Sub-postmasters and Sub-postmistresses: Remuneration

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Duncan Baker

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Member for bringing such an important matter to the House. I was a postmaster, and I have often said in the House that I am the only serving MP to have been in that role. Indeed, it is wonderful to see Calum Greenhow, the chief executive of the National Federation of SubPostmasters, in the Public Gallery.

Despite the Post Office’s commercial revenues increasing by about £100 million over the last few years, the actual revenue that sub-postmasters have earned in that time has fallen substantially, by 12% in just the last three years. As the right hon. Member said, of the 11,700 post offices that operate around the country, only 9,500 are full-time services, simply because of the lack of viability. Does this not show that we must give this great British institution the power to pay people properly for running post offices?

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I do not think we are going to have much contention in this debate. The same point was made to me by Valerie Johnson, who is the sub-postmistress at Baltasound, Unst. She pointed out that holiday pay is contracted to cover roughly £5 per hour, but there has been no update since 2016. That is probably the sort of thing that produces the outcome to which the hon. Gentleman just referred.

The final point I want to deal with relates to bank charges. As we know, we are pushing more and more banks into using the Post Office, and the figures that have been put to me show massive disparities between the amounts that can be paid in on a daily or annual basis. For Barclays, the limit is £3,000 per transaction but only £10,000 per year. For Danske Bank, it is £1,000 per day and £5,000 every 180 days. Ironically, the Post Office instant saver account has a limit of £1,000 per day or £10,000 per year, as does the Post Office reward saver. Brian Smith told me just last week that when people hand over their takings and pay money into bank accounts through the post office, it does not know whether that person is anywhere near the account cap. If the post office staff spend time counting out the money, only to find that they cannot take it because the customer has exceeded the cap, that is a source of enormous and legitimate frustration for them.

Mr Twigg, you may think that I have just about vented my spleen and exhausted everything that I have to say, but today it has been brought to my attention that negotiations between the Post Office and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency are reaching a crisis point. At present, 6 million DVLA transactions, worth something in the region of £3.2 million, are made through post offices every year. I am told by the Post Office that the likeliest outcome is that it will get a 12-month extension to the agreement, which would take it to 31 March 2024, but that the DVLA is not committing beyond that point.