Post Office Network
Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Tony Baldry(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, he will find that there were more closures during the 13 years of Labour Government than under the previous Conservative Government. He should be careful when considering the figures.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
One problem is that the Post Office has to be so heavily subsidised that it classifies as state aid, and there are difficulties with the state aid rules. If we start to lever more private finance into Royal Mail and the Post Office, those difficulties will, I hope, not pertain. That will give the Post Office greater freedom to run post offices wherever it wants.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that intervention. The Minister will need to use all his ingenuity to make the European rules flexible. My hon. Friend and I have taken part in many Post Office debates, and we urged the previous Government and then Post Office managers to allow greater flexibility in running post offices and to allow more private finance to allow a greater range of services—in short, to run post offices a little more as if Tesco were running them given its branch network.