Business of the House

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The coalition agreement is quite clear that we want to phase out the detention of children for immigration purposes in centres such as Yarl’s Wood. At the moment, we are looking at alternatives—namely, looking after families with children in the community rather than in detention. When those alternatives have been developed, the House will be informed in due course.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Given that the coalition has said that because of the Post Office subsidy and the plans for privatisation there will be no further post office closures, can we please have a debate about why a post office in Welwyn Park road in my constituency is going to close imminently?

[Sir George Young]

I think the Government said that there would be no planned post office closures along the lines that we had under the previous Government, when whole swathes of post offices were closed as part of a policy that that Government developed. We are not going to do that, but of course we cannot stop individual post offices closing if the sub-postmaster wants to withdraw and no one else can be found to take over.