Graeme Morrice
Main Page: Graeme Morrice (Labour - Livingston)Torphichen Sub-Post Office (Closure)
Graeme Morrice Excerpts
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The reason why I have called for this Adjournment debate is to warn all Members of the House that what happened to the sub-post office in the village of Torphichen could happen in every constituency in the UK, and is likely to do so, given the plans of the Post Office.
I should like to draw a timeline for the House. At the time of the last review of the post office network there was no proposal to close Torphichen sub-post office. In my constituency there were a number of closures in very small villages with very small numbers of post office users. However, Torphichen is a village of over 600 residents living in over 300 dwellings. It is a very well-known heritage village where the priory of the Order of St John was founded after the knights left the Holy Land, and it is visited a great deal by tourists passing through West Lothian on their way to Linlithgow palace, where Mary, Queen of Scots was born. The village’s natural attractiveness makes it very popular with people who want to buy houses and commute into Edinburgh. It is not a village with a down-at-heel population who have very little use for a post office. Moreover, it has many elderly residents.
On 2 November 2011 the most recent postmaster, who had not been a shopkeeper before and had been renting the premises for some nine months, decided to give up the premises, stop being a shopkeeper and give up the licence at the same time. The person who previously ran the post office and very popular shop—the only shop in the village—had done so for a long time. That is the crucial point. It is the post office that has sustained the village shop for many years, as do many post offices in communities across the shires of England and the counties of Scotland.
On 8 November Post Office Ltd sent a letter under the name of Brian Turnbull, the change manager, to MPs, MSPs and local authorities saying that there had been a temporary closure. It put an apology for the temporary closure on the window of the shop. Interestingly, I believe that that is the same Brian Turnbull who used to be the manager of the post office in Bathgate, who got me and my constituency party to campaign for some years to keep his post office open. When his Crown post office shut, all the people who worked there got their books and were made redundant. Obviously he then got taken on to carry out the same task in other areas.
The odd thing about the letter was that it was written from an address in St Albans. It referred to a couple of telephone numbers, but when I called them I heard things like, “Press 1 if you want this, press 2 if you want that, or press 3 if you want nothing.” The website that the letter referred to was just a general website with nothing at all about what was happening to Torphichen post office. There was no way of communicating.
In the past, the network manager for Scotland would have had the courtesy to phone the Member of Parliament, because this is a reserved matter. They would have spoken to the Member of Parliament and involved them in any difficulties, temporary closures, or proposals for changes or for a reopening. That has always been the case until now. The new network manager for Scotland, Ms Sally Buchanan, did not take the trouble to do that. In fact, we had to search out her telephone number so that we could contact her.
Ms Buchanan had been contacted by Neil Findlay, the adept MSP for Lothian. He contacted the address in Edinburgh and received a reply on 21 November. The reply was interesting because it said that the Post Office had done modelling. I do not know when it had found the time to do that modelling between 2 and 8 November. Having done the modelling, it had decided that the Post Office Local option, which was mentioned when we debated the Postal Services Act 2011, would be best for that property.
We discovered that, despite the fact that somebody in the village had approached the owner of the post office building and offered to buy it, the Post Office had got the key from the previous owner and stripped out all the security that a normal sub-post office has. For some reason it drilled holes in the safe so that it could no longer be used to store money. When I challenged the Post Office on that matter, the reply was:
“That we removed the Post Office owned equipment, including the computer system, from the premises is not indicative of future service arrangements; it is normal practice for us to recover our property where there is any doubt over our ability to have continued access to the premises.”
As I wrote to the Minister and the head of Post Office Ltd, Ms Vennells, it is quite clear that this was an act of vandalism by the Post Office. I can see the point of taking out the computer, but not of ripping out all the security that a normal sub-post office uses. It is clear that the Post Office had taken the decision to downgrade the sub-post office without any consultation with the public.
I have never had to put up with anything like that. I do not think that any Member from any part of the House or from any party would find that acceptable. I certainly would not have found it acceptable in the past and did not expect it to happen in this case.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I am a neighbouring Member, representing Livingston in West Lothian, and I am therefore well aware of the community to which he refers. He said that there was no consultation with the community and little consultation with him as an elected Member of Parliament. Is it not the case that the code of practice for the post office network requires full and meaningful public consultation if any changes to particular post offices and sub-post offices are to be made?
Michael Connarty
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention because I am about to come on to that subject. The code of practice was attached to the original circular that was sent to MPs and MSPs. The Post Office apologised for the inconvenience of the temporary closure and attached to every circular its code of practice, which states:
“We’ll let you know about any change as soon as we possibly can. Sometimes, change is out of our control, but we’ll try to keep you as up-to-date about what’s happening as much as we can. We try to make sure you have 4 weeks’ notice before anything happens. If we’re going to make big changes, there’ll be a ‘consultation period’ which lasts about 6 weeks.”
I can verify that ripping out the equipment happened within days of the Post Office finding out that the closure had taken place.
From then on, it was clear that the Post Office had immediately been contacted by someone in the village who wished to purchase the building and reopen the post office—Miss Oonagh Shackleton and her partner Ian Jamieson, who run a very good manufacturing company in another village. They were keen to give the shop back to the village, and they talked to the Post Office immediately. We also know that the shop’s previous owner, Mussarat Aziz, who had been the sub-postmistress and was also the sub-postmistress in Boghall in Bathgate in another part of my constituency, was approached by the Post Office to ascertain whether she would take over the post office temporarily and run it as a sub-post office. On the one hand, the Post Office was saying that it wanted to keep the sub-post office going, and on the other hand, it had been approached by someone who wanted to do a similar thing.
At the public meeting that we held in the village, Oonagh Shackleton said that she had a business plan, which included financing a sub-post office. In the agreement that we had when the post office network review took place, the money that the Government gave the Post Office included money for running a sub-post office in Torphichen. The money had not been taken away or withdrawn, and it was therefore assumed that it would be available. However, for some mysterious reason that point was never confirmed to Oonagh Shackleton. She decided that she wanted to open the shop in the village again anyway, and she went ahead and purchased it.
However, now that all the security has been torn out, we are told that Mr Brian Turnbull says that if we want a post office service of any kind in that shop in the village, we can have only a Post Office Local. I call that blackmail. All that stuff about removing the equipment not meaning that the Post Office had changed its mind is clearly a bluff.
Norman Lamb
The hon. Gentleman says, “Rubbish,” but let me develop my argument. The Post Office Local model has been extensively piloted over the last year. It is now operational in more than 150 locations. Critically, where it is being piloted, customers—the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Torphichen—are reporting high levels of satisfaction, and operators are seeing more sales and are benefiting from greater flexibility.
When we look in detail at the Post Office Local model and at the independent research that has been conducted, the reasons for high levels of customer satisfaction become apparent. Not only are post offices staying in communities, but they are offering access to the vast majority of post office services—95% of the transactions that typically account for customer visits across the network—during much longer opening hours.
That is really important. In the past, the service to customers has often been constrained by limited opening hours. With the Post Office Local model, a post office can remain open for as long as the shop is open. That makes it much more convenient for people to obtain those services in an evening, for example, if that suits their working habits. That will mean that more people will use the post office’s services in their local sub-post office. So far, the evidence is that sales have gone up by 9% in those Post Office Local models. Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are reporting their own satisfaction with the model. So customers and sub-postmasters support the model in the vast majority of cases.
Graeme Morrice
The Minister mentioned the discussions that had taken place on the move to the Post Office Local model. Presumably, those were internal discussions within the post office network. Has there been any public consultation involving local communities on the issue?
Norman Lamb
Let me deal with the consultation and with the issue of compliance with the code of practice. I know that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk has expressed concern that the code has not been complied with, and I note that concern. The code of practice that was agreed between Consumer Focus and Post Office Ltd governs changes in the post office network, and it has to be followed. I see from the hon. Gentleman’s letters to me that Post Office Ltd wrote to him on 8 November to explain why the branch had closed and to say that the company would
“work to find a solution that will provide a post office service to the Torphichen community.”
The code of practice contains details of when and why a consultation will be held. In the case of a temporary closure—which this is—such as that caused by the sudden resignation of the previous sub-postmaster, the code states:
“We will aim to restore the service...as quickly as possible. As such, and given the emphasis on speed of activity to ensure the service interruption is as temporary as possible, this would not be a matter for public consultation—rather it is an issue of effective communication to keep customers informed.”
That is why a letter was sent to the hon. Gentleman very soon after the closure occurred.
As I have made clear in my correspondence with the hon. Gentleman on this matter, the benefits of the local model far outweigh the reduction in the availability of a very small number of services. He might not take much comfort from my words on this matter, but I hope that he will recognise that many sub-postmasters, old and new—potentially including those in his constituency—see the benefits of the Post Office Local model. Given what has happened in the 150 pilots that have been conducted over the past year, and given the very high levels of customer satisfaction that have been reported, I ask him to keep an open mind and to reflect on the fact that, if customers in other branches that have been piloted over the past year have responded so enthusiastically, it might just be that his own constituents in Torphichen would respond positively to a Post Office Local in that community.