Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing this debate and delivering an impressive and eloquent speech. Passions have risen high today, which illustrates the value of the post office network to hon. Members present and to people in the community, so it is hugely disappointing to see the empty seats on the Conservative Benches.

Post offices are a vital community asset that serve as an anchor for individuals and local businesses, as many hon. Members have highlighted. Citizens Advice surveys have shown that half of Britons say that a post office branch is the most important service in their local community. In rural areas, the importance is even greater: one rural resident in five says that without their local post office they would lose contact with friends or neighbours. Post offices are hubs rooted in community and history, and they have innovated: services have grown and now cover some Government services, while postmasters have been innovative in providing new products to accommodate the rise of online shopping.

At the same time, it is not a revelation that our high streets are struggling. In October, the Chancellor took a “too little, too late” approach to the crisis, showing the Government’s lack of commitment to our town centres. Although they shirk responsibility for the collapse of our high streets, the Government are too eager to discount their own role in overseeing the managed decline of a long-established and vital part of our high street: our post offices.

Our debate today has focused on Crown post offices, the large flagship post offices that are in prominent high street locations and are directly owned and managed by Post Office Ltd. Over the past five years, the Post Office, which is entirely owned by the Government, has announced the closure of 150 Crown post offices—40% of its 2013 Crown post office network. The closure and franchise programme has come in three waves, and the latest announcement in October 2018 stated that a further 74 Crown post offices were being closed, with an estimated 700 jobs at risk.

There is a strength of feeling about the closures across all parts of the country. I anticipate that the Minister will argue that this is not a privatisation process, but franchising is by definition a model part of privatisation. This Government drove the disastrous privatisation of our Royal Mail, many of the consequences of which we are seeing today, with private shareholders creaming off millions in dividends while services are on the decline. I am afraid that the franchising programme appears to be an incremental step in the same direction, privatising our Post Office one Crown at a time.

The impact of the closure and franchise programme is significant for the public purse, for the accessibility, quality and breadth of the service provided to the public, and for the sustainability of the network. Our high streets face a crisis and it is being compounded by the Government-managed decline of the Post Office. As I wrote in a recent article:

“The Government may continue to peddle the myth that it has no agency over our high streets—the truth is they are willingly letting a proud institution and the public down.”

They are letting the Post Office fall by the wayside in an appalling act of negligence.

Plucking post offices out of the heart of business hubs, as the closure of local Crowns does, is bad for local business and bad for the Post Office. It exacerbates financial exclusion in deprived areas, where—in the light of the significant bank closures in recent years—local people may have no access to financial services. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) has been vocal about the proposed relocation of her local Crown away from the town centre and into an area that has seen a 15% decline in footfall over two years. It is an economic fallacy to suggest that shifting a post office to a quieter part of town, away from the economic activity, will be in any way helpful to the long-term sustainability of the network.

Indeed, in allowing the transfer of counters into WHSmith, the Government risk the viability and sustainability of communities’ access to post offices. It has been suggested that WHSmith is shifting its priorities away from the high street, as highlighted by its acquisition of InMotion, a US company known for airport services. That is worrying and raises serious questions about the retailer’s long-term viability and its desire to be on the high street. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) told us, there has recently been a 3% decline in profits. It is therefore surprising not only that Post Office is choosing to partner with WHSmith in this way, but that when pressed during a meeting of the all-party group on post offices, Post Office representatives provided no reassurance about any contingency plans that they may have prepared for the event of a collapse.

My hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Peter Kyle), and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) spoke eloquently about the lack of meaningful consultation in their constituencies. Indeed, during the all-party group meeting, we learned that decisions on closures had already been made and that the consultation process was merely asking for little bits of information about whether people thought they had disability access—someone in the senior management actually said that. I challenged him, saying that the consultations should be asking the public about the closures, and that responsibility for disability access should lie with the management of the post office in question.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue of access, because clearly many disabled people use post offices. Does she agree that if the proposal will mean less access to post offices, it should surely be stopped?

[Gill Furniss]

I very much agree, and I will go into that point in more detail later.

Post Office management claim that they will have six months’ notice if a retailer that hosts a Post Office counter collapses, but in reality a collapse could be immediate and would risk the total closure of the counter. It seems reasonable that contingency planning should be done to prepare for all eventualities. Has the Minister had any discussions with the Post Office about the matter? Can she assure us that she is aware of reasonable contingency plans for any of those scenarios?

My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) referred to the independent reports published by Consumer Focus in 2012 and by Citizens Advice in 2016, which looked at the impact of closing and franchising former Crown post offices and locating them in WHSmith branches. They concluded that it has led to an increase in queuing and service times, a deterioration in customer service and advice, poor disabled access, and a reduction in the number of counter positions. As hon. Friends have pointed out, the retailer has been voted as providing some of the worst customer service in the UK—surely not a ringing endorsement.

The impact of these changes on local communities is significant, and vulnerable people, the disabled and the old suffer the most. The general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention, Jan Shortt, has said:

“Older people are some of the biggest users of the Post Office, and many rely on being able to talk to expert staff, but the move to franchise services to WHSmith is going to be bad for customers...pensioners will find some of the offices are no longer easily accessible or particularly private. This will become a second class service if we don’t stop these plans immediately.”

Similarly, the chief executive of the deaf and disabled rights charity, Inclusion London, and representative of the UK-wide Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance of disabled people and their organisations, Tracey Lazard, said:

“Replacing accessible Post Office premises with a post office counter squeezed into the back of a WHSmith store can leave Disabled people at a significant disadvantage, particularly people with a mobility impairment. Post Office Ltd should be taking action to maximise the accessibility of its premises and services rather than taking this retrograde step that cannot be justified and will instead further Disabled people’s exclusion.”

[Liz McInnes]

Given that Crown post offices are Government property, and that Post Office Ltd is proposing a change that may well be detrimental to disabled people, does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely incumbent on it to carry out an equality impact assessment?

[Gill Furniss]

I completely agree. I am sure we will be asking the Minister whether she will address that, as it would seem that it is completely irresponsible of Post Office Ltd not to do so. It should be at the heart of any consultation with the public and the organisations I have referred to, which represent many of those people.

Despite fierce local opposition to the closures and the franchising programme, the Post Office has not undertaken serious and meaningful consultation and has been clear the closures will go ahead. At the meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for post offices in October, when asked that the consultation process consider the range of views on the matter, senior Post Office representatives were forced to admit that the decisions about the closures had been made, and that the consultation would merely be an exchange of information and a look at further details. Given the Post Office’s public mandate and the fierce opposition to the closures, that is astonishing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) highlighted the particular impact that the closures will have on disabled constituents in our communities. There is also the impact on financial inclusion, as well as on the many other services, including the very important biometrics and essential Home Office information and documents that are issued in post offices. In the end, despite huge public opposition, a large amount of public funds have been used, with significant job losses and significant closures.

The Minister will no doubt repeat what she has said before about not having overview of Post Office structures and processes, referring to the fact that these are commercial decisions for the Post Office. However, I refer her to a petition that the current Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), presented in March 2008. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan cited it earlier, and it is worth mentioning again. That petition urged the Government to “instruct” the Post Office to halt the closure of the post office in Maidenhead and

“to listen to the views of local people in respect of their objection to the closure of this vital part of the local community.”—[Official Report, 6 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 142P.]

Perhaps the Minister could take a lead from the Prime Minister under whom she serves, call in Post Office management and instruct them to halt the closures. Instead of investing in our post offices, maintaining expert staff and broadening the services available, the Post Office under this Government is going backwards.

I applaud the Communication Workers Union for its campaign, Save our Post Office, and its championing and protecting of workers’ pay and conditions of service. At the same time as post offices are closing, sub-postmasters are seeing a decline in remuneration. Many have written telling me they are just about breaking even but earning less than minimum wage, and services are declining. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) gave worrying examples of this trend of many sub-postmasters losing their livelihood and acquiring significant debt. I have had correspondence from a sub-postmistress who told me that she is likely to lose her home because the figures she was given when taking on that sub-post office have never been realised.

How is the Minister scrutinising the Post Office’s strategy and what it means for the service? Will she outline what consultation there will be to ensure the strategy brings in relevant stakeholders and the public in a proper wide-ranging consultation? I am quite astounded that the Minister did not once come to the House so that parliamentarians could have the opportunity to scrutinise these decisions and what they mean for our constituents.

The Labour party has been clear. We want to grow the service, end the closures of our Crown post offices, maintain good pay and conditions for staff and innovate into the future, because we believe in our public institutions and what they mean to the public. At last year’s election, we pledged to create a commission to look into setting up a post bank, which would be an important step forward in financial inclusion and would also provide important income streams to maintain, sustain and grow post office services more widely.

I am pleased we have had the opportunity to debate this important matter today. I urge the Minister to recognise the strength of feeling expressed in today’s debate and reconsider her position. I urge her to take a more considered approach with the Post Office—a publicly funded institution—first, by halting the closures and, secondly, by holding Post Office Ltd to account for the decisions it is making that are having a negative impact on our constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I recognise some of the concerns about mobile branches that the hon. Gentleman raises. I can assure him that I am moving on to it, and obviously I have had the opportunity to listen to hon. Members this afternoon. I am sure hon. Members will agree that we do not want to go back to the days when we saw over 7,000 post offices shut, as was unfortunately the case under the previous Labour Government.

The post offices meet and exceed all the Government’s accessibility targets at the national level. Government investment in the network enabled the modernisation of more than 7,500 branches, adding more than 200,000 opening hours per week and establishing the Post Office as the largest Sunday trading network.

The Post Office’s agreement with high street banks enables personal and business banking in all branches, providing vital access to cash and banking services to consumers, businesses and local economies as bank branches continue to close. It is right to say that the agreement held with the Post Office and banks benefits our communities, which, as the Minister responsible I have made very clear to Post Office Ltd, to my colleagues in the Treasury and to the financial institutions that I have spoken to. The Post Office is providing a vital service to our constituents, and it should be remunerated for that—in doing so, hopefully that will ensure that our postmasters are also remunerated correctly for the service they provide to our constituents.

[Gill Furniss]

The Minister talks about banking services, and I would like to bring her back to a point made earlier. When post offices supply ATMs—clearly when banks close down, ATMs often just disappear from the high street or village—the rental is so much that they lose a significant amount of money. Does the Minister want to put that right in order to incentivise keeping ATMs in post offices so that they are available to all our communities?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say the loss of banks and access to cash has been a concern for our constituents and high streets. To individual MPs who represent a constituency where they feel that their post office is in a position to add an ATM—it is not always possible—as the Government representative I will always feed in specific issues that relate to individual constituencies or branches where we can improve services. I put that offer out there. Give me the details and I will always follow it up.

[Gill Furniss]

The Minister has been given the details today—they will be in Hansard. Postmasters see that they are subsidising the ATM, which just seems wrong to me. I ask the Minister to go back and review that, and to look at finding some way that she can compensate sub-postmasters for that service.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I have heard what the hon. Lady has said today, and I will go away and look it. Every post office operates differently throughout the country. There is not a standard rule for all branches, but I will continue to look at the issues that have been highlighted. I care as much about our post office network as any hon. Member does, and that is not just because I am the Minister in post.

The Post Office’s financial performance has improved significantly, and consequently the Government funding required to sustain the network has drastically decreased and is set to decrease even further in upcoming years. It is the first time in 16 years that the Post Office has made a profit. There was a time back in the early 2000s when the Post Office had a deficit of more than £1 billion. Things have changed, and we are ensuring that we get value for money for the taxpayer while ensuring that we sustain the network.