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Post Office Card Accounts
8. Mr. Richard Page (South-West Hertfordshire): How many Post Office card accounts have been opened. [123227]
The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): I understand from Post Office Ltd. that, by 20 June 2003, 57,000 Post Office card accounts had been opened. By that date, 430,000 people had indicated that they wanted to open a card account, so the number of accounts opened will grow rapidly in the period ahead.
Mr. Page : I thank the Minister for those, in fact, disappointing figures. May I say, because he is a nice chap, how much I regret the fact that he has been unable to unload the role and responsibility for the Post Office on to some other unfortunate Minister, as it really is a disaster and an absolute black hole? Can he explain to the House how his colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions have estimated that there will be 3 million Post Office card accounts, but the Post Office has calculated that there will be 5 million? As the Post Office has done the 5 million calculation to ensure the viability of those sub-post offices that survive the present savage cull, what will happen to them if Ministers at the Department for Works and Pensions are right with their 3 million figure? What will the Minister do to ensure a 5 million take-up of Post Office card accounts to make sure that our sub-post offices—those that are left—survive?
Mr. Timms: The Post Office is progressing extremely well. Large numbers of Post Office card accounts are being opened, as I have said, and they are proving particularly popular among pensioners. Everyone who wants a card account will get one. My hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions have indicated
that they now expect the number to be above the 3 million figure, which was the initial working assumption.It is very important not to miss the bigger opportunity. From this week, Lloyds TSB current account holders can use their cashpoint cards to obtain cash at any post office in the country. I tried that on my way in at the Members' Post Office, and I am pleased to say that it worked extremely well. With Alliance and Leicester and Barclays already offering that service, that brings to 19 million the number of current accounts now accessible at every post office in the country. That is a huge commercial opportunity for the post office network. It is half as many again, for example, as the total number of state benefit and pension recipients, and the Post Office can now make a success of that opportunity.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud): Does my hon. Friend accept that, because of the difficulties that some people still have in gaining access to the Post Office card account, there should be a clear understanding—obviously, he will have to talk to those at the Department for Work and Pensions about this—that, if people choose not to open a bank account, the Post Office card account should be the failsafe system, so that post offices would be guaranteed that anyone who chose not to have a bank account should have a Post Office card account?
Mr. Timms: I agree that all those who do not want a bank account will be given a Post Office card account if they decide that they want one. That has been built into the process, so I can give absolutely that assurance to my hon. Friend.
Broadband
9. Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon): If she will make a statement on her strategy for enabling residential customers to benefit from the provision of broadband internet access in publicly-funded organisations. [123228]
The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): The public services between them expect to invest £1 billion in broadband connectivity over the next three years. Our intention is to aggregate demand to maximise the chance to extend broadband availability to users outside the public services, as well as to obtain the best value for the public services themselves.
Mr. Webb : I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but will he be more precise on timing and process? A school in the village where I happen to live will get wireless broadband because it is too far away from the BT exchange. Lots of people live near the school, and they are asking me when they can benefit from the school's broadband. The Minister has set up a task group and is spending £1 billion, but when and how?
Mr. Timms: I am delighted to hear that broadband is being extended to the hon. Gentleman's local school. Every school in the country—primary and secondary—
will benefit from broadband over the next three years. I am not able to tell him precisely when the service will be extended to others in his local community, but he makes a very important point. Of course, particularly with wireless broadband, once that facility is available to the school I can see no reason why others should not benefit from it as well. In fact, there are examples of schools around the country that have become the hub for community-based wireless broadband services, and I very much welcome that development.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): Can the Minister help with villages in my constituency that are also bereft of schools, and in which broadband provision is therefore an important way of helping them to retain liveliness? Can he give us some hope that we will be able to help specifically the very remote areas that many of us represent?
Mr. Timms: Yes, I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of that. We can be optimistic about the prospects. He will know that the East of England Development Agency has been active in supporting broadband, and a number of rural communities in Suffolk and elsewhere in the east of England are benefiting as a result. We recently completed successfully an auction of wireless spectrum, which will be available for wireless broadband, and I expect that that will be advantageous to rural communities, too. We can therefore be hopeful about the prospects in the months ahead.
Smaller Enterprises (State Promotion)
10. Mr. Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central): What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of state-funded promotion of smaller enterprises. [123229]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Nigel Griffiths): The best assessment of the effectiveness of our DTI small business support programmes is contained in the reports of the Small Business Council, whose 24 members are all successful entrepreneurs. I know from my ministerial visits to the north-east that there are many success stories, and I want to work with my hon. Friend to achieve even more.
Mr. Cousins : I very much welcome Labour's new economic policy for small businesses, and I am extremely disturbed to learn that the Conservative party would want to scrap it completely. That support, however, must be clear and effective. Is my hon. Friend the Minister as concerned as I am by the statement of the chair of the regional development agency in the north-east that there are no less than 200 different organisations trying to support small business within fives miles of the centre of Newcastle? Does he have any proposals to rationalise that, to get some clarity and to establish robust, clear support that new and small businesses can understand and with which they can work?
Nigel Griffiths: Indeed. One NorthEast, the regional development agency, has conducted its own review of business support to ensure that all funds for the purpose are held in one pot, to get a strong focus on start-ups and
to meet the needs of SME customers who choose the service that they want. I also pay tribute to the £13 million being spent in Tyne and Wear on business support, which is being co-ordinated by Business Link Tyne and Wear. Those two important agencies are co-operating, and I am sure that they will take the advice of my hon. Friend on board.
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): I declare an interest as an unpaid director of Ormeau enterprise park. Does the Minister accept that small businesses need help when they start up? Unfortunately, those who may fund some of those businesses may have a mindset that, when they have failures, they cannot be relied on to go forward in the future. Do we not need to change that mindset, bearing in mind that even large firms with enterprising inventions have had to repeat their experiments to succeed?
Nigel Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When I was in Belfast a couple of weeks ago discussing this issue with Bill Jeffrey of the Federation of Small Businesses, I stressed to him that the changes in the insolvency provisions that we have already made, which take the focus away from the honest failures and allow us to concentrate on the small minority of dishonest failures, will help to introduce a culture into Britain that to start up in business, to run a business, and to fail because the wrong product or service is being offered at the wrong time is not something of which to be ashamed. I encourage all Members of the House and the press to take that approach and to ensure that people are given encouragement to start business again. In the United States of America, people are not a success in business unless they have had at least one failure.
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