Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Debate between Albert Owen and Lisa Nandy

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

I could not agree more, and I know that my hon. Friend is a tremendous champion of that workforce in his Bury constituency. That point goes to the heart of how a publicly owned service should set the standard for how we treat our workers and our customers. I absolutely agree with him.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and I wish her, the Chair and all Members a happy new year. She made the important point about ownership of the Crown network. We are the owners but, in addition, the Government are the sole shareholder, so by proxy the Government are closing down our public services. We need the opportunity to have not just a debate, but the information before anything happens.

[Lisa Nandy]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. On that basis, I was quite horrified at what happened last month when I went to my Crown post office to talk to the staff. I went with a representative of the Communication Workers Union, who had notified management in advance, but an area manager was then sent all the way to Wigan to block me at the door. We were chucked out of the building, but for some time I stood outside in the street in the freezing cold to talk to staff about their concerns and fears. A number of counter staff who had initially been keen to talk emailed me later to explain that they had been put under significant pressure not to come outside.

Why is a publicly owned business trying to intimidate and silence its own staff? It was particularly telling that the area manager said that she had been sent by the press office. This is an organisation apparently more concerned about appearances than about the rights of its own workforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Minister will hear “suspended”, “halted”, “paused” and “moratorium” over and over during this debate. It is not just about bank closures, the threat to the post office and the fact that WHSmith is in trouble. Many towns that face the loss of their Crown post office have had closures of major department stores such as Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser and Debenhams. Like the Crown post office, those are destination stores—they attract people into our town centres who then stay and shop elsewhere. There is a very real prospect that our town centres will begin to fall like dominoes. A perfect storm is hitting our high streets.

My Crown post office in Wigan has stood on its site in the centre of our town for 134 years. It has weathered a global financial crash and two world wars, yet apparently it cannot survive three years of Tory Government. One of our major concerns is about the lack of proposals for the building, which is owned by the Post Office. It is a striking building right in the centre of town. Will the Minister tell us what is envisaged for those buildings? Will we see derelict and abandoned buildings blighting our already struggling high streets?

[Albert Owen]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are trying to regenerate town centres, yet they are closing down buildings. In a town in my constituency, the building has been empty for some years and is a blight on the landscape.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is a story I hear over and over from colleagues around the country. Behind those losses is a loss of spending power in our towns. Over several decades, good jobs have been lost and replaced by minimum-wage, insecure work. Young people have left and there has been a significant loss in the working-age population. The jobs that remain do not pay enough to sustain our local services. We have felt the anger from those areas in recent years, so why do the Government allow this process to continue?

WHSmith employs its staff on part-time contracts at the minimum wage, whereas post office counter staff typically earn £21,000 a year. It matters for the viability of our town centres that people are paid properly, and for the health of our nation that people are treated properly. In my view, this failed economic model was one of the direct causes of the heavy leave vote in constituencies such as mine. It has caused justifiable anger in our towns, so why is that failed economic model being employed?

Surely, if Government mean what they say about listening to those who have been left behind and about trying to reinvigorate our high streets, they must abandon this plan right now and seek an alternative. All the plan means, as the Communication Workers Union puts it, is that post offices are on

“a path of managed decline”.

For the 800 or so staff facing transfer or redundancy, I suspect that this will be the final straw. The vast majority of staff who faced franchising were not subject to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 in either of the last two rounds of transfer. Workers in Wigan tell me that it has been a tragedy to watch services run down over several years. Some of them have worked for the Post Office for decades, but this is the final straw.

The Post Office faces pressure from the loss of traditional services such as letters and from falling Government revenue, but it is by no means without assets. Last year it announced profits of £35 million. That should have been the catalyst to retain experienced and well-paid staff and expand into new areas—in France, La Banque Postale, established a decade ago, made a profit of €1 billion in 2016—but instead, it has cut staff and branches and awarded the chief executive a 7% pay rise. Behind the latest wave of closures is a story of greed, exploitation and carelessness with the social fabric and economic heart of our communities.