Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Touhig

Monday 28th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, the Support and Aspiration Green Paper, published in 2011, contained the aspiration that it would be as good as its name and would make the system of provision less adversarial and give children, young people and their parents greater clarity about their rights. It clearly stated that local authorities would have to set out a local offer which parents could rely on. However, parents and special education professionals are concerned that the Bill will not put an end to the battles faced by families which the Green Paper so clear-sightedly analysed as a major blot on the system and pledged to end. They also worry that it fails to put in place appropriate accountability mechanisms in order to ensure that local authorities deliver the support that families need.

The Government’s intention to put children, young people and their parents at the heart of the system, and Ministers’ oft-repeated desire to ensure that the services outlined in the local offer are responsive to families’ needs, are commendable. The key to this is accountability: if families with disabled children and children with special educational needs are not able to hold local agencies to account for the delivery of the services in the local offer, they will have no way of ensuring that the services they need are available.

The Bill makes some useful moves in this direction. Clause 27 states that local authorities must consult children and young people with special educational needs and their parents when reviewing education and care provision in the local offer. Clause 30 requires local authorities to publish comments about their local offer from children with SEN and their parents, as well as the authorities’ responses to those comments. However, I am concerned that, while publishing the comments is a start, it will not of itself ensure that local offers are responsive to local needs. Local agencies will be under no obligation to act on the comments and to make the improvements parents want to see. Parents will still have to battle with local authorities for the services they need.

The amendment places the onus on local authorities to improve the service, rather than leaving children, young people and their parents to fight for their rights themselves. It would require local authorities, after publishing comments on the local offer, to involve young people and parents in producing an action plan to revise the education and care provision outlined in the local offer; to review and report on progress against the action plan; and then to revise the local offer accordingly. This would help to ensure that local support is responsive to local need.

Without this amendment, which is aimed at driving up the quality of local services, I fear that little will change for families, and the opportunity to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled children and children with special educational needs will be missed. Parents will still feel that they have to battle through the labyrinths of bureaucracy the Green Paper spoke about for the support they and their child need. I therefore hope that the Government will adopt this amendment, which will ensure that the local offer will be something parents can indeed rely on. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my support to the noble Lord, Lord Low, on Amendment 98A, to which I have added my name. I shall also speak to Amendment 99, in my name and the names of my noble friend Lady Hughes and my noble friend Lady Jones.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, has outlined the objectives of Amendment 98A, which requires local authorities, where services that they provide have been found insufficient, to involve parents and young people in producing an action plan, to revise the education and care provision in the local offer and to review and report on progress against the action plan.

I look across the Room. I believe that the Minister has spent most of his life working in business. I am sure, therefore, that he would see the merits of this amendment; if he ran a business that was in danger of losing a major customer, he would want to find out why and then to put in place an action plan to deliver what the customer wanted, thereby keeping the business. Amendment 98A does just that. The provider of the service is required to engage with the user to ensure that what is provided is what is needed. That seems sensible to me.

I turn to Amendment 99. Clause 27 requires local authorities to keep education and care provision under review. While that is welcome, in the view of the Opposition it is insufficient. Amendment 99 would require local authorities to assess whether there was sufficient funding in place to be able to secure these services for all the children and young people who needed them. If they found that they lacked the wherewithal, they should consider jointly commissioning services with neighbouring local authorities where appropriate.

These are difficult economic times and there has been huge pressure on local authority spending and budgets. Whether or not services are secured and available should not depend on whether a particular local council can afford the level of provision needed to meet the needs of children and young people in its area. Therefore, collaboration strongly commends itself.

I am sure that I am not alone in believing that accountability is the key to these reforms. Parents, children and young people should be able to rely on the services provided by the local authority and render it accountable when that provision is not met. That seems fair and proper, and our amendment requires local authorities to consider working together and sharing services with neighbouring authorities. I believe that that already takes place in a number of London boroughs. I know that in my part of the country, Wales, a lot of collaboration is now taking place between local authorities that are sharing the ability to provide services across a number of boroughs.

Importantly, Amendment 99 would not constrain local authorities to work with others but would merely require them to consider doing so in the interests of improving services for children and young people. The amendment was dismissed in the other place, where the Minister said that the decision for spending on children and young people with special educational needs must remain one for the local authority. We would certainly agree with that, but nevertheless Amendment 99 highlights a problem and seeks to find a solution. If the Government recognise that there is a problem but do not want to accept this amendment as a solution, will the Minister explain how they will ensure that local authorities deliver the services that young people and children need and that they are accountable for providing those services? In other words, if the Government do not like our solution, what is their solution to a problem that we all recognise exists?

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Touhig

Monday 29th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I shall speak more briefly, your Lordships will be pleased to learn, than I have in any of the debates we have held so far in Committee. I wish to speak to Amendment 105R. This is a probing amendment designed to seek clarification as to the meaning of Clause 72. The clause gives local authorities power to delegate some of their functions to other care providers. This raises the question of whether care provided under such delegated authority should be regarded as arranged by a public authority and therefore subject to the Human Rights Act. Clause 72(6) states that:

“Anything done or omitted to be done by a person authorised under this section … is to be treated … as done or omitted … by … the local authority.”.

This means that the local authority remains bound notwithstanding any delegation of its functions. But the Joint Committee on the draft Care and Support Bill recommended that the clause should be amended to state that the person with delegated authority is also subject to the same legal obligations as the local authority itself. It is argued that this should include obligations under the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. However, subsection (7)(a) puts the whole matter in doubt by providing that this does not apply,

“for the purposes of the terms of any contract between the authorised person and the local authority which relate to the function”.

The amendment seeks clarification as to what this means and an assurance that not only local authorities but also those who provide care under these arrangements will be treated as public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and other legislation.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 105Q in my name and in the name of someone I am proud to call a noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, who spoke to this amendment so well and eloquently. As law makers, we can be proud of the Autism Act 2009. It was a significant piece of legislation and it is well embedded. I look forward to the review of the autism strategy that the Government are now undertaking. This amendment will ensure that the duties set out in the statutory guidance continue to apply to local authorities and NHS bodies to ensure the ongoing implementation of the Act. There is much wisdom and common sense in this and I hope that the Government will support it.

Special Educational Needs (Direct Payments) (Pilot Scheme) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Touhig

Monday 16th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for writing to me personally to give me maximum notice of this debate, which has been brought on fairly quickly after the new year. I am not complaining about that. We asked the Minister to make debating the order a priority in the parliamentary timetable when the order-making power was inserted into the Bill on Report so that the proposals could be given the fullest opportunity to show their worth. It is therefore good that we have this early opportunity of scrutinising the order. Like the department, we want to get on with the pilots and evaluating them in order to understand how much substance, if any, there is in the concerns that have been expressed. It was nevertheless considerate of the Minister to give me maximum notice.

The Government have been very accommodating in the approach that they have adopted in the development of the order. In response to representations, they agreed that it should require the affirmative rather than the negative procedure. The sunset horizon has been reduced from five years to two years and the pilots will be undertaken only in pathfinder authorities or those that are piloting direct payments in health.

Some further safeguards asked for have also been introduced. In response to representations from the Special Educational Consortium, the order has been reworded with a view to ensuring that the receipt of a direct payment in no way threatens the statutory right of the child to receive the educational provisions set out in their statement and that the viability of specialist SEN services is not threatened by direct payments taking resources out of the system. Nevertheless, I confess to retaining a degree of scepticism about the Government's ability to ensure all of that and as to what will be the effect of direct payments in practice.

I hope that the Minister will not feel that, having been absent on the occasion when the order-making power was added to the Bill, I have turned up as a bit of a wet blanket as regards the general consensus established on a previous occasion and that he does not wish that I had stayed away again this time. I do not wish to be a wet blanket but just like the noble Lord, Lord Rix, I wish to draw attention to a number of concerns that need to be bottomed, which I believe the Minister is as keen to bottom as anybody.

Education is a universal service for all children. What will be the effect of resources being taken out of the system by way of direct payments? What will be the effect on other children with SEN who do not have direct payments? Will they see services reduced? What will be the effect on the ability of schools, colleges and local authorities whose responsibility it is to educate disabled children and children with SEN to plan for the coherent delivery of the relevant services?

I understand that all relevant statutory duties, such as the duty to provide or arrange special educational provision contained in Section 324 of the Education Act 1996, remain in place throughout the pilots. I also understand that the order includes a requirement in paragraphs 11(c) and 17(f)(i) that local authorities consider the potential adverse impact on other services that they provide or arrange for other children and young people in their areas and that they stop making direct payments if it becomes apparent that the payments are having such an impact. But direct payments take money out of the system. How can the Government be sure that this will not threaten the viability of specialist services? How can they be sure that giving responsibility to the parent instead of the local authority or school will not undermine the legal right of children to receive the provision that they are entitled to? The Government may say that they do not want these things to happen, but how can they ensure it?

There may be unintended consequences too. Some schools and local authorities may wash their hands of difficult children by encouraging parents to take a direct payment. Parents and young people may be encouraged to take a direct payment when assessments are unclear as to what they are entitled to, thus putting their ability to purchase the necessary support at risk. What if parents do not use the direct payment for the purpose for which it was intended? Parents do not always behave as responsibly as we would like. Of course, the local authority might be able to take them to court, but that is surely not where we want to end up.

The Special Educational Consortium is concerned that the Government have not fully considered the impact of resources for this universal service being taken away from schools and local authorities and being held by individuals. Careful thought will need to be given to the impact of parents or young people holding the budget. Direct payments held by parents and young people will inevitably interact with school and college finances and employment policies. This may have implications for the way schools and local authorities plan for the education of children with special educational needs. For example, if a parent employs a teaching assistant to work with their child in school, who will be responsible for managing that teaching assistant? Who ensures that the child’s teacher works collaboratively with the teaching assistant? Who is accountable for the education outcomes for the child, and ultimately how will schools’ ability to plan provision for all children with SEN be affected? Safeguards to ensure the sustainability of specialist support services, particularly for children not eligible for direct payments, need to be copper-bottomed.

There are other concerns, such as how the Government will ensure that the provisions set out in the statement are properly quantified and specified before a direct payment is made. I will not go on listing them in more tedious detail now. The department is aware of these concerns from the Special Educational Consortium. They clearly place a premium on the evaluation of the pilots for bottoming the extensive range of issues to which this order gives rise.

I was greatly encouraged by the way in which the Minister was seized of the importance of evaluation when the order-making power was inserted into the Bill on Report and, most important of all, that he clearly saw the importance of approaching the evaluation with an open mind and not with a preconceived idea about what should come out of the pilots. The fact that the department is also working so co-operatively with the Special Educational Consortium on the development of the order and, I hope, with the development of the pilots is very much to be welcomed and is very encouraging. Undertaken in that spirit, I greatly look forward to the results of the evaluation.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister for sharing with us the correspondence that his fellow Ministers have had with others because that was very helpful in updating us on progress. As a result of the Education Act 2011, the Secretary of State now has the power to create pilot schemes to test the use of direct payments for meeting special educational needs in education settings. During the passage of the Bill, the Government accepted that this important proposal should receive the appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny and that it should be done by the affirmative resolution procedure. The Government introduced that at that stage. In his opening remarks today, the Minister very kindly gave me some credit for that idea, but it was not really due to me: it was a holy trinity as the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Rix, had the same idea. Unfortunately, they could not be present on Report, so I actually spoke the words and got the credit that the Minister has given me. A holy trinity and not one part of the deity alone was responsible for this proposal, and I am delighted that the Government welcomed it.

On Report, I and others welcomed the greater personalisation of education provision for children and young people with special educational needs because it is right. However, there are some particular risks in the use of direct payments in education, particularly in schools. This is a major change in the way that education is delivered, and it is right that it is being carefully considered. I know the Special Educational Consortium has been working closely with the Minister’s officials. I am very grateful for and appreciative of the hard work that his officials have put in and the understanding that they have had in trying to mitigate some of the worries that the Special Educational Consortium and others have had about aspects of the Bill.

Education Bill

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Touhig

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 24 to 28. I shall speak as briefly as I can because these amendments had a good airing in Committee. However, I was unfortunately unable to be present when they were discussed and so I will take this opportunity to say a few words on them—not just for the sake of it, of course, for the Government have come some way to meet us, but because some concerns remain, which have been raised with me by the Special Education Consortium, on which it would be helpful to have reassurances from the Minister.

The amendments relate to Clause 4, which toughens up the arrangements for pupil exclusions. Clause 4 makes significant changes to the appeals process and removes the power from the proposed independent review panel to order the reinstatement of an excluded child except in cases of direct disability discrimination. There are many children with special educational needs who are not the subject of disability discrimination, and the purpose of the amendments is to introduce safeguards into the exclusion process to deal with their case.

Amendment 15 makes provision for regulations to require that where a pupil has been excluded from school for a fixed period on two or more occasions in a 12-month period, or is at risk of permanent exclusion, a head teacher must ensure that there is an assessment of whether the child has unidentified learning needs, that there is a review of the effectiveness of the special educational provision being made if the pupil has identified special educational needs, and that there is a review of the effectiveness of the reasonable adjustments being made if the pupil has a disability.

Amendments 24 to 28 would require regulations to make provision for a number of things: for parents to request a SEN expert to advise the panel on SEN issues; about the information parents are given on their right to request a SEN expert; the skills and qualifications that a SEN expert must have; the ability of the SEN expert to review the needs of the child and whether the school has put the correct support in place; the duty of the school to co-operate with the work of the SEN expert; and the ability of parents to select a SEN expert of their choice.

The Government have moved some way on these issues from where they started in the other place and it is clear that they do not wish to disadvantage children with special educational needs. Indeed, they have published draft guidance on exclusions which recognises the need to protect children with SEN, which I very much welcome. However, there are some outstanding concerns. The guidance is clear that head teachers should, as far as possible, avoid permanently excluding children with SEN. However, the guidance needs to be more specific and detailed at this point. Have all the steps been taken which need to be taken? This could include additional adjustments, critical extra support or other interventions which may play a crucial role in preventing exclusion. The guidance moves too quickly to discussing alternative placements without encouraging schools to consider whether they have answered all these questions. I should be grateful if the Minister could address this point in his response.

The guidance focuses heavily on preventing exclusions of statemented pupils. This is, of course, very important. However, it is important also to bear in mind that some 18 per cent of children, or roughly 1.4 million children, with a special educational need do not have a statement. I ask the Minister to consider extending the guidance to address the needs of children on school action or school action plus. Children on school action plus may have substantial needs but do not have the protection afforded by a statement of SEN. Such children are more than 20 times more likely to be excluded than the rest of the school population and so additional safeguards are clearly needed in their case.

I turn now to the remaining concerns about the SEN experts and the role they could play in advising an independent review panel. I welcome the clarity that the draft guidance brings in relation to the impartiality and expertise of the SEN expert, but retaining parental confidence is key to the success of these reforms and it is with that in mind that I have tabled these amendments again. The school’s role is key here and yet the guidance does not make clear that schools should be required to inform parents of their right to request a SEN expert when their child is excluded. The SEN expert clearly has a vital role to play in protecting the interests of the child and yet the guidance states in terms that the expert’s role does not include making an assessment of the pupil’s special educational needs or making a judgment about whether the school has taken the appropriate steps to meet the child’s needs.

As I have said, I welcome the guidance’s clarity on the need for an expert on special educational needs. However, it remains unclear whether this expert will have the requisite understanding and experience of the disability or SEN in question. I ask the Minister to consider revising the guidance to make it clearer that “expert” should also mean “relevant”.

My final point on the expert relates again to parental confidence. As it stands, the expert will be paid for by the local authority if the child is in a maintained school and by the school if in an academy or free school. While I welcome the guidance stating that local authorities should take reasonable steps to offer a choice of expert and that the expert cannot be connected with the case, it remains a concern that the paymaster should be the institution that the parent is appealing against. If it could be made unambiguously clear that parents could have the expert of their choice, that would surely help to bolster confidence in the independence of the system. I hope that the Minister can give me some reassurance on this point and on my other points as well. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, who has made a powerful case articulating the concerns that still exist despite the good debate that we had in Committee on exclusions. I do not intend to rehearse the arguments deployed in Committee, save to remind the House that the Government’s equality impact assessment states that 72 per cent of all pupil exclusions from schools in England are youngsters with special educational needs. That 72 per cent is a very high figure, and one we need to keep in mind as we seek to resolve these issues.

Yesterday, I attended the launch of Finished at School, arranged by an organisation called Ambitious about Autism. This document poses the question:

“Where next for young people with autism?”.

It contains a number of case studies and poses questions about post-16 education for youngsters with learning difficulties, particularly with autism. Among its questions, it asks for a clear, legal right to educational support up to the age of 25 for young disabled people. It says that a funding system that gives young people and families more information, choice and support is needed, as is a cross-government focus on outcomes and destinations for young disabled people, and a further education workforce with the skills to support young people with autism to achieve their ambitions. Sarah Teather, the Minister of State responsible for these matters, was present and warmly welcomed the report yesterday. She said that the Government had every intention of living up to the ambitions set out in their Green Paper. All this is to be welcomed.

Before any noble Lord questions how my argument is relevant to the question before us now of exclusions, I will explain. In England, we have 66,000 young people with autism in the 16 to 25 age group. Yet only one young person in four with autism in that age cohort continues their education beyond school. That is why we have to do everything possible to reduce the huge level of SEN exclusions from our schools. For three-quarters of young people with autism, attending school until the age of 16 is the only education experience they will ever have. That is why we have to be so careful about exclusions.

On Amendment 15, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, pointed out, the draft guidance makes some welcome noises on this but the trigger for assessment is not as clear as this amendment would make it. On Amendments 24 and 25, it would appear that parents will be told that they can request a SEN expert of their own but we do not know how this will happen or what information parents will be entitled to receive in order to achieve that.

On Amendment 26, the guidance makes it clear that the SEN adviser should have appropriate training. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Low, I am still concerned that that training should be specific to the disability of the person with SEN being examined. On Amendment 27, the guidance is clear that it will not be the role of the SEN expert to undertake an assessment of needs, which is somewhat disappointing. Finally, on Amendment 28, it will be for the local authority to select the SEN experts for the parents to choose from.

There are still many questions to be asked and answered on the whole issue of the exclusion of youngsters with SEN. I look forward to the response from the Minister, who has demonstrated to me, and no doubt to others across the House, that he is listening. He certainly did that in Committee. I hope he listens to us now.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Lord Low of Dalston and Lord Touhig

Monday 14th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, Amendment 16 is designed to strengthen the rights of users of postal services. As has been seen in the past, with privatisation and a greater focus on commercial imperatives, it is all too easy for the most vulnerable users of services to be put at the greatest disadvantage. Let us take the energy sector. The most expensive way to buy gas and electricity is with a prepayment meter, yet it is the poorest in society who are forced to buy them in this way as they do not have access to direct debit facilities. There is a real risk that certain groups of service users who rely on Royal Mail more than others will similarly be vulnerable to change. I believe it is important that Parliament sends a strong message that it expects the services provided to vulnerable groups to be maintained.

To take one example close to home—and I declare my own interest here—on the one hand, the Bill legislates to protect specialist services for blind people, but on the other, it requires the proposed postal services regulator, Ofcom, to review that service and all the other services contained within the universal postal service within 18 months of the Bill coming into force. The Minister was very clear at Second Reading that this review is not intended to lead to a reduction in the minimum requirements of the universal postal service. However, in discharging its primary duty to secure provision of the universal postal service, Ofcom must give specific consideration to the financial viability and efficiency of the service. The review will decide whether the current universal service obligations work in the interests of users. I believe they do, but I do not think a regulator with a remit to further competition in postal services necessarily would.

A similar concern applies to the concept of the single tariff: a single price for a stamp. At the moment, Royal Mail is obliged to offer customers the same letter service without discriminating on price, regardless of the distance between the point of posting and the point of delivery. This works in favour of people who live in rural areas, but once the accountants and management consultants are let loose, questions about why users in urban areas should go on subsidising an often loss-making postal service in rural areas are bound to arise. Why not reduce the cost of a stamp in the cities and make those in the countryside pay a price that better reflects the cost of providing the service?

Small businesses are equally vulnerable to changes in the price of letters and packets. The Federation of Small Businesses has expressed concern about the Bill. It is worried—and I can understand its fears—that a more aggressive pricing regime will harm small businesses. The collection and delivery of postal packets forms part of the universal postal service. Such a service is vital for small enterprises. With economists in charge, these businesses could well be charged a price for the service they receive based, at least in part, on their location. Small businesses in rural areas are perhaps the most vulnerable to the more commercial spirit that will inevitably come with privatisation.

Older people, pensioners, who are a growing section of the community, again rely on the postal service more than younger users. With the advent of electronic communications, there has been a seismic shift away from writing and sending letters in the conventional way, but many older people are marginalised when it comes to such technologies. They are more reliant on the traditional postal service as a means of communication. It is important that a privatised Royal Mail does not operate in such a way as to disadvantage older users of postal services.

I am not against this Bill. I simply want to strengthen it so as to protect the postal service for those who live in a rural area, who run a small business that is reliant on Royal Mail, who receive specialist services for blind people or who are elderly. The object of this amendment is to restrict the ability of Royal Mail and the postal services regulator to use their new-found commercial freedom and a more competitive environment slowly to chip away at those services, to raise their costs disproportionately or reduce their frequency.

The Minister will no doubt say that it is absolutely the intention of the Government to protect these services. I do not question her intention for a moment. But once the Bill receives Royal Assent, the Minister hands over responsibility for the maintenance of these services to the regulator. An obligation on the Secretary of State to consult in the way I have suggested with this amendment and to report to Parliament strengthens the hand of the consumer and helps to build into the legislation another safeguard for service users. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig]

In supporting the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, I shall speak to my Amendment 16A. The Bill does little to ensure accountability to the devolved Administrations in the United Kingdom. Yet we must recognise the vital services provided by the Royal Mail to the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is part of our country’s infrastructure, supporting economic and social interaction across all the nations and regions, and we should retain universality of service across the whole country.

The needs of service users varies depending on where they live, with those in rural and hard-to-reach areas particularly dependent on postal services and vulnerable to changes that may follow from the introduction of the Postal Services Bill. For that reason, I believe that the devolved Administrations must be kept informed about the developments in postal services. Specific analysis should be undertaken and the likely impact of changes to postal services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be properly considered. Moreover, specific consideration should be given to those with particular needs, such as pensioners and people with disabilities, a point eloquently argued by the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, a few minutes ago.

The devolved Administrations already take a keen interest in postal affairs and recognise their importance. Economic development has been important to the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Executive. They support the needs of small business in rural areas and both Administrations have made significant investments in their post office networks over these past years. In my view, it is unlikely that any of the devolved Administrations would want to see the break-up of the universal service. Providing detailed reports to the devolved Administrations would give them the opportunity to comment on particular implications of changes and will be important to improving oversight and accountability.

The future of Post Office Ltd and the continued provision of the universal service are a particular concern. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland contain large rural communities that would be disproportionately affected by any further decline in the post office network. The post office network is struggling. More than 150 post offices were closed as long-term temporary closures in 2010 alone and more than 900 post offices are up for sale. Sub-postmasters are struggling to make a living from their post offices. I fear that this Bill will potentially make things more difficult for them if we do not seek to improve it.

Breaking the link between Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail puts one-third of the Post Office’s revenue at risk. If the two cease to be part of the same company, there will be no guarantee that Royal Mail continues to sell its products through the Post Office. The Government’s proposals for the redesign of the post office network will see 4,000 “main” post offices created and the remaining post offices becoming “essentials” and “locals”. Essentials and locals will not provide the full range of post office services and some 2,000 sub-post offices would be transferred into essential or local category by 2014. They will offer only a proportion of the widespread post office services now available. I think that all remaining non-main post offices are likely to follow soon after.