Backbench Business Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Anna Turley
Main Page: Anna Turley (Labour (Co-op) - Redcar)Department Debates - View all Anna Turley's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Kelvin Hopkins
I agree. It is vital that rural communities, in particular, have public services, sometimes on a smaller scale, to ensure that people living in more dispersed communities have proper access to those services.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way so early in his speech. I want to follow up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) made about financial services. The post office in France set up La Banque Postale, which has made £1 billion of profit, and the CWU is campaigning for our Post Office to emulate it. It should look at expanding into financial services as a means of increasing value.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend, too, has anticipated something I am going to say in my speech. That just reinforces what I am going to say, so I am pleased about that.
The Government, bending to pressure and concerns from inside and outside Parliament, have just launched a consultation document, but it must lead to genuine action. It must not simply be a token exercise that does not change thinking in the Government and the Post Office. We need effective action to promote a long-term and successful future for the Post Office.
The Post Office’s current funding package runs out in March 2018 and must be replaced by an effective strategy and support for the future. The negotiations between the Government and the Post Office must not be simply a ritual seeking in reality just to manage decline. For customers, the most significant measures taken this year are the two announced tranches of Crown office closures and franchises, which followed an earlier programme affecting 50 Crown post offices in 2014-15.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) mentioned franchising. Independent research carried out in the past five years found that franchises left to WHSmith in 2007 and 2008 perform poorly—worse than Crown post offices in queue times, service times, customer service and advice, disabled access and the number of counter positions. That brings to mind the failure by railway franchises to measure up to the five-year record of success when the east coast main line was returned temporarily to the public sector. Franchises have also seen losses of experienced staff, fewer specialised staff and less space.