The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Mr.
Greg
Pope
Armstrong,
Hilary
(North-West Durham)
(Lab)
Baron,
Mr. John
(Billericay)
(Con)
Burt,
Lorely
(Solihull)
(LD)
Fisher,
Mark
(Stoke-on-Trent, Central)
(Lab)
Greenway,
Mr. John
(Ryedale)
(Con)
Hendry,
Charles
(Wealden)
(Con)
McFadden,
Mr. Pat
(Minister for Employment Relations and Postal
Affairs)
Mackinlay,
Andrew
(Thurrock)
(Lab)
McGovern,
Mr. Jim
(Dundee, West)
(Lab)
Main,
Anne
(St. Albans)
(Con)
Öpik,
Lembit
(Montgomeryshire)
(LD)
Prentice,
Mr. Gordon
(Pendle)
(Lab)
Seabeck,
Alison
(Plymouth, Devonport)
(Lab)
Simon,
Mr. Siôn
(Birmingham, Erdington)
(Lab)
Spring,
Mr. Richard
(West Suffolk)
(Con)
Vaz,
Keith
(Leicester, East)
(Lab)
Wright,
Mr. Anthony
(Great Yarmouth)
(Lab)
Glenn
McKee, Committee
Clerk
attended the Committee
First
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 24
July
2007
[Mr.
Greg Pope
in the
Chair]
Financial Assistance to Industry
4.30
pm
The
Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs (Mr.
Pat McFadden):
I beg to move,
That this House authorises the
Secretary of State to pay, by way of financial assistance under section
8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, in respect of post office
network change to 2011, a sum exceeding £10 million and up to
£465 million to Post Office
Ltd.
I welcome you to
the Chair, Mr. Pope. I have to say that I start with a
little nervousness because my old boss, my right hon. Friend the Member
for North-West Durham, is behind me and I am more used to having her
beside me giving good advice. I do not know whether I will need to rely
on her as we proceed.
The motion relates to last
weeks debate in Committee about raising the threshold for the
money that can be paid out under the Industrial Development Act
1982the legal vehicle under which the Government can make such
investments. Today, we are discussing the specific sums to be spent to
support the Post Office.
The Post Office is undergoing a
period of significant, and in some ways difficult, change. The network
is rightly regarded as important by every Member of the House and by
our constituents, but we as a society no longer use it as we once did.
Four million fewer people are using post offices every week, compared
with just two years ago. More of us pay our bills by direct debit, we
mostly have our benefits and pensions paid directly into our bank
accounts and we communicate with one another by mobile phone, text
message and e-mail. We do those things far more than we did even just a
few years ago, let alone a decade ago.
It is sometimes said that the
Post Offices difficulties have been added to by the
Governments decisions, such as allowing benefits to be paid
into bank accounts or allowing people to renew their car tax online.
The truth is that the Government have not led the changes in
societys behaviour, but responded to them. People can still
choose to have their pensions paid into a Post Office account or to
receive them in cash at the post office, and they can still renew their
car tax in the traditional manner at the post office. However, it would
be wrong for the Government not to respond to the way in which people
live their lives and to force people to use the post office, although
we recognise the difficulties that that creates for the network.
However, people are used to such changes taking place in other
transactions in their lives, and we have to respond.
The Post
Office has been posting significant losses for some years and has been
losing almost £4 million a week across the Crown network and its
sub-post offices over the past year. Clearly, that level of loss is not
sustainable, and action was required to put the network
on a more sustainable footing to ensure that it continued to meet the
needs of customers in the years to come. The Government and Post Office
Ltd considered a number of options, and difficult decisions had to be
taken. We recognise and value the important social and economic role
that post offices play in every part of the country, but we had to
balance that against the ever-increasing calls on the Exchequer and the
fall in the number of people using the post office week by
week.
We published
proposals in December 2006 and embarked on a national 12-week public
consultation, which drew 2,500 responses. Following consideration of
those responses, the Government announced our final decisions on the
future of the post office network on 17 May. Those included: the
introduction of minimum access criteria, ensuring a truly national post
office network across the UK; the continuation of the annual network
subsidy until 2001, with an expectation that the subsidy will continue
beyond then; and a commitment to a successor to the Post Office card
account. All that will be underpinned by investment of up to
£1.7 billion until 2011.
A key part of making the
necessary cost savings will be addressing both the under-use in some
rural areas and the over-provision in some urban areas. To illustrate
this, it is worth drawing to the Committees attention the fact
that the least used 800 branches serve an average of just 16 people
each week, whereas in more populated urban areas, some 1,000
sub-postmasters have at least six other competing branches within a
mile of their business.
Andrew
Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab): In giving these statistics,
can the Minister indicate which countries of the United Kingdom have
the least take-up? I think that he referred to some post offices not
having any customers at all. Where are they
located?
Mr.
McFadden:
I do not have a national breakdown on that, but
I am happy to write to my hon. Friend. Obviously, those post offices
are likely to be concentrated in the most sparsely populated parts of
the
UK.
These
issues had to be addressed and we concluded that to get the Post Office
on to a more stable footing for the future, a maximum of 2,500 branches
would need to close under a managed compulsory programme. That will be
partly offset by the introduction of at least 500 outreach sites that
might involve, for example, part-time access in particular locations to
ensure that at least some post office services remain
available.
I
am sure that we all agree that sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses
do a magnificent job the length and breadth of the country, and it is
only right that those leaving the network as part of this change
programme are compensated for the loss of value of their businesses.
Following discussions between Post Office Ltd and the National
Federation of SubPostmasters, the Government have agreed to fund
compensation at the level of 28 months remuneration. That
matches the compensation package made available to sub-postmasters
under the urban reinvention programme carried out in 2003.
Turning to the specific
investments that we are discussing today, there are three elements to
the money.
Mr.
John Baron (Billericay) (Con): Can the Minister confirm
that the guidance that the Government have given on the distance
between post offices is based on the as-the-crow-flies principle? The
danger with that approach is that it does not take into account the
state of public transport, particularly rural bus services, which in
many parts of the countryfor a variety of reasons, including
poor fundingare suffering. What are the Government going to do
about that in order to help local residents, particularly the
vulnerable and elderly in our
communities?
Mr.
McFadden:
I can confirm that the distance is as the crow
flies, but the hon. Gentleman will know that the access criteria have
been very carefully drawn up to take into account natural barriers, as
well, such as mountains and rivers, and motorways. This principle is
applied in a sensitive way, so we are not saying that if a particular
location is a mile away and on the other side of a mountain, that major
factor would not be taken into account.
I turn to the specifics of the
money before us today, to which there are three elements: compensation
to sub-postmasters who are leaving the network on a compulsory basis;
redundancy costs of Post Office Ltd staff; and funding of the ongoing
losses to which I referred earlier.
The exact
split of the funding between those different headings will depend on
how the company delivers the change programme, but the overall cost
required will be roughly the same over the period. That is an important
point, so let me pause on it for a moment. If there were fewer branch
closures or Crown conversionsthe plans for which I shall come
to in a momentthe company would not be able to make the
required savings, so the losses that would need to be funded would
subsequently increase. As I said, in addition to those three elements,
we will continue the network subsidy of roughly £150
million a year until 2011.
Let me say a little more about
those three headings. As I said, Post Office Ltd and the National
Federation of SubPostmasters have agreed a compensation package based
on 28 months remuneration. It will be paid to all
sub-postmasters leaving as part of the network change programme. It is
not possible to give an exact amount for that part of the investment
package, as it depends on which branches close. No decisions have been
made regarding the local process, as it is just beginning. However, we
expect
Mr.
Anthony Wright (Great Yarmouth) (Lab): My hon. Friend
mentioned due process. Will there be time for representations to be
made by local Members of Parliament, and will the situation differ from
when representations were made during the urban regeneration programme?
In my opinion, those representations were not heard. Although we made
them, it was a fait accomplithe decisions had been
taken.
Mr.
McFadden:
Yes, there will be time for Members of
Parliament to make representations. From my reading of the issue over
the past month or so, nobody would say that the consultation process
under the urban reinvention programme was a model of how such things
should be done. Post Office Ltd has learned
a number of lessons from that. My understanding is that the consultation
got a bit better as the process went on, but what my hon. Friend says
is certainly fair comment regarding the early stages. As I said,
Members of Parliament and the public will have a chance to
respond.
Mr.
Wright:
What really worries me is the mention of
compulsory closures, which take away the possibility of representations
being made. Will there be room for manoeuvre on the number of closures
or the areas in which they will
happen?
Mr.
McFadden:
That is an important point. Let me be clear
about what is being consulted on and what is not. To get the network on
to a stable footing, we have said that there should be up to 2,500
compulsory compensated closures. The consultation is on how, not
whether, that is to be done. However, in a particular local area there
should be the opportunity to make representations and to say,
You have to close a certain number of post offices in this
area, and we believe that the closures should be here, rather than
there. People should be able to make such
representations.
However,
I must be honest with my hon. Friend and with everyone in this
Committee. Neither I nor the Post Office promise that people will
simply be able to say through this consultation, We
dont want any of this. We want the taxpayer to keep paying more
and more subsidies, and we wish that the closures would go
away. The consultation is on how, not whether, the closures are
to be
implemented.
Mark
Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, Central) (Lab): Does the Minister
not see that that is not what any other Member of this House considers
consultation? Consultation is an exchange of views; the
consultation that he describes is simply one-way. It
tells people what they are going to get, which is not consultation.
Such an approach is exactly like the so-called consultation on the
Crown post offices. The Ministers predecessor told me that that
consultation had nothing to do with whether the Crown post offices were
going to be closedthat decision had already been made. It was
simply about the how and why, and only for a pitiful six
weeks.
In the case of
my constituency, the closure of Crown post offices went completely in
the face of all the evidence, yet there was no ability to make
representations to the then Minister or to the Post Office on whether
the decision had been correct. Indeed, we were not even allowed to have
the information on which the decision was based. We were told that
there were losses of £70 million, but when we asked the
Post Office and Royal Mail what the losses were for a particular post
office in my constituency, we were told that that was commercially
confidential and that we had no right to ask about it. How, then, could
one judge whether a fair decision had been made and whether the
consultation was
proper?
Mr.
McFadden:
I set out the position because I wanted to be
clear with hon. Members and the public at the outset. I am afraid that
I disagree with my hon. Friend when he says that our consultation does
not qualify as such in any real sense. If we are clear and honest with
people at the beginning about what is and is not open to question, that
is a legitimate process. If he looks at the 500 or so consultations
that the Government carry out each year, he will see that many of them
are about how something is to be implemented; they are not all about
whether a particular thing should be done. I am therefore not sure that
I agree with my hon. Friends initial
point.
Mr.
Baron:
I appreciate the Ministers honesty.
However, without going over all the old ground, which has been
mentioned, I should say that in most peoples minds such a
consultation is about whether a post office should be closed. It is not
about a certain number2,500 or whateverbeing closed and
deciding which ones they should
be.
What particularly
worries me is the nature of the consultation. Obviously, everybody can
make a submission, but the decisions themselves will be taken behind
closed doors. Again, most people would ask how that can be; very few
people will come forward to say that a post office should not stay
open. Surely the decisions should be made in a much more transparent
way and explained to local residents. At the moment, it seems that the
Government have made up their mind that they will go hell for leather
for the closures, and that the consultation exercise is nothing more
than sheer window
dressing.
Mr.
Siôn Simon (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab): On a
point of order, Mr. Pope. Far be it from me to stifle my
colleagues special pleading, but I do not understand how all
the discussion of the processindeed, the Ministers
discussion of itfalls within the terms of a provision that
authorises the Secretary of State to make the
decision.
The
Chairman:
To be honest, that is a self-answering question.
If the Minister were out of order, I would have ruled so. It is in
order to raise those issues, which are pertinent to the motion before
us.
Mr.
McFadden:
I am afraid that I disagree with the view
that the consultation is window dressing. I have met representatives of
Postwatch, the consumer voice on the issue, and it will be intimately
involved at every stage. We are not going hell for leather in any
particular area; the whole processfrom discussions with
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, local authorities and
Postwatch, to the involvement of MPs and the general publicwill
last several months.
We
could spend all day on the question of whether the consultation meets
with the agreement of Members. I do not want Members or the public to
have a false impression: what I am trying to do today is to make it
clear that the decision on the compensated closures has been made. We
now have to talk about how to implement
it.
Having talked about
the compensated closures, I shall move on. As well as the large losses
incurred in sub-post offices, Post Office Ltd also needs to address the
significant losses being made in Crown post offices.
In the past year alone, that group of about 460 branches, representing
just 3 per cent. of the total number of post offices, incurred losses
of some £70 million. Again, action is required if the company is
to meet its commitment to the Government to get the network on to a
more stable
footing.
Part
of that is the deal, announced on 19 April, to site a total of 76 Crown
post offices near branches of WH Smith. That will have a major impact.
It is certainly not the first franchising arrangement into which the
Post Office has entered, and I appreciate that it is controversial
among some Members. However, the move will secure the future of Post
Office services in the relevant areas. A main branch will be secured in
all 76 areas and every site will be fully compliant with the
requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Post Office Ltd
has given an assurance that any customers with mobility problems will
be served on the ground floor if they are unable to get to the main
counters. In many cases, customers will also benefit from increased
opening hours, including during the prime Saturday afternoon shopping
period, and from the retail offer in the same location.
Those changes to the Crown post
office cost base will have a short-term financial cost, as some staff
may opt for voluntary redundancy rather than being redeployed within
the company. The Government will meet the cost of redundancies of those
staff. In addition, the Post Office will seek significant savings in
central administrative support for the whole network. That part of the
package will cost up to £170 million. The Governments
investment
package
Mr.
Wright:
To be perfectly honest, having post offices open
on Saturdays is great for customers. However, I am concerned about the
staff who do not want to work on Saturdays. Will they be allowed to
refuse, or will the new employers
decide?
Mr.
McFadden:
If the staff choose to transfer over, they will
do so under their new employers terms and conditions. If they
choose not to transfer, there may be the option of voluntary redundancy
or redeployment elsewhere in the network.
The Governments
investment package is based on the Post Offices five-year
business plan, which extends to 2011. We have already made some
payments to Post Office Ltd in respect of accrued losses to 2006-07.
Further losses during the funding period to 2011, and the compensation
and redundancy costs that I have outlined, require up to £465
million of assistance to be made available through section 8 of the
Industrial Development Act
1982.
There
are three elements to what we are discussing: the compensated closure
programme, redundancy payments, and ongoing losses in the network.
Government investment in the Post Office is vital to maintain the
network. If we were unable to make the required payments, the
consequences would be disastrous, as the company would need to start
closing branches on minimum contractual terms of a few months
notice. That would take no account of accessibility requirements, and
the resulting diminished network would be located predominantly in
urban areas.
The future
of the post office network is of great importance to all Members of
this House and to
millions of people in every part of the UK. Change is certainly
necessary to secure the future of the network, but we are carrying it
out in a way that allows the company strategically to plan the network
in a managed way that delivers fair treatment to the dedicated
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses leaving the network, and which
maintains, through the access criteria, a truly national network
accessible to all. I commend the
motion.
4.52
pm
Charles
Hendry (Wealden) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under
your rigorous chairmanship, Mr. Pope. I welcome the Minister
to his new brief and wish him success in it. It is appropriate that,
after Postman Jim, Postman Pat should be in charge of the issues that
we are discussing. However, I have to say that Mrs.
Gogginses all around the country will be disturbed by what he has in
mind for their beloved post office network.
Some of the Ministers
comments have added to the grounds for such concern. He said that the
Post Office was undergoing a period of significant and in some ways
difficult change. The changes that he has outlined are extremely
difficult and painful, not in some ways difficult. He
should not minimise the consequences of 2,500 post office closures and
the impact that that will have on our constituents, particularly on the
most vulnerable: those who do not have transport, those with
disabilities and those who are vulnerable in other ways. Such people
simply will not be able to travel to the post office, which will be
that much further away.
The Minister also said that it
is sometimes said that Government decisions have added to the
difficulties. Yes, that should be said. We understand why the decisions
have been made and that they have to reflect how our society is
changing and moving on. However, let us be in no doubt about it: last
year, the Governments decisions took £165 million out of
the network, while putting £150 million of subsidy into it. The
problems facing post officesthe reasons why footfall has
dropped and why some post offices have become so marginalowe a
significant amount to those Government
changes.
The
Governments biggest failing has been not to recognise that they
should be using the funding to bring new business to the Post Office
network, rather than finding ways of managing its decline. We cannot
vote against the motion because to do so would, as the Minister said,
mean that the closure programme would go ahead without compensation.
That would be catastrophic. However, we think that how the Government
have reached this position and how they intend to proceed is
fundamentally flawed and very mistaken
indeed.
We need greater
clarification from the Minister, particularly on how the money will be
used. Will he tell us a bit more about how post offices will be chosen
for closure? Will that be done purely by location? We assume that such
considerations must be the driving force. However, if closures are done
by location, that means that somebody will put a cross on the map and
say, Youre in the wrong place. You may be profitable
and highly popular, but because you are too close to the next post
office, you will have to be the one to go.
My hon. Friend the Member for
Billericay rightly mentioned the access criteria. Most of our
constituents do not travel in straight lines. Even people in urban
areas do not always travel in straight lines, and in more rural areas,
a journey of what might be 3 to 5 miles on paper involves going a lot
further when one actually follows the road networknot because
of a whopping great mountain or a stream, or whatever happens to be in
the middle of such an area, but simply because the roads are wiggly.
That is particularly true if one is dependent on public
transport.
To what
extent will the closure decisions be made on the basis of
profitability? If profitability is the only test, rather than location,
it will be very hard to meet the Governments access criteria.
If sub-postmasters move from one branch that is due for closure to
another in order to stay in businessif they are staying in the
businesswill they be entitled to compensation under the scheme?
If not, I can give an absolute assurance that they will walk away. They
might come back six months or a year later and say that they want to do
it again. However, if they would be walking away from £25,000 or
£30,000 in compensation simply by moving to another post office,
where they have neither the good will nor an established business, it
is difficult to see why they should make that decision.
The hon. Member for
Stoke-on-Trent, Central spoke about the consultation process. He is
right to do so, because the process is not what we understand by
consultationa process in which we can argue a case. The
consultation process sets one post office against another. It requires
one community to argue why they should keep their post office and why a
neighbouring community should lose
theirs.
I am not sure
whether he meant to say it, but in his opening remarks the Minister
said that in a given area a certain number of post offices would have
to close. We have not seen those numbers. If he has information on how
many will close in each area, he therefore ought to tell us the figures
before the House rises for the summer, and say whether those figures
are for counties or metropolitan areas, for example. That way, we will
know how the 2,500 closures will be spread around the country. He has
said that that is the number, and he must give that additional
information to the House before we rise for the
recess.
Hilary
Armstrong (North-West Durham) (Lab): I am interested in
the hon. Gentlemans alternative proposals for consultation. Is
he saying that he would be prepared to have a consultation that
resulted in no closures? If so, how much extra money would he and his
party commit to keeping post offices
open?
Charles
Hendry:
The tragedy of this debate is that the Government
turned away from options that would have brought more business into
post offices. No sub-postmaster to whom any of us has spoken in our own
constituencies says, I want a bit more compensation;
they say, I want more business. I want to be freed up so I can
work with carriers other than Royal Mail. At the moment, if UPS
or FedEx drive past a post office and cannot deliver a package, they
have to drive back 15 or 20 miles to the depot, rather than dropping it
off there, where it can be collected at the convenience of the
customer.
Post offices want to offer other,
financial services, but they are being prevented from doing so. Many
want to work with PayPoint, but they are being prevented from doing so.
All that the Opposition are saying is that we should give the post
office network the chance to survive on business rather than subsidy,
which is what the post offices have told us they want to achieve.
We need greater
understanding of where the funding will go. Some of the money will
clearly be channelled into Royal Mail and the Post Office centrally, so
can it be used to cross-subsidise other activities carried out by Royal
Mail? Postwatch told us yesterday that it thinks that the redundancy
payments necessary for Royal Mail to become profitable and successful
will total approximately £1 billion. Could any of that be used
for the more general restructuring of Royal Mail? We know that its
volumes of post have declined by 2 per cent. during recent years, so it
is difficult for it to find the funding from its own resources that
such a redundancy package would require.
How does the package relate to
the £1.2 billion that the Department of Trade and Industry
authorised Royal Mail to borrow to modernise its systems? Is it an
additional sum, or is it somehow included in that figure? Will the
Minister also tell us what period the figures will cover? In his
statement to the House, the Secretary of State told us that he was
going to give £1.7 billion over the next few years up
to 2011. When does the Minister expect to have to draw down the
remaining part of that money? For how long does he expect this
particular element to last? When does he expect to have to come back
before this Committee to ask for more?
This money should be being used
to generate new income for the post office network. It is crying out
for new business, it knows that the business exists and that is what it
wants to be able to get on with. We should not be managing the decline,
because through that process we will simply be hitting the most
vulnerable the hardest.
Post offices are incredibly
important institutions in our communities. If someone is ill and does
not call to collect their pension, the sub-postmasterthe person
most in tune with what is happeningis often the first to know
and to raise the alarm because something might be wrong. We know that
what often follows the decline of a post office is the closure of the
shop in which it is situated. In many of our constituencies, the last
shop in the village happens to be the one containing the post office.
If we lose the post office, the whole viability of that village shop
could go, too.
As the
new Minister with responsibility for such matters, the hon. Gentleman
should go back to the drawing board and say, I think we have
made significant mistakes in our approach. We need to see how we can
bring more business into the post office network, rather than simply
letting it decline. We will support this measure because the
consequences of our voting against it would be too seriousit
would lead to uncompensated closures. However, the whole ethos of the
Governments approach to this issue has been massively
flawed.
5.1 pm
Lorely
Burt (Solihull) (LD): I find myself in agreement,
unusually, with the hon. Member for Wealden, particularly on the
diversification of business in post offices. The Government still have
a big opportunity to enable post offices to earn their living in the
way that, as he rightly says, they are in business for: by generating
more revenue for themselves and by becoming viable in
themselves.
I do not
want to rehearse all the arguments about the closure of the 2,500 post
officeswe have heard them on several occasionsabout the
Governments role in the demise of the post office, or about the
fact that the consultation did not appear to be real because the
decision has already been taken. Instead, I want to ask about the
incredibly broad range of financial assistance to which the Government
are referringof between £10 million and £465
million. I am amazed that they are not in a better position to narrow
down to a smaller range the money that will be needed for such
financial assistance. Can the Minister throw any more light on that
issue? In respect of the three areas to which he referred, how will he
be able to demonstrate to Parliament the value for money of this
expenditure and the different ways in which it has been
spent?
Have we applied
for any European money to assist in this compensation programme? Will
the Minister reassure the Committee that this sum is not part of the
£1.7 billion investment pot announced by the Government in
May?
5.4
pm
Andrew
Mackinlay:
I shall be brief, although I do want to make
one or two comments. The first relates to the documentation. Yesterday,
I went to the Vote Office to clarify just what I was being put on to by
the Whips. I have no criticism of the Vote Office, but there was
bewilderment there. I then went to the Journal Office, where the
situation was also not clear to our distinguished Clerks. I do not
blame them, either, because the fact is that the supporting explanatory
memorandum is inadequate. No doubt I am an exception, and everybody
else in the Committee is a walking encyclopaedia on what we are
discussing, but I confess that it was not easy to find out
about.
It is
incumbent on the Minister and the Department to state in the motion or
in the explanatory memorandum what the issues are when bringing a
provision forward for parliamentary approval, and to make such a
statement available in the Vote Office. Some things in the
Ministers speech could have been legitimately flagged up in an
explanatory memorandum. I commend that approach to him, but I do not
criticise him personally. I criticise the Department for the usual
contempt for Parliament: Well get the Whips to get some
MPs to come along, and well rubber stamp this. That is
what happens, and with it I am not prepared to put up. I hope that that
will be borne in
mind.
What
the Minister outlined was very interesting. I am not somebody who
argues that things can stay as they have always been. Reluctantly, I
conclude that there needs to be some rationalisation of the post office
network. A number of Members legitimately asked what the criteria for
selection are, and what the parameters are for the areas where savings
have to be made, which is
a very reasonable question. It occurred to me when the Minister, not
unreasonably, placed great emphasis on the need for things such as
disability access that some post offices will not easily lend
themselves to conversion at a reasonable cost, compared with others.
Will that be a factor in the selection? We have a right to know, as do
our constituents. That is a legitimate point that people could and
would argue during consultation. Frankly, I do not think that the
Department is dealing from the top of the pack on this issue with
Parliament, or with the people to be consulted. There should be much
greater disclosure in writing as to the criteria for deciding where the
closures should be, and people should be given the opportunity to argue
their case.
I turn to
my second point. I deliberately asked the Minister about this issue in
the context of the countries of the UK. My feeling from going round
Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK is that there is a disparity
in broad-brush terms between the countries of the UK, which I fear
might continue or get greater. If this downsizing is a UK-funded
operation, I want to see a consistent approach throughout the
UK.
I must say in
passing that I have thought for some time that if ever there was a case
for devolving something to the Scottish Parliament, the Northern
Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly, it is the location,
distribution, funding and subsidy of the post office network. Bearing
in mind all the other things that we have devolved, it makes sense that
these issues should be a matter for local decision making and funding.
The post office network could and should fall into line with the idea
behind the Barnett formulathat different communities want
different things, and that some believe that certain things are more
important for a variety of social reasons. Independently of the motion
before us, over the coming period I want to canvass the idea that the
post office network should be devolved. There is also a case for other
post office services being devolved to the various
Governments.
You are
witness, Mr. Pope, to the Minister saying that he will write
to me. I hope that he will write to me about the distribution of the
existing network and how it will operate after the closures, to show
that there is a universal approach throughout the UK. If there is a
disparity, he should disclose it and explain why. That would be useful
to us in future discussions. I also hope that he will address the
question of the pot of money provided, and of assessing which areas
will be affected. Will such areas be based on government regions,
administrative counties or local authority areas, for example?
[Interruption.] The Minister is indicating that I am wrong, so I
wait with bated breath to hear what areas are
involved.
5.10
pm
Mark
Fisher:
May I join other Members in welcoming the Minister
to his new responsibilities? He said many welcome things in his opening
remarks. The very fact that he used the word we when
referring to the Government in respect of post offices was a welcome
change. When I made representations about the Crown post office
closures, his predecessors view was that they had nothing to do
with the Government and that they were the result of an entirely
commercial Royal Mail decision. He said that there was no point in
my coming to see him. The different attitude shown by a new Minister who
says, We take responsibility and we have made the
decision, is very welcome and quite
proper.
I
was also heartened by what the Minister said, in the context of post
offices generally, about a national networkI
think that that was the expression that he used. That is in welcome and
marked contrast to the last round of major closures, when there was no
planning at all and sub-postmasters were simply invited to apply for
closure. Those who did got the money, closed and left my
constituencyand, I suspect, many others around the
countrywith a completely cockeyed map. There was no recognition
of where there was need, or of the demography of the
constituency.
We have
a long way to go if we are to re-form a coherent and sensible map that
serves all communities. When the Minister mentions the national
network, I hope that he means itI take him at his word.
I hope that he will make sure that this time, there is a coherent map
that recognises where people use the post offices and how travel takes
place. Then, we will have come some way back towards having a national
network, which is an essential ingredient. I welcome both those aspects
of the Ministers contribution and I am grateful to him for
them.
I should like
briefly to take issue with the Minister again over his use of the word
consultation. I and many other Members understand
consultation to mean a dialogue. When we consult
somebody, we put a view and solicit and want to hear their response. It
is clear from the consultation on the Crown post offices that that has
not been the casewe are being told that they are being closed,
and whatever we say or query about the basis or good sense of the
decision is not relevant. That is not consultation but dictation of
what is about to happen, which is
regrettable.
Andrew
Mackinlay:
Is not part of the problemmy hon.
Friend has experienced this and it will happen againthat
relatively large sums of money have been dangled in front of
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, who seize them regardless of
any consideration of their customers or the locality? Consultation is
almost meaningless if there is a bung up front for people to seize and
then go away.
Mark
Fisher:
My understanding is that the Minister said that
that will not be the case this time. He will ensure that there is a
planned national network, and that decisions about which sub-post
offices will close will be made not on the basis of people volunteering
to do so, but on the basis of use and need. Perhaps the Minister will
clarify that point when he responds. I hope that I am right and that my
hon. Friend has misunderstood.
Andrew
Mackinlay:
I hope that,
too.
Mark
Fisher:
Good. I suspect that the Minister will come back
to me on my quibblesbut not my general questionsand say
that he and his predecessor made it clear that the consultations were
not on whether there would be closures, but on how and why. Even in
respect of those very narrow forms of consultation, there has
been no proper discussion. I wrote to Mr. Adam Crozier. He
did not vouchsafe me a reply, but one of his junior officials did. I
asked to see where the counters would go in our WH Smith. I could not
see how they could get 11 service points into that incredibly crowded
store. The shop has a very narrow frontage and widens out. I suspected
that the service points would be put at the back of the store, so as
not to prevent the sale of magazines at the front. I asked to see a
ground plan, but the one provided was illegible and meaningless and
showed nothing of any use. Therefore, there was no
consultation.
I
askedquite reasonably, I thoughtthat if such changes
were being made on the ground of losses, could the Post Office explain
how the losses were being made and how big they were. Had there been
dramatic losses, no one would defend the continued existence of the
Crown post office. However, we were denied the information. We were
told that it was commercially confidential, but commercially
confidential to whom? There is no commercial confidentiality. WH Smith
is not yet involved and therefore not affected. The Post Office and
Royal Mail is a public service. If it is making a loss, it ought to
spell out that loss to the Minister and the House. It is public money
and if it is being lost, we have a right to know. Commercial
confidentiality has nothing to do with it. It is a completely fake
argument. I was therefore very disturbed to discover that Royal Mail
would not tell us what the losses were.
I suspect that rent was one of
the main reasons for the losses of our Crown post office. The landlord
of our very handsome 19th-century post office, which is sited in a
prime position on very valuable land in the middle of Stoke, was
charging an enormous rent. Sadly, the landlord is Royal Mail. So one
side of Royal MailRoyal Mail estateswas charging a huge
commercial rent and making it impossible for Post Office Counters to
remain viable. One does not know whether that is the right supposition
or whether it is just paranoia on my part, because we are not allowed
to see the figures. Democratically, that is simply wrong.
The Minister must
understand that he is responsible for public money, which is why he is
asking for money today to make compensation. If he is asking for public
money for a reason, he ought to say what the losses are. It is
completely wrong to deny us that information. My constituents are not
stupid. If they think that something is not viable, they will accept
it. When they are told, however, that something is not viable but are
not told why, they get very angry indeed. This closure is very
unwelcome.
I also have
to take the Minister up on something that he said about disability. He
said that people will be served on the ground floor, but that is not
possible in the WH Smith in my constituency because it is on the upper
floor of a large shopping centre. It can be accessed only via
escalators and lifts, so there is no way that anybody can be served on
the ground
floor.
One
ThursdayThursday is the big day for pensionsall the
lifts and escalators were out of service for the whole day. In that
instance, the changeover had not yet taken place, but what would have
happened if the post office had been moved to the back of WH Smith?
Apart from the fact that there would have been no service that day,
the health and safety risk would have been enormous. How can elderly
people get out of a first-floor building such as that if there are no
escalators or
lifts?
Charles
Hendry:
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that quite a
number of the WH Smith branches in question have escalators, but that
they go only one way? Normally, if the shop is downstairs in the
basement, there is an escalator to take the customers down and they
have to make their own way up. If the shop is upstairs, the escalator
goes up and the customers have to make their own way down. It is
extremely difficult for people who have disabilities to
leave.
Mark
Fisher:
I did not realise that we are obviously very lucky
in Stoke. We have a two-way system involving escalators that go both up
and down, which is the lap of luxury for my pensioners who want to go
to the new post office.
We have a
further problem, in that our WH Smith happens to be on private
property. A large company runs the shopping centre and, for reasons of
its ownnot necessarily perfectly sensible, but understandable
and well-established commercial reasonsit has a strong
exclusion policy. It does not want people in its beautiful new shopping
centre who are wearing hoods, or vagrants off the street. It does not
want the elderly, the scruffy or the smelly. All those people have an
absolute right to go to the local post office, and they will be
excluded. I put that to Mr. Crozier, and he has yet to
reply. It is an extraordinary idea that the public service of a post
office can be on private property and that a private landlord can
exclude people from it.
Mr.
McFadden:
Some 97 per cent. of post offices in this
country are on private property. Does my hon. Friend object to
that?
Mark
Fisher:
I do not think that 97 per cent. are on private
property where the landlord has an exclusion policy that decides who
should or should not go on to that property. This company operates a
strong exclusion policyfor commercial reasons, it believes. It
does not want people whom it considers undesirable to go into its
shopping centre, so they will be denied access to the post office. When
I put that to Mr. Crozier, he would not discuss it or
recognise it as a problem. We will have a ridiculous situation whereby
access to a public servicethe post officewill be
determined for commercial reasons by a private entrepreneur. That
cannot be right.
Is
that really what the Government want and believe to be correct: that
someone should say who can and cannot go into a post office? That
cannot be right. Surely we all have the right to go into a post office.
After all, post offices have been paid for by our moneyfor
instance, by the money that we are meant to be voting today. However,
my constituents, who will contribute to the money that the Government
rightly want for post offices, will be denied access at the whim of a
private property owner. That cannot be right.
In all this,
the Government are probably creating the worst of all possible worlds.
The post office is no longer truly a public service. It ought to be a
public service and we believe that it is a public service, but it is
clear that
that principle is being confused with the relationship with the WH Smith
concern, and with property owners such as those who own our shopping
centre. As a result, the public service element is questionable, but as
the hon. Member for Wealden implied, the post office is unable fully to
operate commercially. It is at a terrible halfway house. It is not
being released to act commercially and to try to salvage itself, and
nor is it being properly subsidised by the Government.
Like other hon. Members, I am
baffled by the fact that the Government cannot be more specific about
how much money they need. Surely we could be told a rather more precise
figure than somewhere between £10 million and £450
million, as well as why it is needed. I would bet that whatever happens
and whatever the sum is, this will not be the last time that the
Government come back to the House to ask for more money to subsidise
closures and to keep things open.
I shall certainly vote for the
Government today, because I welcome anything that will salvage the
national network that I hope to have. I believe that that network is an
enormously important public service socially, and is to the benefit of
all our constituents. However, the Government need to think carefully
about whether they are committed to the post office network as a public
service. If so, are they prepared to put public money behind it? This
will not be the last of the public money, and nor should it be. We need
a post office network, and I fear that by incremental means, we are
sliding away from
that.
5.24
pm
Mr.
Baron:
I will not speak for long, but there are one or two
issues about which I would not mind pressing the Minister. I initially
raised access criteria, because they are important. The Minister
rightly responded by talking about mountains, lakes and rivers and so
on in rural areas. May I press him on the access criteria for urban
areas? A mile might not sound a long distance, but when bus companies
and public services in general are being cut, for lack of funding or
whatever reason, a mile can be very long indeed, particularly for the
elderly and the
vulnerable.
The
Minister will be well aware that post offices are used
disproportionately by the elderly, young mothers and mothers to be. For
those people, a mile can be a very long distance. Are the Government
looking at this carefully and ensuring that they are not simply
rubber-stamping access criteria policy without taking into account the
provision of local public transport facilities? I should be interested
to hear the Ministers view on
that.
Secondly, several
Members mentioned the lack of transparency on the consultation. The
Minister should be applauded for his honesty in making clear what the
consultation is about. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden, I
urge him to think again about the issue. In most peoples minds
a genuine consultation is about whether closures should be taking
place, not about where they should take place given that the decision
to savage the network by 2,500 cuts has already been
made.
Nor is there
transparency in respect of what a viable way of keeping post offices
open will be. If local residents participate in the consultation, they
will make
their views known and suddenly the decision will be
taken behind closed doors without any information given out about how
it was reached. Everyone will be in the dark about that, which can only
add to the deep-felt cynicism that already pervades certain sections of
our community about the political process generally. May I ask the
Minister, even at this late stage, for more transparency at least as to
how the decisions are made? That would do the Government the power of
good. It would certainly help everybody to understand how the process
is working. At the moment, it seems to be dark arts, and smoke and
mirrors.
Hilary
Armstrong:
The hon. Gentleman has a fair point. I am sure
that the Government will seek to be as transparent as possible. I
remember a post office closure in my constituency, which has some very
small urban areas and huge rural areas. The decision was incredibly
difficult because the postmistressthey are not all
masterswanted to get out of the property. She had very good
personal reasons which she did not want the local community to know
about. She desperately wanted the get-out clause. Nobody was able to be
wholly transparent because she had the right to keep her counsel on
that and to ask us not to let the local community know. The hon.
Gentleman asks for things that are sometimes impossible and go beyond
peoples capacity or willingness to
participate.
Mr.
Baron:
The right hon. Lady makes a fair point, but let us
be absolutely clear. I doubt that personal reasons will be cited for
closure in the vast majority of those 2,500 cases. Secondly, where
there are personal reasons
[
Interruption.
]
If the right hon. Lady wants to intervene she is more than welcome to
do so. Where there are personal reasons, they should be respected. But
at least let it be clear that there are personal reasons.
At the moment, all we are going
to get from the Government is a decision from the top saying which post
offices are to be closed, without any possible explanation of the
criteria used to make that decision. That cannot be right. Of course,
if the decision of a sub-postmaster or mistress is for personal reasons
that is fine, and it should be accepted, but I refuse to believe that
there will be personal reasons in all those 2,500
cases.
Hilary
Armstrong:
The real problem with what the hon. Gentleman
has just said is that it would have left that woman incredibly exposed.
She was the only person who could have had personal reasons for the
closure. We would have exposed her if we had made that public. Nobody
would have said what the problem was, but she would have had to take
the blame from members of the local community, first for not telling
them what her reasons were, and secondly for having the temerity to say
that she wanted to
go.
Mr.
Baron:
As I said, the right hon. Lady makes a fair point,
but although we can protect a sub-postmasters or
sub-postmistresss reason and ensure that there is an element of
privacy, we should not allow that one reason to blanket out the whole
decision-making process in respect of why 2,500 branches are about to
be closed, because people will be very angry about
that.
Charles
Hendry:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the right hon. Lady
is fundamentally confusing two different elements? One is the voluntary
closure issue, which involves somebody saying, I no longer want
to run this post office. If their post office is not one that
has been identified by the Post Office for compulsory closure, they
will be entitled to no compensation whatever, so in the case that the
right hon. Lady mentioned, the person would probably not have been
entitled to any compensation under the closure programme. As I said,
there are two totally different issues. One is a decision made on high
by the Post Office and sanctioned by the Government that certain post
offices will have to close. The other issue involves cases in which
people simply decide that they do not want to go on running the
businesses and there will be no
compensation.
Mr.
Baron:
That is a very fair point and reinforces the fact
that, if anybody has a personal reason for voluntarily giving up their
post office, they do not have to disclose it and that that should not
be used as an excuse to impose a blanket ban when it comes to
transparency and the criteria for the closure of up to 2,500 post
offices. That just will not wash. I do not know about the right hon.
Ladys constituents, but the excuse that we have to keep
personal details private certainly will not wash with mine, because
that can be taken care of with voluntary closures. We are talking about
a programme for the enforced closure of up to 2,500 post offices. Her
thinking on the issue will not wash with
constituents.
I want to
press the Minister on a third and final point, which was very well made
by my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden. Will the Government explain
why they seem so intent on not allowing post offices to gain access to
more business? Why, instead of managing the decline, do they not allow
post offices to install PayPoint, for example? Will the Government
explain why carriers cannot be allowed to work together? My hon. Friend
cited an example relating to items that have not been
delivered.
Simple
measures such as those would help post officesstruggling post
offices, perhapsto take on more business, so instead of
managing the decline, we could encourage more post offices to expand
their business and so become commercially viable. At the moment, too
many post offices are caught in a grey area: they are not allowed fully
to operate commercially, as they should be, which is affecting their
viability, and the Governments answer to thatwrongly,
in my viewis that we manage the decline. We should be trying to
make post offices more commercially viable, which would be better for
their long-term
sustainability.
5.33
pm
Mr.
McFadden:
I think that we are due to finish at 6 pm. The
debate shows that we all care about this issue, which is absolutely
right. A number of questions were asked. Let me try to go through the
main points that were
made.
The hon. Member
for Wealden began by talking about the size of the subsidy and how the
branches would close, and he expressed his view on that. At the
heart of this issue is a choice. If we chose to have a purely commercial
post office network, there would be not 14,000 post office branches in
the country, but 4,000. We do not choose to have a purely commercial
post office network. We choose, because we value the network, to make
the social network payment and to try to create availability throughout
the country.
That said,
with a network of 14,000 branches, there is still a need for the
closures. The Opposition might say, We should not have any
closures at all and the subsidies should be limitless. Four million
fewer people a week are using our post offices, and next year there
might be even fewer, but the Government should just keep on signing
those cheques. However, ultimately, we have to balance our
commitment to the national network with our responsibility to
taxpayers. The issue before us does not concern network subsidies, but
the management of the closure programme, redundancies and public
investment in the network. Such investment cannot be
unlimited.
I shall
deal with the commercial freedom of post offices. As I said in response
to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central, 97 per cent.
of post offices are private businesses and share with organisations
such as the Co-op and newsagents. Recently, I met the general secretary
of the National Federation of SubPostmasters. He runs a post office
that formerly was a Crown office and is now shared with the Spar shop
in his home town. It is not uncommon to share retail space. In fact, it
is much more common than having free-standing post offices. Most post
offices
share.
Opposition
Members have underestimated the degree of innovation in the Post Office
in recent years. It is now one of the largest suppliers of foreign
currency in the country and a major retailer of travel insurance and
broadband. It is diversifying and has the freedom to continue to do so.
There will always be a discussion between Post Office Ltd and
sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses about new products. That is
quite right. The Post Office has taken a view on whether it makes sense
for sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses to sell products that
directly affect the revenue of Post Office Ltd. For example, there is
nothing to prevent sub-postmasters from having a PayPoint, as long as
it is not used for the key services provided by Post Office
Ltd.
I discussed that
recently with the general secretary of the National Federation of
SubPostmasters and asked him about commercial freedom. Opposition
Members say that their own sub-postmasters are queuing up to say that
they disagree with the stance that has been taken. If the critical mass
of the national network is a valuable bargaining tool and a post office
is to sell new products, it is important to maintain that critical
mass. A free-for-all would not necessarily benefit the
network.
Charles
Hendry:
The Minister is wrong. If a sub-postmaster wanted
to take on a PayPoint facility, he would have to get permission from
the Post Office, which has declined permission in virtually every case.
They have accepted that that might be necessary in a very few rural
cases, but in almost every other case, it has declined permission.
Sub-postmasters cannot have PayPoint installed because they are
overruled when they make the request.
Mr.
McFadden:
My understanding is that the critical thing is
the products being sold through PayPoint, and not the PayPoint itself.
That is the principle that the Post Office applies to the different
products available in a post office. It does not see the merit of
selling products that directly affect its own
revenue.
A
question was raised about the compensated closure programme and factors
that will be taken into account. A wide range of factors will be taken
into accountnot just location, the level of custom or losses,
or profitability. The hon. Member for Billericay asked about public
transport. That should be considered. The Post Office will take into
account a whole range of factors. Postwatch will be closely involved
throughout the process. There will be discussions with local
authorities, sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, and an opportunity
for the public and MPs to make representations. I have been clear with
the Committee today about the terms of the consultation precisely to be
straight and honest with the public about the decision that was taken
in May and not to pretend that somehow it was reversed through the
programme that we are advancing. We are talking about how to do that
over the next 18 months, and that is what the process is
about.
The hon. Member
for Wealden asked whether I had a secret list of numbers for different
areas that I could give to the House before Thursday. There is no
secret list of numbers because the process is just beginning. In reply
to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, it will be done in roughly
50 or 60 groups of parliamentary constituencies over 18 months. In each
group of constituencies, the process will take 20-odd weeks from the
beginning until the final
conclusion.
If you will
indulge me, Mr. Pope, I shall turn to PayPoint. I understand
that some 1,400 post offices currently have PayPoint terminals on the
associated retail side of their businesses for services that do not
directly compete with the Post Office. I may be told that I am wrong,
but there we
are.
Andrew
Mackinlay:
I am genuinely intrigued by my hon.
Friends reference to 40 or 50 constituencies, and I am grateful
for the information, but it occurs to
me
Mr.
McFadden:
It is 50 or 60 groups of constituencies, not 40
or 50
constituencies.
Andrew
Mackinlay:
I see. I misunderstood, but my point is the
same. That would be a mix of town and country and, although my hon.
Friend may not be able to do so this afternoon, he should clarify
whether there would have to be a proportion. I think that the Committee
agrees that there will be different criteria for rural areas and for
urban areas. The cluster or pool from which the selection will be made
will be a mixture of both, and we need to know what will constitute a
rural area as distinct from an urban area. My constituency is in the
Thames gateway and is very much an urban area along the river frontage,
but clearly it would be included with some of the leafy lanes of Essex,
Norfolk, Suffolk and Great
Yarmouth.
Mr.
McFadden:
My hon. Friend is probably right that a cluster
of constituencies might include urban and rural areas, and I shall
clarify the matter. There
will not be 40 or 50 constituencies in a cluster but 40 or 50 groups of
constituencies throughout the country. However, he is probably right
that there will be a diversity of areas within a
group.
Hilary
Armstrong:
Some constituencies are like
that.
Mr.
McFadden:
Some constituencies have both urban and rural
areas.
Charles
Hendry:
The Minister is being extremely generous with his
time in giving way, and I am most grateful to
him.
The 50 or 60
clusters must be known, and I assume that the Post Office and the
Minister know. Can he release that information this week before we
break for the recess? We need to know the areas in which those
decisions will be made. I believe that the Royal Mail has started
writing to hon. Members saying when their areas might be involved, and
it would be useful to see the total
picture.
Mr.
McFadden:
My understanding is that Post Office Ltd is
writing to hon. Members about this, so the hon. Gentleman will have the
information if he has not already got
it.
My
hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central raised a number of
issues. I will slightly disappoint him when I say that, whatever I have
said today, I still believe that it is for Post Office Ltd to manage
the network and not for Ministers to make detailed decisions about
individual branches. I do not want to give a false impression; I want
to make that position clear. He asked about the erosion of the national
network and expressed concern about its prospects. Even after the
closure programme, the Post Office will have, for example, vastly more
branches than the banks and some seven or eight times as many branches
as the biggest supermarket group in the country, so we are still
talking about a major national
network.
One
or two hon. Members asked whether the programme will be on a first
come, first served basis. The answer is no. There will be some overlap
between people who want to leave and branches that it is deemed
necessary to close, but there will not be a queue of people to claim
the compensated closure payments. There will be much more co-ordination
than that, precisely because of the access criteria and our commitment
to ensuring the maintenance of a national network.
I am always wary in debate of
going up a street that I have not been on. My hon. Friend the Member
for Stoke-on-Trent, Central knows his constituency much better than I
would claim to. He went into some detail about access to the proposed
franchise within WH Smith in his constituency. I hope that Post Office
Ltd will discuss such issues with him. I shall certainly be happy to
ask it to do so. On his point that putting a post office into a private
space is somehow against the commitment that we should have to the post
office as a public service, I can tell him that the vast majority of
post offices are in that situation. Many share space with the
newsagents Martin McColl, the Co-op and others in franchise-type
arrangements. I do not believe that that has given rise to people being
banned from picking up their pensions because they are not dressed
properly, or the other access issues that he raised. If he is worried
about that, it is important for him to discuss it with Post Office Ltd,
and I would encourage him to do so.
Mark
Fisher:
I trust that Mr. Crozier and his
colleagues will read what the Minister has said and have the courtesy
to come back to me on the matter. Perhaps they do not understand that
the owner of that particular shopping centre operates a very tough
exclusions policy and is therefore acting as the gatekeeper to a post
office. My constituents might say, I want to use what was our
Crown post office, now in WH Smith, but those private
individuals have the right to say, I am sorry, you cannot. It
might be a public service post office, but we are not going to let you
use it. That cannot be right. All our constituents contribute
to all our post offices, so surely there has to be free and open access
for the public. It is the responsibility of the Government to ensure
that that is the case.
Mr.
McFadden:
My hon. Friend has raised the matter twice now,
and I have to say what I said before: he should discuss it with Post
Office Ltd. I certainly do not believe that franchising is an enemy of
the continuation of post office services. In fact, in some cases it
will be its saviour.
There have
probably been comments that I have not responded to, but I hope that I
have covered most of the points that have been raised and that I have
the agreement of the Committee to draw the debate to a close.
Question put and agreed
to.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Motion, that this House authorises the Secretary of State to pay, by way of financial assistance under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, in respect of post office network change to 2011, a sum exceeding £10 million and up to £465 million to Post Office Ltd.
Committee rose
at eleven minutes to Six
oclock.