Postal Services (Rural Areas)

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Sarah Newton

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I would like to pay tribute to and thank Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark), for bringing forward this important debate on the Floor of the House through the Backbench Business Committee.

The mail and postal service plays a key role in the lives of my constituents, and stands at the centre of much that is good in the local community. The local post office and the mail service are central to both the economic and the social life of South Down. Some 55% of post offices are in rural areas and 31% represent the only retail outlet in their area—a situation with which I am very familiar in my constituency, particularly in hard-to-reach areas in the rural communities—a point to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) has already referred.

The postal service plays a vital role in connecting our society: it is the central hub and is an essential part of the rural infrastructure, especially for the elderly and many vulnerable people who may be excluded from other forms of communication. Further cuts to our postal service and network risk isolating many in our society by creating a two-tier network that separates the connected and the dislocated. Such a development would be bad for our society and for our economy.

To express support of our existing position is not to say that we cannot develop and modernise the service for the 21st century, and we should indeed be looking at ways to reinvigorate this institution as part of the drive to develop and regenerate the rural economy—a theme to which I will return later. As many Members have mentioned today, however, the fear is that the privatisation of the Royal Mail and its impact on the relationship with the Post Office will place a further strain on the Post Office’s ability to survive, especially in rural areas, and that it will not revitalise the service, as some have suggested it will, but leave it to wither on the vine. I am worried that the inevitable market pressures from privatisation will place further strain across the postal services and that the parts that are not as profitable, especially in remote or rural areas, will have to be closed. We should not and cannot let this happen.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful point and obviously represents a constituency very much like my own. Does she agree that there will be cases in which remote rural communities need these services so much that, although it will not be possible for them to develop commercially, they will need continued public subsidy? Will she join me in asking the Minister to commit to—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to sit down? Questions must be brief.