Post Office Museum and Post Office Railway

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Michael Fallon

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) on securing this debate on the future of the postal museum and the Post Office railway. I commend her for such an entertaining and informative speech, which I think we all enjoyed.

The Government recognise that the British postal museum and archive is the leading resource for all aspects of British postal history in the United Kingdom. These records are designated as being of outstanding national importance. The BPMA was established by Royal Mail in 2004 as an independent charity to manage and preserve the Royal Mail archive and to be the custodian of the museum’s collection. As well as housing the world’s greatest collection of British postage stamps, the museum and archive hold written records of the GPO and the Post Office, staff records, telegrams—as we have heard—posters, photographs, uniforms, pillar boxes, an amazing collection of postal vehicles including a five-wheeled “pentacycle”, and a fascinating variety of other artefacts, including the signature stamp of Anthony Trollope, who worked for the Post Office for over 30 years, and sheets of the Penny Black, the postage stamp that is at the heart of the history of the universal service.

The BPMA effectively safeguards visual, written and physical records from 400 years of postal history. It acknowledged some time ago that in order to secure a sustainable future for that heritage, it would need to relocate and redevelop the museum and archive. The current premises at Freeling House have space and access limitations; they are also prone to intermittent flooding, so the staff have had to deal with additional curatorial issues. As the hon. Lady told us, there was previously a Post Office museum, but it closed in 1998. Since then, a large part of the collections has been held at a storage facility in Essex, or held by other museums around the country. It is clear that the BPMA needs a permanent and damp-free home, for its museum collections in particular but also to lay the foundations for a more sustainable future.

The plans that the BPMA has set in play to address the situation are beginning to pay off. These are exciting times. An existing building near the Mount Pleasant complex is to be the new home for the archive, and the surrounding land will be used to build a new exhibition space. The selected building, Calthorpe House, has been provided by Royal Mail, and planning permission has been granted for the development of a museum building on adjacent land. The BPMA is also proceeding with plans to bring back into service part of the historic mail rail underground system—which we have heard about—as an additional visitors’ attraction. That will enhance the visitors’ experience, and I am sure that it will attract many people to the hon. Lady’s constituency.

The cost of all the redevelopment—again, as we have heard—is just over £22 million, which is a significant sum. The BPMA has secured much of that funding from a number of sources. Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd remain firmly committed to the work of the BPMA and to the redevelopment project. Donald Brydon, the chairman of Royal Mail, has been a great advocate for the BPMA, and has been consistently in touch with me about it. Royal Mail has made available a 999-year lease on Calthorpe House—the new museum and archive premises—at a nominal rent, and further donations of £350,000 have been made in respect of preparation work for the new museum.

Both Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd continue to make payments to the BPMA as part of the ongoing arrangements. For example, in 2012 a £640,000 charitable donation was made for the running and maintenance of the museum. Fees of £400,000 were also paid for archive services provided by the BPMA in order to ensure that Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd would meet their obligations under the Public Records Act 1958, and, in doing so, would themselves ensure that records of social and historic importance were preserved and made publicly available after 20 years.

Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd have also contributed to the new project by providing soft loans and grants of just over £7.5 million, to be paid at various stages of the redevelopment. To secure the loans, the BPMA prepared a commercial business case which will enable it to be more self-funding in future—by, for example, charging for mail rail, and allowing its facilities to be hired for corporate events. The BPMA has also secured access to heritage lottery funding of over £4.25 million, and was awarded £250,000 as initial funding, with access to a further £4 million-plus. My Department arranged a contribution of £70,000 to the BPMA last year. That came about as a result of the terms of the retail share offer element of the initial public offering which we saw through successfully in October. Under the terms of the offer, any sums less than the offer price of one ordinary share were not to be refunded to the applicant, but the Secretary of State could give these amounts to charitable purposes.

[Emily Thornberry]

Was all the residue and the money that was to be given to charities given to this museum, or did some of it go elsewhere?

[Michael Fallon]

My understanding is that it was all given to this particular charitable purpose, but I will check whether I am right.

We considered what charitable donation would be most appropriate and we thought a donation to the BPMA was the most merited of the various possibilities canvassed. The BPMA is also raising significant funds from charities and foundations by selling surplus duplicate stamp collections and related material and using corporate donors to help to raise the funds needed. All proceeds from such duplicate stamp sales are ring-fenced for use by the BPMA. The BPMA also has effective plans in place—along the lines of its existing fundraising activities—to attract the outstanding funds needed for the project.

I hope that today’s debate has served to highlight the highly important work for which the BPMA is responsible as custodian of our postal heritage. That is deserving of wider recognition, and I think deserving of the highest praise given the history of the museum and some of the hiccups along the way. Through the hard work and determination of the BPMA’s administrators over the last few years, this truly worthy project is now within touching distance of coming to fruition, and to get this far is a magnificent achievement in its own right.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all who have already made contributions to the redevelopment project. Through their generosity a very important part of Britain’s history will be preserved for the benefit and enrichment of everyone—most importantly, of course, future generations. I would encourage all charitable trusts and foundations, corporate sponsors and individuals to give serious consideration to supporting the BPMA in whatever way they can.

I hope that any necessary additional funding can soon be secured to ensure that work can start on schedule for the planned opening in 2016. In the interim I hope that anybody listening to this debate, including those of us who have engaged in it, will be encouraged by the BPMA’s plans and will seriously consider paying a visit to the museum, as I intend to do, to find out more about a key period of our modern history—the communications revolution that started here in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century and spread with remarkable speed around the globe.

The Government will continue to monitor the progress of the project with keen interest, and Parliament will, of course, be kept informed of the progress through Royal Mail’s annual reports on its heritage activities that are laid in Parliament, as the Government required under the Postal Services Act 2011.

Question put and agreed to.