Post Office Closures

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who introduced the debate, and his colleagues on obtaining time from the Backbench Business Committee.

It is almost trite to say that post offices, and sub-post offices in particular, are central to the life of many of our small rural and village communities, but that is very much the case. Indeed, as we see the withdrawal of other services, such as clearing banks, from such communities, they will only grow in importance. Maintaining a vibrant and viable network of sub-post offices across our smaller and more rural communities is therefore now more important than ever.

In my time in Parliament I have seen a large number of post office closures, although whenever there is a structured programme of closures we, in Scotland, generally do quite well out of it; we do not see very many post offices close because we have a small population spread over a large area of terrain. However, there has been a constant process of attrition. Time after time, sub-post offices have closed temporarily because the person running them has retired or moved away or is simply fed up with managing the business—and who can blame them? In fact, I have one post office that is about to reopen in the next month or two in the village of Finstown in Orkney. It has been a Herculean effort to find someone to take it on, but it shows that it is still possible to achieve that if there is willingness from a handful of people to make it work.

It is difficult now to make a sub-post office work as a stand-alone business, and for that reason the few businesses that are left are generally being folded into shops, garages, cafés and other places. That is good for those businesses, but it requires a bit more flexibility and sensitivity on the part of the Post Office. I am thinking of the example of Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney, which for years had a stand-alone sub-post office. When that sub-post office was no longer allowed to continue, it was moved into a bakers and general store. The community does not feel comfortable, despite the best efforts of the shop owner, to go along and get their pensions on one side of the counter while standing next to someone buying their messages on the other.

The Post Office needs to be more proactive in supporting people who are prepared to provide a sub-post office service. I spent an hour on Sunday night with the owners of the Palace Stores in Birsay in Orkney—a great little local shop that also includes the post office. They tell me that they have probably lost about a month of post office business because of poor connectivity. The broadband connection that is necessary to run a sub-post office is unreliable. That obviously has more to do with BT Openreach and Fujitsu, which provide the internet services for the Post Office, and their inability to speak to each other, but it is a good example of how the Post Office could make a real difference if it took a more proactive role in supporting its sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. A small country shop in Orkney going to talk to BT will get treated as if it were a small country shop, but a big organisation such as the Post Office would be listened to and taken much more seriously and, in that very practical sense, it would be able to support people who have for years provided one of the most important services in the communities I have been privileged to represent. For that reason, I hope that the Minister will take to the Post Office management the message that that should be its priority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I have talked so far mostly about financial issues. It is undisputed that the Crowns were losing £46 million and are now breaking even. There are still some loss-making ones to deal with. I appreciate that changes of the kind we are considering are not easy, especially when they involve staff who have worked in a place for many years. I know that the hon. Lady has had a briefing from the Communication Workers Union, and I have had meetings with it on several occasions; I sympathise with its position. However, it is essential that the business should continue to manage its costs to ensure that it can meet the challenges faced by high streets, let alone the Post Office, now and in the future, as the way we shop and get access to services continues to change.

Several hon. Members made points about Government services, and I agree that in 2010 the Government had hopes that the Post Office could take over many more such services; but the rapidity with which some of them migrated to the internet meant that that hope did not bear enough fruit. The staff in Crown branches that are being franchised have the opportunity to transfer to the franchisee in line with the TUPE process; or they can choose to leave the business. The Post Office offers a generous settlement agreement, which reflects the hard work, commitment and dedication that many employees have shown over the years. However, I reiterate the point that a more efficient Post Office is able to support and supplement thousands of small businesses, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) noted; she spoke with great authority about the needs of people in her largely rural constituency. The Government take those needs seriously and have honoured a commitment to maintain a service, even where it is not viable on a financial basis, to people living in the rural parts of her constituency.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

Will the Minister give way?

[Margot James]

I will not give way; I have no time left, really.

I agree with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) that poorer urban areas also have a great problem with access to local services—it is not just rural areas. I am pleased to tell her that the Post Office is now focusing on that issue. The Post Office is revisiting some poorer urban areas where it closed branches 10 years ago, to talk to retailers about setting up a local post office counter. I hope that that will succeed in the hon. Lady’s area.