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6.32 pm
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton): This is an important day for the future of the post office network, because hundreds, if not thousands, of people have travelled to the House to put their case. That was not stage acted: in the fine tradition of democratic lobbying, it was an endeavour with a serious point and purpose. Those people were not just representing themselves--a fact to
which the three million signatures on a petition handed in this morning readily attest. I congratulate all of them and hope that they have travelled safely from far and wide.We have initiated this debate, not for the first time, because we have been leading on this issue and we shall continue to press the Government for the answers that they refuse to give. It is high time that they listened hard and answered in detail. Perhaps the starting point for that should be the debate, which I commend to hon. Members on both sides of the House as compulsory reading, initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) in the Westminster Hall annexe this morning. My right hon. Friend spoke in detail and with devastating effect.
The Government's policy simply does not add up. They say that they want to protect the post office network, but they intend to rob it of its income. They then speak with certainty only of issues irrelevant to the problem that they are causing. We will not let them get away with that.
We have had a lively debate, and many hon. Members have brought their experience to bear. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), even though he spoke from the Government Benches, was spot on. He essentially said, "No income, no post offices," and explained that that would hit the poorest hardest. Many of his constituents will be very hard hit by the Government's policy.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) was rightly worried about post office closures in his constituency. Indeed, there have been more than 500 up and down the country since the general election. Let me be honest about the earlier figures. In the 18 years preceding the general election, there were 2,568 post office closures. Let us put that figure on the table. It is not 3,000, as the Prime Minister said from the Dispatch Box this afternoon. I doubt whether he will come back to the House and correct the figure. I am afraid that, if he did that on each occasion, it would become too habitual a duty.
The call is for the Government to be more practical. I think the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Miss Smith) must be a deeply confused person. She says that post offices do not want subsidies. She is right. They want incomes. She was unable to explain to the House where those incomes would come from.
Miss Geraldine Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Duncan: In a second. The established income risks disappearing--
Miss Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Duncan: If the hon. Lady will only listen, I have already said that I would give way. Post offices' established income risks disappearing before any new income appears on the scene.
Miss Smith: I have made it clear where the income will come from. We need new business for the Post Office, including banking facilities. I mentioned the words "a people's bank". It is no good doing as the Conservative
party would and relying on benefits work. That would leave post offices to wither on the vine. The Government are trying to do something about it.
Mr. Duncan: The hon. Lady--like many of her Government's Ministers--has to realise that wishful thinking does not constitute a properly delivered public policy. Although she may have an idea that there should be a new income flow, until the Minister can describe the detailed way in which it will happen, her wishful thinking will count for nothing.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) said it all. I sympathise with him in choosing not to name all his sub-post offices. I, too, have more than 100 villages in my constituency of Rutland and Melton and many of them face a dire predicament. As my right hon. Friend says, the trickle of closures is becoming a flood and the anticipation of problems in the future is causing a big problem now. The income of post offices does not stand to be replaced by credible alternatives, and we need to know that it will be.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not rehearse all the arguments put by other hon. Members, including the hon. Members for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) and for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) and my hon. Friends the Members for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight), for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior) and for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin). I would like to get to the kernel of the debate. Let us dismiss all the irrelevances that have crept in. Of course automatic teller machines will change the pattern of some cash collection, but they are not a solution and there are problems for people who do not want to receive their money in units of £10 or who simply cannot, and who need every single penny to which they are entitled. Indeed, there is the problem of charges. The Government may put 75p on the pension, but if £1.50 disappears in ATM charges, that ain't much of a solution either.
Privatisation is also a red herring. This is not a debate about ownership. It is a debate about the income that will accrue to those institutions that are already in private hands and will determine whether they are able to survive. It is a question not of ownership but of income. Only parliamentary discipline stops me expressing quite how irrelevant I feel privatisation has become to the debate.
Dr. George Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Duncan: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I must press on.
Let us concentrate on the one crucial issue to which we need answers from the Minister this evening--the income that individual sub-post offices will either continue to enjoy or be denied. This is all about income. If the Minister gives us decent answers on that issue alone, we will be satisfied with his response. It is the crux of the matter. Under the policy that the Minister is gradually implementing, the vast post office network--roughly 19,000 or more post offices--may suffer a loss of income of between 40 and 60 per cent. In practical terms, the Government are replacing a guaranteed Government- sourced income, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said, with an uncertain, commercially negotiated income. Not only will that income be uncertain but it will be one of which the Government intend to wash their hands.
As the Minister's letter to every hon. Member said:
- The amount that subpostmasters will receive will depend on the contracts that the Post Office Groups strike with banks and on negotiations between the group and the NFSP. These are commercial matters and it would not be appropriate for the Government to become involved.
The Secretary of State refused point blank to answer questions on that detail. It is shameful that, whenever the right hon. Gentleman is asked a question, he obfuscates and diverts the argument to something that is wholly irrelevant--privatisation or the fact that people can withdraw cash, in full, without deduction. That is good--as far as it goes. However, if, when a person withdraws 100 per cent. of their entitlement, the agent or intermediary who is providing the service that delivers that money receives the square root of diddly-squat in return, there will not be a Post Office network through which to deliver 100 per cent. of benefits. The Minister smiles. He always enjoys my use of language--we had "scragging" in Committee; now we have "diddly-squat".
If the Post Office network does not have an income that is sufficient to maintain its commercial viability, there will be no network. The only issue that matters is what the income for the Post Office network will be following the implementation of the Government's policy. The Minister does not need to divert the argument; he does not need to talk about anything else.
Let me summarise the matter for the Minister's benefit, so that he will be under no illusions. We know that the Secretary of State has not had a good month. With his failure to answer our questions on this issue, things are getting even worse for him. I have a few specific questions for the Minister. What will be the income of the sub-post offices--be they in urban areas or in rural areas, such as those that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends represent? How will that future income compare with that which they currently enjoy? Much of their present income is derived from a Government source, of which the Minister has control. It does not derive from a commercially negotiated arrangement over which they have less control and which is bound to produce a lower amount. What will be the components of their future income? In the new Labour world, how will the Post Office network income be made up?
To follow up my question to the Secretary of State--who replied, in effect, "Don't worry, they will all have a reasonable income"--what is a reasonable income? How much lower will a sub-post office's income have to be before the Secretary of State, in all his wisdom, would consider it unreasonable? What income does the Minister think is required to sustain a Post Office network of roughly the same size as the present one? How will the new arrangements be sufficient to replace the income that he is taking away from the network?
Given the activities carried out by post offices, and the services they deliver, does the Minister agree that income is much better than subsidy? I suspect that, in order to atone for much of what the Government know will happen, they will try to slew the arrangements away from income towards subsidy--I think that will come into next Tuesday's Report stage of the Postal Services Bill. They know full well that, if that is done, subsidy will wither on the vine in due course--away the network will go. If there is no income, there will be no post office: no income--no network. We need to know what the income of sub-post offices will be in new Labour's future world, when their policy is implemented. We want detail on that point.
Tomorrow is the Secretary of State's birthday. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) said that 18,000 birthday wishes are winging their way towards him--even as I stand here. I hope that he will give proper answers to all those 18,000 hard-working people. In the meantime, it would indeed be appropriate if the Secretary of State got his cards.
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