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We propose that, having made that separation, 25 per cent. of Royal Mail goes into an employee trust so that shares are effectively owned by the employees to provide the necessary incentives; 25 per cent. remains in public hands with Royal Mail, because with its universal distribution requirement there is a public service element, though it is a relatively small one; and 45 per cent. of the shares are sold on the open market.
That yields about £2 billion in addition to the subsidy programmes that the Government have suggested, to put into an endowment to rebuild the network. That initial money will allow training, development and marketing to be put in place and will allow the network to be rebuilt.
Susan Kramer: The hon. Gentleman may say “Tosh”, but put that offer in front sub-postmasters and postmistresses, and in front of communities that know that their post office is under threat or declining, and the response will be very different. People can see the future and can see that our proposal works.
In the last debate on the Post Office, the Minister for Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy, who has not yet had an opportunity to speak, used a quote from a disillusioned postmistress writing in the Somerset newspaper, the Western Daily Press, which I think accurately summed up the Government’s attitude towards post offices. He said that
“people do not use the post office, they only think they need one!”—[ Official Report, 16 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 614.]
We have heard variants of that echoed over and over.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Jim Fitzpatrick): I am grateful to the hon. Lady for being so generous in giving way. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who previously spoke for the Liberals on the matter, used the same tactic of attributing that quote to me. It was not a quote from me. It was a quote from a sub-postmistress, which I was using to explain to people who did not know that even sub-postmistresses, not just the Government, were saying that there was a problem with the network.
Susan Kramer: I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I was careful to get the attribution correct, as he heard. The selection of the quote is significant, because it has been echoed time and again today. It comes back to my original point. Whether or not the Post Office has a future will depend on whether the Government believe in a viable and thriving post office network that can contribute to all kinds of social cohesion, but which also has a commercial future. If they take that approach, they will look at the plan that we have recommended and see that there is a way forward—a way to guarantee the future by keeping the social role that the post office network plays while providing it with the necessary investment. I recommend that plan not only to the Government but to the Tory Opposition, whom I hope will come up with a final strategy of their own at some point; it is sad that they did not do so today.
5.45 pm
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes) (Lab): I am pleased to be able to take part in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer). Given her lengthy speech, it is somewhat surprising that the Liberal Democrats have not tabled an amendment to the motion. Perhaps that is because they are a bit coy about their policy, which includes privatising Royal Mail, and do not want it published in the Order Paper.
Geraldine Smith: The Liberals usually like popular policies, and I do not think that they will find that privatising Royal Mail is very popular with the general public.
Shona McIsaac: I completely agree with my hon. Friend.
Susan Kramer: Liberal Democrats like policies that work; sometimes they happen to be popular and sometimes they do not. We have always been willing to choose the hard road when necessary. The reason why there is no amendment on the Order Paper is that in October we had our own Opposition day debate and set out our proposals in great detail. There seemed no need to weary the House with yet another amendment that was not going to be selected.
Shona McIsaac: It is great that the Liberal Democrats are not going to weary the House, because they do that far too much already, but that is a feeble excuse for not putting their policies and thoughts on to the Order Paper today.
I was not originally going to take part in this debate— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) should be very careful, because if he carries on jeering and cheering like that I will retaliate by using up all the time available and preventing anybody else from getting called. [ Interruption. ] Does the hon. Gentleman want to intervene?
Shona McIsaac: Good, because I would not have let him anyway.
The Conservative opening speech was such a misrepresentation of the Government’s proposals that I felt that I had to take part in the debate to try to bring a bit of balance to a very important subject. I am sure that all Members in the Chamber recognise the importance of the post office network. We all support our own local sub-post offices and Crown offices, whether in rural or inner-city areas. Wherever we are, up and down the country, we all recognise that sub-post offices, in particular, are the lifeblood of communities.
Mr. Leech: Does that mean that the hon. Lady will support keeping all the post offices in her constituency open but is happy for 2,500 to close elsewhere?
Shona McIsaac: If the hon. Gentleman will give me a wee bit of time, I will explain my thoughts on these matters, and then he can reach his own conclusions.
In spite of the way in which the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have portrayed the Government’s position, the reality is somewhat more complex. We have heard a lot today about how people’s spending habits have changed over the years. This Christmas, I am sure that people did more shopping on the internet than ever. That is not necessarily bad because, when I visited my local sorting office at Christmas, I was told that the number of packages that internet shopping generated was valuable.
Not only changing spending habits have had an impact on our post office network. Banking habits have also changed. One does not have to go back many years to
the time when few women had bank accounts; hence many payments, especially child benefit, were made through order books. It was not done because people especially wanted that but in recognition of the fact that many women did not have bank accounts. That also applied to elderly people. As the years have passed, more and more people have bank accounts. People who retire now are more than likely to have a bank account, whereas that was unlikely several decades ago.
Mr. Graham Stuart: I wonder what the hon. Lady’s constituents will make of her speech. She represents a rural constituency that is similar to mine, and hearing their Member of Parliament act as an apologist for the Government’s post office closures and provide every excuse for their shutting down thousands of post offices throughout the country, including in her constituency, will go down badly with her constituents, who would expect her to fight for them, not try to excuse the Government’s mismanagement.
Shona McIsaac: I shall not thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Given that he supported my private Member’s Bill on the Humber bridge, I expected better of a Member from north of the River Humber. I do not know whether he has paid the toll on the Humber bridge to travel south into my constituency, but it is not entirely rural. Indeed, Grimsby and Cleethorpes are the largest urban areas in that part of the east of England. However, the constituency has a rural hinterland and I care passionately about the rural network and also about what anywhere else would be deemed an inner-city network in deprived urban electoral wards.
Let me consider some of the concerns that sub-postmasters and the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters have expressed to me. Some of them have already been mentioned and I should like the Government to consider discussing them with the Post Office. They include Paypoint. The Secretary of State said that there was a problem about competition that involved Paypoint. Paypoint wants more outlets, but because of the notion that there will be competition, a sub-postmaster who would like a Paypoint machine cannot have one because it is a rival product. The Secretary of State mentioned travel insurance, but if Paypoint provided, for example, only TV licences, I do not understand why that would constitute a rival product. I should therefore like a little more explanation of the restriction on Paypoint. In parts of the rural hinterland of my constituency, the post office remains the best place to pay bills and people have to travel further to reach the nearest Paypoint machine. That should be tackled.
Constituents mentioned paying British Telecom bills and some claimed that they can no longer pay them at the post office. People can do that, but if one examines the section on how to pay at the back of BT bills, it says nothing about paying at the post office. That is not something that the Government have done. BT itself says that paying bills at the post office is the most expensive way of paying them, so it has taken a commercial decision on the matter. It has not stopped people paying in this way, but it is no longer promoting it.
We need to bear in mind the fact that commercial decisions are often involved, and that this is not just about the Government. If BT is saying that this method
of payment is too costly, the Post Office needs to start looking at what it is charging such organisations to collect these payments. Perhaps it is not demonstrating as much business sense as it should, if it is driving away custom. In a sense, that is what happened with the payment of television licence fees. The BBC said that collecting those payments through the Post Office was very expensive. Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members have been pointing the finger of blame at the Government in today’s debate, but things are never that simple or straightforward. There are many other issues involved. If we are to have a thriving network, the Post Office will need to examine its charging structures.
Richard Younger-Ross: I accept the tenet that not everything can be laid at the door of the Government, and that the Post Office is in part at fault for some of the problems that it faces. For example, Newton Abbot Crown post office is to close shortly, but the Post Office it is not even able to say whether that office is making a profit or a loss. Its inability to put a figure on this demonstrates its lack of financial competence. Does the hon. Lady agree that such post offices should not close because of the inability of the Post Office to understand its position, at least until the Government’s review has been completed?
Shona McIsaac: It would be way beyond my pay grade to comment on the future of post offices in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
People have expressed concern to me about the future of the post offices in their area, but I occasionally hear another side of the argument—if not exactly the flip-side of the coin—which does not often get mentioned. An example was something that a resident of my constituency told me recently. They wanted to send a letter by recorded delivery and went to their local village sub-post office. Unfortunately, it was shut that day, so they went to the shop in the next village. Unfortunately, the sub-post office in the shop was also closed that day, so they had to make quite a lengthy journey to the nearest town. This was not at some obscure time; it was in the middle of the working week. The reason for this happening is that the nature of some of the sub-post offices’ contracts means that they are not open at certain times of day. We need to look at the issue of opening hours.
I work closely with the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and I am very conscious of the issues relating to working hours. There should be much more flexibility for the opening hours of sub-post offices and Crown offices. They often do not reflect modern working practices, in that they are open when a lot of people are at work. Indeed, the main Crown office in the centre of Cleethorpes is probably one of the few that is open on Sundays, when it does excellent business. We need to examine those issues as well.
Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD):
I do not see how the person involved in the example that the hon. Lady mentioned could have the luxury of travelling from village to village. Public transport is also an important dimension of this issue, but not everyone has the capacity to have a car of their own. Nor does everyone have the capacity to access public transport. I represent
147 villages and hamlets, so public transport is a big issue in my area. That conspires against the thesis that she put forward.
Shona McIsaac: I shall not try the patience of the Chair by straying into a discussion on public transport. Suffice it to say that accessibility is a crucial issue as well.
Recently, I met members of the National Federation of SubPostmasters from my area, when they came down to lobby Parliament. [Interruption.] I thought hon. Members were trying to intervene, but they are not. I am intrigued, because I do not recall any Conservative or Liberal Democrat Front-Bencher mentioning meeting members or delegations from their areas when they came down to Parliament, but given the distances involved, I was pleased to be able to meet 23 members from South Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire.
My hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) and for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) and I, as well as others, had a constructive meeting with those people from our area, and some of them told us that they were not all totally opposed to the idea that there had to be closures. Closures will always be controversial, but some of those people said that they want to retire and sell their businesses. However, they want that to be managed properly. When the Government made their statement in December, and following that meeting, those members felt that what the Government said about the future of the network was very good and positive. There are those who want to retire and sell up. Property prices have increased, so people can realise their property assets and retire. That does happen.
Selling up could leave a gap in provision. A lot of people have been running sub-post offices for many years, which has skewed the age profile to the top of the range. Many of those people are thinking of retiring. They think that the package is good, and if they want to retire they can do so. Now, we have back-up. In the past, we would not know whether a gap in provision in a village would be filled by another sub-post office, but, due to what the Government are saying, that would now be carefully analysed. If an area was left without a post office, we would look at bringing in another one. That is absolutely vital for the future.
Ms Dawn Butler (Brent, South) (Lab): I thank my hon. Friend for that apt description of some postmasters who want to retire. When post offices are closing, should not the Opposition be a little more responsible in their campaigning with regard to their terminology, language and approach? Should they not try to work with the Government to ensure that there are no gaps in provision for specific areas?
Shona McIsaac: I certainly think that the difference between what the previous Government did and what we are suggesting as the way forward for the future is the social aspect of the post office in communities. We will try to ensure that we have that coverage nation wide in the network. That is very welcome. I hope that the Conservative party will support that aspect of the proposals.
I am going to mention another point as regards the Post Office card account. Of all the issues raised in my postbag, that came up the most. People were very concerned about the possibility of the Post Office card account ending. The announcement that there would be a replacement card account was therefore welcome, and it has eased many of my constituents’ fears.
I would like the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider ways of linking in credit unions to the future replacement for the card account. The areas in my constituency with high post office usage are often those with fairly high levels of deprivation. There are still people in those areas who do not have access to bank accounts because of their credit ratings, and the North East Lincolnshire Credit Union is working to keep those people away from loan sharks. Links with credit unions therefore have immense potential for tackling financial and social exclusion in the future.
In northern Lincolnshire, my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe, for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) and for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and I have always worked closely with our post office network. We heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe that my parliamentary neighbour and regional Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, worked with one of his parish councils to have a sub-post office reopened. That shows how we can work together for the future of the network.
I was astonished, however, by the support from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) for the idea that more local council services could be delivered via the sub-post office network. Perhaps he might like to have a word with his Tory colleagues on North Lincolnshire council. While my neighbouring MPs have worked with our Labour colleagues on the council, his colleagues voted against extending the community use of sub-post offices and the Local Government Association position, in complete contradiction to the policy he espoused today. That is just another example of today’s Tories saying one thing and doing another.
6.7 pm
Jeremy Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth) (Con): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) for leaving a little time for the rest of us. I shall try to use as little of it as I can. I want to speak about who is to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves, who suffers as a result and what might be done about it.
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