Post Office Network

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to hear your Glasgow accent in the Chair, Mr Gray.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I have lost most of it.

[Gavin Newlands]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for securing the debate, and I commend her for all the work she is doing on this important issue. As she mentioned, the SNP pushed hard for the banking industry to provide a fair price for banking transactions over post office counters, because the rate was simply unsustainable. I am glad that a substantial increase was agreed; it is only right, given that in many places the banks are completely reliant on the Post Office to deliver their services. I am delighted that that has been resolved.

One thing that unites Members of different parties—I say that despite the lack of Tory Back Benchers present—is the future of our post offices in our constituencies and local communities. My constituency has 14 post offices and each is vital to its communities, from Ferguslie Park to Bishopton, Gallowhill to Houston, and Linwood to Bridge of Weir—I thought that I, too, would go on a tour of my constituency.

The post office in Bridge of Weir is an example of a community seeing the real value that a post office provides to the village and working hard to secure it. It was closed in 2011 but, through the hard work of the local community, The Bridge charity was set up to take over the former library and repurpose it as the village’s post office and community centre, with a peppercorn rent from the council. From day one, however, the charity faced an uphill struggle. Its income runs at barely half of that projected by the post office, knocking the projections that the trustees made completely out of kilter. It is a matter of some anger that the post office did not qualify for community status due to the proximity of other post offices in other villages, even though Bridge of Weir public transport links can be charitably described as patchy.

Any closure of the post office would result in substantial inconvenience for service users and the wider community, which has a significantly older than average demographic. The Bridge is able to keep the post office only through cross-subsidisation of counter trade by the associated retail unit, which provides a fairly narrow retail offer in order not to conflict with any other retail operations in the village. That cannot be sustainable without a real change to the criteria by which local community post offices qualify for additional support. It is simply preposterous that every other shop in the village would have to close and lie empty before this community asset becomes eligible for consideration for the Post Office funding streams.

In the last few months Post Office Ltd has provided a one-off grant to support The Bridge. If it recognises that need, ongoing support should certainly be offered to The Bridge. I have discussed this issue with the previous Minister; if she will allow, I hope to discuss it with the new Minister. I hope that she will take away what I and many other Members are saying, and that she speaks to the Post Office about amending the criteria to introduce more flexibility—we need a bit of common sense in designating the units of the network that need support.

Post offices such as that in Bridge of Weir, and in thousands of communities across the country, need real support and recognition from the UK Government that they are not just places to collect pensions and post birthday presents; they are the lifeblood of places that have had facilities taken away from them over the years. Sadly, we know that our postmasters have been poorly served by the Post Office and its management.

The Horizon IT fiasco is not just a damning indictment of the Post Office management and its inability to resolve problems competently; it is a devastating judgment on the “Upstairs, Downstairs” culture that seems to pervade the organisation. Dozens of victims have had their livelihood and liberty stripped from them at the behest of management, who denied for nearly two decades that there was any problem at all. We now know that there was a problem entirely of the Post Office’s making, which has cost a high price, and not just financially; the human victims will never get back the weeks and months they have wrongly spent behind bars, and families will never get their loved ones back.

My constituent was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 13 months. Her life was turned upside down. She lost her marriage and house as a result. No level of compensation is adequate for the damage that Horizon has done to her life. That episode demonstrates the fundamental cultural issues within the Post Office management that need to be addressed, and it highlights the lack of governmental oversight that led to that management culture.

For too long the Post Office has been treated like an old armchair: too useful to throw out, but unloved, battered and kept out of obligation rather than enthusiasm. I wish the Minister well in her new role, but that attitude has to change if we want a post office network that is fit for the remaining years of the 21st century. That attitude left some sub-postmasters living below minimum wage earnings due to the paltry sums paid to them to maintain a link in the post office network, and it has left the Bridge of Weir post office continually fighting for its future rather than receiving the support it deserves.

We need recognition from the Government that a post office is more than the sum of its parts. It is a vital cog in our society and communities that helps to bind us together, and it cannot be yet another piece of social cohesion that is left to be stripped away by the mantra of market forces.

A Green Industrial Revolution

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I plan to focus my relatively short remarks on transport as it pertains to the green industrial revolution that is so obviously required. I look forward to taking up my transport brief and working closely with the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), and the Opposition Front-Bench team, and with the relatively new Secretary of State for Transport, who must have the best job in the Cabinet, given that his predecessor set the bar so low that he cannot possibly fail to clear it. [Interruption.] In the repatriation of the Thomas Cook passengers, he managed to book airlines that actually had planes, so already he is one up on his predecessor.

I formally congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill). He may be new to this place but he has been in this game a wee while now, and it showed in an excellent and passionate maiden speech. I also congratulate all other new Members who have made maiden speeches today. It is a tough assignment, but they have all done it with great aplomb. I well remember my maiden speech, with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when you allowed me some leeway at the end of my speech as I had gone over my time; I am forever grateful to you for not cutting me off before the end of my speech.

I want to comment on an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) raised in his Front-Bench speech at the start of the debate—the UK Government’s failed green deal scheme. That scheme had laudable aims, but it was badly designed and allowed cowboy companies with criminal intent to drive a coach and horses through the various loopholes in the legislation. As a result, hundreds of my constituents have been defrauded, often for thousands of pounds, by Robert Skillen and his company, HELMS. Unsurprisingly, Skillen liquidated HELMS and emigrated.

The Government must take responsibility for their failed scheme and ensure that our constituents are fully compensated. The members of the green deal all-party parliamentary group and myself, as co-chair, will be renewing our campaign for justice for those affected by HELMS in the coming Session.

[David Linden]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he is doing in the all-party parliamentary group. May I say to the Government, through him, that it would be helpful if the Department for Energy, Business and Industrial Strategy had a more adequate number of staff to work through the backlog of people who are trying to contact BEIS to deal with issues to do with the green deal?

[Gavin Newlands]

I could not agree more. I am seeking a meeting with the new Minister—the previous Minister involved was the then Member for Devizes—to see how the assistance of BEIS has actually helped with the Green Deal Finance Company, because from our viewpoint it does not seem to have helped a whole lot.

For a decade now, the Scottish Government have been pursuing a long-term vision of what Scotland’s economy and society should look like in the decades to come. It is a vision that sees all our electricity needs coming from renewable sources, and the transport system becoming carbon neutral. It is a vision that sees the potential of the natural resources that we have all around us, waiting to be harnessed and used to benefit us all. It is a vision that puts the reindustrialisation of our country at the heart of the strategy, arm in arm with the investment and renewal that has come to the fore over the decade.

My constituency is seeing the fruits of that long-term vision right now. For more than 50 years Renfrew—the largest town in my constituency and my home town—has been without a fixed rail link, and it is the biggest settlement in Scotland that is entirely reliant on buses for public transport. That calamitous mistake from the 1960s is about to be rectified with the beginnings of the Glasgow city region metro, which will start in my constituency at Paisley Gilmour Street, and finally provide the airport with a connection to the rail network.

That project is part of a green industrial revolution, and just as the original industrial revolution had the most expansive rail network in the world at its heart, so must the 21st-century version have transport and connectivity running through it like letters through a stick of rock. Hundreds of people will be employed directly in building the project, and hundreds more will be involved in the supply chains—an economic impact that will go way beyond my constituency and those of my neighbours. Using clean, green, renewable electricity, the new metro will be part of a public transport network that is rapidly being modernised.

Since devolution we have seen the reopening of the Borders railway, and routes from Hamilton to Larkhall, Stirling to Alloa and Airdrie to Bathgate, with only the former line not electrified. Virtually the whole central belt network now runs on electric lines, which contrasts with years of stagnation and neglect. That programme continues, with preparatory work beginning for the entire west of Scotland network to run under the wires, and longer-term goals of electrification north of Perth and the complete decarbonisation of Scotland’s railways within the next 15 years.

Along the A9, the spine of Scotland, work on the first electric highway is under way. Charging points are being installed at a rate of knots, providing the security of energy supply that is vital for the transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric ones. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun alluded to, in Norway, which has a strong Government plan and the will to make transformational changes, sales of electric vehicles have grown exponentially. Petrol and diesel cars are on their way out—some going for an oil-rich country—and a confident, independent, self-governing country is taking big decisions on the big issues facing our planet. I hope that Scotland will soon join our Nordic friends as part of that club, whatever obstacles the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State think they are putting in our way.

In contrast, the UK Government cannot decide whether they want to make existing fuels cleaner and less polluting, with a decision on E10 petrol still lying in the long grass where it was kicked. Over recent years, those on the Treasury Benches and their Departments have been in a state of complete paralysis. Electrification projects are cancelled on a rolling basis, including in Windermere, on the Nottingham to Sheffield line and in Hull, south-west Wales and Coventry. Towns and cities have yet again been left behind, and jobs and economic growth directly connected to decarbonisation have been lost. Meanwhile, Crossrail spirals out of control and over budget and Crossrail 2 is in the pipeline as if its predecessor never happened. Billions are spent on extension after extension to London’s underground and overground. Why concentrate yet more spending, infrastructure, economic output, resources, and ultimately people in a single city, when we know that a fairer allocation of economic power will result in a better environmental outcome and a less unequal society?

If the UK Government were serious about boosting the economies of the north and south-west England, they would look to Scotland for ideas. Instead, they are presiding over delay and decay. In Tyne and Wear, 40-year-old metro carriages have had their lifespan extended to 2025, while the system awaits new trains, more than a decade after the current ones exceeded their life expectancy. Even when the UK Government finally coughed up for trains that brought to mind modernity and not Methuselah, the then Chancellor handed over only 60% of the costs requested.

In conclusion, if the UK Government want to be serious about a green industrial revolution, the short termism and insular—

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Metropolitanism.

[Gavin Newlands]

What the shadow Secretary of State said—Hansard can ask him later what he said. If the Government want to be serious about the revolution, that short-termism has to stop. Spending seven times more per person on transport investment in London than in north-east England is not the answer to anything. Learn the lessons from Scotland, make decarbonisation a priority, and the economic rewards of the transition can be spread across the UK.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is a great pleasure to call, to make her maiden speech, Olivia Blake.