Post Office Closures

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on bringing forward this important debate, which is very pertinent to my constituency. I want to touch on the tragic death of Sir David. When I arrived four years ago, I remember that he was one of the very first to be a friendly face and greet me. That is all I will say, but that sort of thing stays with you the rest of your days. I mourn his passing, as does my party.

In 1616 it was under the rule of a Scottish king, King James VI of Scotland and I of England, that the Scottish postal service was set up, so we rather led the way. Shortly after the restoration of his grandson King Charles II in 1660, the network of post offices in England was set up. So, once again, a Scottish king showed the way. We have had huge trouble with closures of branches, as others have said, but I will not repeat their remarks. I am going to use one example—the village of Balintore in Easter Ross. When the aforementioned retail business pulled out, we were left with the prospect of having no post office whatsoever. I say to the Minister that I give absolute credit to the people working at the post office for their valid attempts to secure some other arrangement, and they have done it in conjunction with the local Seaboard Memorial Hall. We are going to have a post office—thank God—once again in the village of Balintore. It is not just Balintore but Shandwick and Hilton, and a lot of people live there—believe you me.

It was great that this particular community had a vibrant hall committee that was willing to step in and see whether it could meet halfway with the post office in order to take up the service. They did that, but the trouble is that, looking at my vast constituency—if the Boundary Commission for Scotland has its way, it will get vaster still—not every community has a whole committee or some sort of organisation that is willing to step into the breach to take on that role. Therefore, it is patchy. To use a hackneyed phrase, it is a bit of a postcode lottery in terms of where people live. For the record, I say, “Well done, Balintore,” but it is not so easy to replicate that.

The final point I want to make in my brief contribution is that in a remote part of Scotland, such as my constituency, the post office network is part of the fabric of society, as others have mentioned. People say, “Oh well, the young people can go online,” and so on, but it is not quite as simple as that. Post offices are important to young people as well, and I think we have come to appreciate the value of the face-to-face aspect of the post office through the pandemic.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really important point. The post office has a place right at the heart of our community, especially in difficult times, in my constituency, which is not remote. Tariq Chishti of Netherlee post office has received an award for going above and beyond during the pandemic to support people who were having real difficulty. The staff at Barrhead post office, which I visited recently, have done the same. The Minister should really take heed of the hon. Gentleman’s point about the community at large—all of the community—requiring this service and benefiting from it. That is at the heart of the debate.

[Jamie Stone]

I thank the hon. Lady for that very useful intervention. Her point is very well made indeed.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Further to some of those points, I have been quite fortunate in my constituency, where the Post Office has innovated and placed a sub-post office within the community centre. A common theme of the debate is that it all comes down to remuneration and whether we can make that sustainable. That is the vital point that we need to get across to Ministers.

[Jamie Stone]

My final point is simply this: where there is a post office service being conducted in a retail premises that is not a post office—a newsagent or some other business—there is an issue. I can think of an example in my constituency, where privacy tended to be invaded. Someone would be queuing up and talking to the lady about his or her pension or whatever, but the people behind wanted to buy a copy of the Daily Record or whatever. The person at the counter was uncomfortable with the feeling that the person behind could hear what was being said. That is perhaps an issue for another day, but I say to the Minister that we must remember that for some transactions in post offices, or however we do it in the future, there is a confidentiality aspect. I have no doubt that the Seaboard Memorial Hall in my constituency will do an excellent job and will tackle that privacy aspect of the work as well.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

There are two more Members who wish to speak. As long as we finish by 10.28 am for the wind-ups, we have time for both hon. Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) on having secured today’s debate, and on all the work that she and other Members do in the APPG on post offices. It is a very vibrant and diverse APPG, and I always enjoy speaking with its members and sharing thoughts with them.

I thank you, Mr Betts, and others for the tributes that have been paid to our friend and colleague Sir David Amess. In giving my tribute, I want to respond to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who talked about the Government’s social vision for the Post Office, because two of the three things in our vision really chime with what Sir David did and what he stood for. The main building blocks are to deliver a convenient and trusted local service offer that meets customers’ needs—working closely with postmasters, who play a hugely important role in their communities—and to ensure that the Post Office’s services continue to be easily accessible to all consumers, particularly the vulnerable groups that need them most. The third, which perhaps does not relate directly to Sir David but is so important for the Post Office, is to support the Government’s access to cash and financial inclusion agenda by ensuring that basic cash and banking services are available throughout the network to meet the needs of individual customers and small and medium enterprises. We have heard about the importance of those services throughout the debate.

The post office network is unique. With more than 11,500 branches, the Post Office is the biggest retail network in the UK: there are more post offices than bank branches and building societies combined. Thanks to Government funding, we have ensured that we have the most stable post office network in a generation, with 99% of the population living within three miles of their nearest branch. As I go through my speech, I will try to cover some of the issues that have been raised about the network, but over the past decade, while the country’s high streets have undergone a significant period of change, the number of post office branches has remained broadly stable. As we have been discussing, that business has continued, and must continue, to evolve to meet customer need. What has not changed, though, is how undeniably important post offices are to communities. Our local post offices have never been more important or more valued than in the past 19 months, as the country has faced the unprecedented challenges of responding to the pandemic.

[Jamie Stone]

Does the Minister accept that his point about 99% of the population living within three miles of their nearest branch does not apply to my constituency?