Postal Services Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

24EA: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Operating methods of post offices
(1) A company which is engaged in the provision of post offices shall not require changes to be made to the operation of any post office in relation to any of the matters listed in subsection (2) unless the conditions in subsection (3) have been satisfied.
(2) These matters are—
(a) the terms on which any sub-postmaster operates a post office;(b) the required opening hours of any post office;(c) the services offered by any post office; and(d) the physical conditions in which the services are provided.(3) The conditions for the purpose of subsection (1) are that—
(a) there has been consultation with representatives of the employees affected by the proposed changes and any sub-postmaster affected, as well as with relevant consumer groups;(b) a report has been submitted to the Secretary of State by the company proposing the changes, including the proposed timescale for the introduction of the changes.”

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who is unable to be present. We believe there is feeling among sub-postmasters that Post Office Ltd will now have too free a hand to implement changes in what are now styled as post office locals, which may result in them losing a significant amount of revenue. That would throw into question the whole viability of many such sub-post offices and their associated shops.

This amendment is in three proposed subsections. The first subsection sets out the relationship between the second and the third, which concludes that there has to be consultation with representatives of the employees affected by the proposed changes and any sub-postmaster affected as well as with relevant consumer groups. Under subsection (3)(b) of the proposed new clause, the company would have to submit to the Secretary of State a report proposing the changes, including the proposed timetable for the introduction of the changes. The matters concerned are: first, the terms under which the sub-postmaster operates the post office; secondly, the required opening hours of any post office; thirdly, the services offered by any post office; and fourthly, the physical conditions in which the services are provided, such as how the staff operate on one counter and so on.

It is apparent that there are worries about the contract to be negotiated so far as sub-postmasters are concerned. We understand that the payment of commission rather than a guaranteed annual sum is one of the features that is likely to lead to a substantial loss of income—perhaps the Minister would like to comment on that.

I have of course looked at the BIS booklet about the pilots, which is very well set out but neatly sidesteps the question of what happens if the sub-post districts are fewer and further apart. Individual examination of the pilots does not quite reveal what is a plausible scenario: that they would be much further apart. For example—this is simple arithmetic from school—doubling the radius of a catchment area from three miles to six miles will not just double the area concerned, because r² means that you are going from nine square miles to 36 square miles.

Finally, page 16 of the booklet—this is in connection with the pilots—says this is a way in which you can implement the Government’s big society reforms at the local level. It is too late at night to play around with the concept of the big society, but surely that is particularly grotesquely inappropriate when the number of sub-postmasters is likely to fall. I am reminded of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which after all has some similarities of concept to the big society, with Big Brother and so on. In that book he introduced “doublethink”, whereby words often mean precisely the opposite—this is a mixture of George Orwell and Lewis Carroll, I guess—of their natural meaning. So the big society now has big wide spaces with fewer services. I beg to move.

[Viscount Tenby]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall and others. In doing so, I confess that I will be singing from the same song sheet as my noble friends Lord Cameron and Lady Howe. On the basis that a good song bears singing again, I make no apology for returning to the theme.

The Government have stated that they will not add to the 5,000 or so closures to the network so sadly seen in recent years, but I suggest that they are being a little disingenuous. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Let me explain. Conditions can be created that may make it difficult for some sub-postmasters to continue to trade profitably. For example, there may be the withdrawal of the ability to offer road tax renewals, as the Minister referred to earlier, or to facilitate the postage of packages over a certain weight. It has just been announced, for good measure, that the contract in respect of pension and benefit cheques has been awarded to Citibank, which is to subcontract to Paypoint, a company that works through newsagents and garages. This is a decision that has been described as “bitterly disappointing” by the National Federation of SubPostmasters, while the spokesman for Consumer Focus has been quoted as saying that,

“Government has committed to making the Post Office the ‘front office’ for public services. The decision … seems out of step with that”.

Most of these sub-post offices combine retail outlets with postal counter services, certainly in the suburbs but mainly in rural communities. They provide a lifeline for the increasingly large element in our population of the elderly and often infirm. It is no good talking to such citizens about electronic gadgetry and the like. They want to be able to access the outlets without recourse to a car, and to experience tried and trusted procedures when they get there. The lifeline that the retailer needs to maintain is a viable business. What is additionally important from their point of view is that, arising from these services, these shoppers also buy the often-quoted packet of cornflakes and more besides. These sub-post offices are the very outlets that the Post Office should be seeking to support with the introduction of new products and services. They are indeed the jewel in the crown, and this amendment seeks to protect that jewel properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I hope that reflection can be mutual. Then, when we come to Report stage, we will see if there has been any degree of accommodation of what is widely felt in the Committee.

One of the problems of the relationship in the new model between the Post Office and what are currently called sub-postmasters is that there is currently little transparency over what that relationship is. My noble friend Lord Young put a question to which I may have missed the answer. Is it not the case that there is widespread talk that it will be based on a straight commission basis rather than a minimum for the year, which is a sort of salary? The sub-postmasters in thinly populated areas are not dinosaurs. Generally, their surname probably is Patel and they are fairly sharp businesspeople, but they do have these problems. They are the heart and soul of the community, along with the school, the church, the cricket ground and whatever. That is life.

I am glad that the noble Baroness has today started to tease out, I hope, the ambiguities of her repeated statement that “we have no programme of closures”. Well, of course we are not talking about a programme of closures of sub-post offices; it is not the Government who will do that. Let me put it as kindly as I can: that is not the answer to the question. We are trying to see the circumstances in which there could be any protection, against any criteria, when a community sees a post office about to close.

There are generalisations about the model, and how it will be wonderfully sparkling and new. There is a broadly continuous counter in the post office in the shop I go into. Two out of the four staff have the necessary “competences” to deal with the post office side, and will also sell you a lettuce or half a dozen eggs. I may sound like a dinosaur for a minute, but in what sense does that need to be modernised?

I am very grateful for the support that we have received from the Cross Benches, which suggests to me that the next step should be to see whether there can be something to reassure the many sub-postmasters. I know that they are a disparate group. Having been a trade union official for 35 years, I am not unfamiliar with that. We are trying to look at it from a local perspective, in the spirit of the big society; how about that as a conciliatory way to end?

On this occasion, therefore, I hope that there can be further consideration before Report. Unless there is, I predict that colleagues will wish to press the point further and, maybe, divide the House at that stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 24EA withdrawn.