Future of the Post Office
Debate between Caroline Voaden and Gareth Thomas(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Since the election, three post offices in my constituency have closed—in Churchstow, Aveton Gifford and Dittisham—through the resignation of postmasters and, in one case, the death of the local postmaster. Each time, the Post Office says that it is carrying out a review, and each time it quickly decides to close the post office and, as the Minister himself said, the beating heart of those communities is then lost. Dittisham residents must now travel nearly 5 miles to the nearest branch. There is no bus, so elderly residents who do not drive cannot get to the nearest post office. Will the Minister guarantee that while the consultation is ongoing, no more rural post offices will be lost, and that as part of the Government’s thinking, more flexibility could be built into the Post Office’s business model, so that innovative and enthusiastic potential postmasters who want to reopen post offices in some of these villages can be allowed to do so?
Gareth Thomas
One crucial issue that we considered when we developed the Green Paper was how to address postmaster remuneration, because in some communities the Post Office has struggled to find people who are willing to take on the running of a franchise. It is important that Post Office senior management have improved postmaster pay, with £20 million last financial year, a commitment to £66 million this financial year, and a plan to go even further. I hope that will make a significant difference to the ability to find people to take on franchises, and not just in urban areas but in the rural areas the hon. Lady describes. She will forgive me for not knowing her constituency as well as she does, but if she wants to contact me about particular issues with branch closures, I would be happy to look at those.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Caroline Voaden and Gareth Thomas(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Gareth Thomas
The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that we receive representations on the VAT threshold from a number of small businesses, and we ensure that they are heard by Treasury colleagues. He will recognise that VAT raises a significant sum of money for the public finances, and given the mess that we inherited, we had to take some difficult decisions about those public finances to protect funding for hospitals in his constituency, and indeed other public services across the country.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Recently imposed general product safety regulations have added yet another layer of cost and complexity to exports to the European Union. That is particularly hitting entrepreneurs and microbusinesses, many of which have had to end exports to their EU customers. Did the Department have any discussions with its EU counterparts during recent trade negotiations about exempting small and microbusinesses from those rules? If not, is it doing any work to support small businesses in particular, which have had to end exports to EU customers because of the new regulations?