Community and Sub-Post Offices

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands]

It is as if my hon. Friend, who is sitting next to me, had read my speech, because I am about to come to that.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

There is a fantastic post office in the village of Dunlop in my constituency where people do great work. It has a fine range of whiskies and beers, by the way, so it is well worth a visit. They have the same issue. The sub-postmaster has worked out that on the hours he does, he gets paid less than the minimum wage, yet he hires staff and correctly pays them the money they are due. Is this not an injustice?

[Gavin Newlands]

It absolutely is. That sub-postmaster will have even less money once he has paid the commission to my hon. Friend for the advert he has just given.

At this point, it is worth giving some background and context regarding sub-postmasters’ remuneration. Previously, all post offices received a fixed element of pay—a core payment—that also allowed for six weeks’ annual leave. Now, only a small number of offices—about 400—that did not go through the network transformation, plus offices designated as community offices, continue to receive a fixed element of pay. Overall, the total amount paid to sub-postmasters has dropped as a result of the removal of this fixed element of pay from the majority of offices. The total amount paid by Post Office Ltd across the whole network in 2017-18 was 17% lower than in 2013-14, and that is before adjusting for inflation. As a result of the transformation programme, new post office models—main, local, and local-plus offices—are paid on commission only for the transactions they carry out. Main-model offices receive commission rates that are roughly one third higher than local-model offices.

It is with this backdrop that the Post Office is currently engaged in renegotiating the deeply unfair banking contracts with UK Finance, the body that represents the banks. Given that the Government have hidden behind the post office network countless times at the Dispatch Box while defending bank branch closures since 2015, and that, on behalf of the public, they own the Post Office, I hope that they will act as the proper stewards of the Post Office they should be and ensure that the deal ends up being a fair and sustainable one.