business decisions in that climate. However, I see a crisis of confidence among the customers of sub-post offices. When I met my own delegation of sub- postmasters today--and I shall not resist the temptation of naming them at a suitable point in my speech-- Mrs. Nan Haswell, who has been communicating with me about this issue for some months, told me that she can, in her small sub-post office in the village of Dunlop, collect council rents. One of her regular customers was issued with a new rent book this week. She said to Mrs. Haswell that as the sub-post office would not be there any more, she wrote to the council saying that she would pay her rent directly through the bank. That is the effect that the crisis, which is to some degree generated by deliberate campaigns to undermine the network for political purposes, is having in some areas on the network of post offices.
Millions of people are signing petitions to keep post offices open, and tens of thousands of them are at the same time signing bank forms to carry out transactions that could easily be done through the post office. They are using banks to receive benefits or pay for services. The irony of that is not lost on me, and I hope that it is not lost on Opposition Members.
My delegation consisted of Mrs. Haswell, Mr. Mohammed, who runs an urban post office in a housing scheme in Whatriggs road in the Bellfield area of Kilmarnock, and Mrs. Dunlop who is the sub-postmistress in the small village of Fenwick. Their message was that they do not want any favours, they just want a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. That seems a reasonable request from honest working people and I, as their Member of Parliament, feel duty-bound to help them achieve it.
The complications of this issue have already been mentioned and concern the nature of the businesses. I do not propose to repeat what other people have said, but I think that there is potentially an important and bright future for these businesses in providing community services. However, I believe that that future depends on a partnership between the businesses, the Post Office--which is sometimes all too separate from those businesses--the communities, local councils, community councils, parish councils, local enterprise companies, training and enterprise councils and other local businesses. We have to work together to generate that community spirit, and the view that the resources are important to the community life not only of small villages and rural areas but solid urban communities, which are sometimes small villages within urban settings. The post office provides an important hub for some of those communities.
That cannot happen unless we do several things, including breaking up the centralised approach of the Post Office to the way in which deals are done for post offices rather than by them. Post offices in my constituency are told by Cascade telephone calls that services that they previously provided can no longer be provided because the Post Office has concluded the contract. That happened in one case with Scottish Power. No one explains to sub-postmasters that this important aspect of their business and income stream will be lost--they are told by a Cascade telephone call. They were told in my constituency last week by such a call that they have lost the right to sell BT stamps because BT has moved on to plastic.
I make a plea for the Government to engage with the Post Office to devolve power to the post offices so that the network, which is not a homogeneous lump of rural post offices or two homogeneous lumps of rural and urban post offices but a number of individual businesses, can work with the local communities, councils and local enterprise companies to generate the local partnerships that are needed to provide services.
Another example of how centralisation has worked against the post offices in my constituency is Girobank's recent insistence on a £1 charge for a transaction relating to the collection of council tax. The council has absorbed that cost for some time but can no longer and has had to tell people who pay their council tax that way that they will have to pay an extra £1 when they go to the post office. Sensibly, those people will not do it, because some of them are paying small sums such as £4 a week towards their council tax. Again, decisions are being made centrally that affect the income stream of individual businesses. There needs to be some flexibility.
My final point relates to the opportunity of post offices to take advantage of the current negotiations with the major banks to design and produce a bank account that can be operated at low or no cost, which will prevent people with small amounts of money from going into overdraft. It is important that the deal, which can, I understand, be done within weeks is properly funded by either the banks or the Government so that it can be put in place now. In that way, it can be ready for customers in time for the ACT changes. I understand from the managing director of retail services at the Post Office that that alone could generate £200 million of the £400 million income that the network receives from benefits payments.
In short, I do not believe that this valuable network of post offices should be made to depend on the payment of benefits or pensions in future. That is an unsustainable and unviable future. However, there are many opportunities out there. We must all co-operate to generate such opportunities, but we need considerable assistance from both the Government and the Post Office.
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