Sub-postmasters and Sub-postmistresses: Remuneration Debate
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Jamie Stone
Main Page: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)Department Debates - View all Jamie Stone's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
Sub-postmasters and Sub-postmistresses: Remuneration
Jamie Stone Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Mr Carmichael
Oh my goodness! I am spoilt for choice. I give way to all three Members, but very quickly.
Jamie Stone
In the north-west of my constituency, Mr and Mrs Mackay run a general store in the village of Durness in Sutherland. It is a fact that supermarket deliveries and mail order are threatening the store’s viability. That is something we should guard against.
Mr Carmichael
Absolutely. With your indulgence, Mr Twigg, I took those interventions together because we had three different communities all telling us the same story. It is a story of commitment from sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses that is not being met through their remuneration. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) should be emphasised, because isolation is not something that affects only those in rural communities. There are people who live in isolation in cities and towns. For them, a post office and access to a post office is an important service, and they stand to lose out as a consequence of the constant salami slicing that we see.
Another postmistress in my constituency from Orkney spoke about the different changes that she has to work with. She told me:
“A lot of mail and packages are left with us for collection. Every item has to be accounted for, processed in and processed out. We are quite often having to produce a proof of postage for mail that is paid for online. This takes some time checking that the correct postage has been paid. The changes to customs requirements have added on much more time to the process than what they claim”
—that is the Post Office—
“This is particularly true for Drop and Go accounts where we have to input the senders details for every package. This information could be pre populated…The Post Office do not provide all the items that may be required to meet their standards—for example, a shredder.”
The list of things that are done for communities by people running sub-post offices was shared by my constituent Juliet Bellis, who runs the sub-post office in Fetlar, an island community in Shetland with 68 residents. She makes the point that elderly and infirm residents there rely on the post office to charge up their electricity keys. She says:
“I am contracted to open for 8 hours per week but I have trained up everyone who works in the shop so that, if the shop is open, the post office is available. That means in the summer you can get access to the post office 7 days a week, from 11am to 4pm; in the winter, we only open for five days a week—from 11am to 2pm.
The post office is therefore getting 35 hours from me in the summer and 15 hours a week in the winter. For this I get paid £390.90 per month…slightly above the current minimum wage if I opened for 8 hours per week.”