Torphichen Sub-Post Office (Closure)

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[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 The money had not been taken away or withdrawn, and it was therefore assumed that it would be available.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.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment at what has happened to his post office. In four locations in Northern Ireland—Ballyhalbert, Portavogie, Cloughey and Kircubbin—all the changes were made with consultation and a time scale for the changeover. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that there should be a successful transition period before the handover, so that everything runs smoothly, and to stop debacles such as that in his constituency?

[Michael Connarty]

I totally agree. Every hon. Member would expect that. I am sure that the Minister would expect it in his constituency. We would expect the Post Office to say, “We have a closed shop and someone who might want to buy it. We’ll consult the public on what kind of set-up they want, and support the shop on the basis that previously existed.” That would have been sensible.

The Post Office’s precipitate action was driven presumably by a policy from above to drive down the level of service—that is what happens with Post Office Local. The Post Office probably now finds that action irreversible —or perhaps it acted deliberately to ensure that the action was irreversible.

If people consult Hansard, they will find that when we debated the Postal Services Act 2011 and heard talk of Post Office Local, I informed the House that I had had in my constituency its forerunner, which was called post office essentials. The shopkeeper who took that on board eventually after six months decided that it was not worth the trouble, because of a number of things. The shopkeeper of a Post Office Local has to provide all financing out of their own pocket; no money comes from the Post Office in advance. The Post Office will tell people that it might give them a loan in the interim to see them over to the point when they are viable, but in reality, financing for a Post Office Local—or a post office essential, as it was called—comes out of the pocket of the shopkeeper.

Another problem for the shopkeeper was that people could come in and say that he had kept their pension for five or six weeks and they would like to have it because they were going on holiday: they would be asking for £500, £600, £700 or £800. Small shopkeepers do not keep that kind of money in their shop, so the shopkeeper who ran the post office essential in Linlithgow Bridge in my constituency told me that he had to say to people, “I’m sorry. I can’t supply that kind of money. I can’t shut the shop to go to the bank, so you’ll have to go to the main post office,” which was at the other end of town. Of course, people then started saying, “What good are you?” and he started to lose customers. In fact, he decided it was not worth the trouble to have a post office essential.

That was in a town environment, but if it happened in Torphichen, and if people found that they were not using the shop because they were not getting the service, and that they had to go to the main post offices in other towns to get large sums of money, I believe the shop would become unviable, close and be turned into a house. I have seen that happen again and again in villages that have lost their post office.

The shop will be taken away from the village if the proposals do not succeed. The people who offered to open the shop in the belief that they would get a sub-postmaster’s salary, get money delivered by the Post Office securely, and have a safe, secure and insured transit of money, find those things denied to them by Post Office Local. It is a travesty that that has gone ahead, and everything I have had from the Post Office, right up to Miss Vennells, and sadly from Ministers, who have just copied letters coming from the Post Office, does not stand up to scrutiny.

I want to end with a couple of things that make me think this is not just happening in this village. I wrote to Miss Paula Vennells, the chief executive of Post Office Ltd, on 3 February, asking:

“Who took the decision to take out the Sub Post Office infrastructure?...Who decided not to re-open the Sub Post Office but to re-brand/re-offer a Post Office Local to the new owner of the Torphichen Sub Post Office?”

No reply has been heard from the Post Office since then.

We discover that the Post Office proposal, when we discussed the Bill, was to have new operating models—that is what they are called—in 50% of its branch network. Post Office Ltd’s own plans say that at least 2,000 branches will be converted to the new local operating model. That is potentially four sub-post offices in the constituency of every Member in the House. This debate is about that happening in a precipitate manner.

We have tabled early-day motion 2841 calling for a moratorium on the use of the Post Office Local model. As I have said, the post office essential model is not much different. Shopkeepers do not get parcels, and there are limits on the amount of benefits that can be drawn from the shops, because people draw them on the resources of the person who is running the post-office local, or sub-post office.

I am asking the Minister to look again at what has happened in Torphichen, and to say to the Post Office that it has not consulted properly or used its own agreement. It has not yet had a public meeting in the village. We took letters to the community council because nothing has been written to people in the village. Post Office Ltd is secretly badgering the person who has bought the post office to take a Post Office Local. It is saying, “If you don’t take a local, the village will be most upset because they haven’t got post office services. You’ll get no help or money from us, and you’ll get such a miserly sum for every transaction that it really won’t be worth your while, but you’ll have to take it or the village will blame you”—the person who rescues the shop—rather than the Post Office, which deserves to be blamed.

I hope the Minister will look seriously at this situation. The Government might say, “We can’t interfere; this is a commercial matter,” but this is such a breach of the Post Office’s own rules and practices. Will the Government say to their Back Benchers and to Opposition Members that that new model is acceptable? I hope not.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Norman Lamb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) on securing this debate. Adjournment debates are an important opportunity for Members to raise issues of importance to their own constituencies. He has taken that opportunity, and I applaud him for doing so. He has been passionate in pursuing this issue. As a Member representing a rural constituency, I agree with him about the importance of maintaining the rural sub-post office network, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to the concerns reflected in a petition to Parliament from the residents of Torphichen, which, I am told, is a very beautiful village.

The hon. Gentleman spoke passionately about the importance of the post office in Torphichen and about its future. It is a matter he has written to me about, so I have some understanding of his concerns. I think back, however, to the extensive debates in the House, to which he referred, on the Postal Services Act 2011, which was passed last July. He will remember that he opposed the Act, not withstanding its clear objectives, which were to secure the future of the universal postal service and, critically in this context, to secure the future of the post office network. As I said, I care passionately about achieving that.

I shall briefly reiterate, for the record, the commitments to the future of the post office network made by my predecessor as postal affairs Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey). It is important to do so, because the Government’s commitments are particularly relevant to the situation at Torphichen. Over the course of this Parliament, we will provide £1.34 billion of funding to secure the long-term and sustainable future of the post office network. That will be achieved through investment to modernise about 6,000 post offices, improving them for the future while continuing to provide funding to maintain a network of at least 11,500 post office branches.

Alongside that was the fundamental commitment that there would be no programme of post office closures. That is important to this debate and the situation in Torphichen in particular. As I explained in my correspondence with the hon. Gentleman, Torphichen post office temporarily closed—he made that point—last November, following the resignation of the previous sub-postmaster with immediate effect. That is really important. Those two words—“immediate” and “temporary” —are significant. Normally, when a sub-postmaster wishes to resign, they are obliged under the terms of their contract to give Post Office Ltd three months’ notice to enable the Post Office to identify a new sub-postmaster or mistress and, if necessary, nearby premises from which post office services can continue to be provided.

I understand that the previous sub-postmaster at Torphichen resigned with immediate effect, so Post Office Ltd had no opportunity to ensure a proper and timely transition of service in the community without a break in service. That was the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Of course, ideally, we would seek to achieve a smooth transition from one sub-postmaster or mistress to another, but that is simply impossible where the sub-postmaster resigns with immediate effect.

[Jim Shannon]

In the light of what has happened—I am sure that there are many other examples across the United Kingdom—is it not time that post offices put in place a system whereby they have someone on standby who can fill in as a changeover takes place? Is that something that the Minister would consider?

[Norman Lamb]

The problem is that we are dealing with private businesses. Most sub-post offices are owned individually as private businesses, so it would be difficult to put in place a network of people who are immediately available perhaps to move into premises that are privately owned and not accessible to a third party. The emphasis is on trying to get as smooth a transition as possible, but obviously there are real difficulties when someone walks out without giving any notice. I absolutely sympathise with the concerns of the people of Torphichen, who have been suddenly confronted with the loss of a really important service and who obviously fear for its future. I completely understand that concern.

As a result, the post office in Torphichen has been closed temporarily since 2 November last year. A temporary closure is exactly that: temporary—closed for a limited period while Post Office Ltd seeks to identify a new sub-postmaster to restore services. Where a temporary closure occurs, it is obviously preferable that it lasts as short a time as possible. I understand that in the majority of the 602 cases over the last nine months where a sub-postmaster has chosen to leave the network—whether because they are retiring or moving elsewhere, or for other reasons—there has been a seamless transition between the outgoing and incoming sub-postmasters, with no break in service for the post office’s customers. However, that cannot necessarily happen in all cases.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk used the term “downgrade”. Let me address that concern. There was no decision to downgrade the Torphichen post office. He talked about the removal of security equipment, so let me deal with that. I have noted his concern, but I should explain that where a sub-post office temporarily closes, the temporary removal of valuable Post Office-owned equipment for safe storage should not be misinterpreted, or otherwise misconstrued, as suggesting that post office services will be permanently removed or downgraded; rather, it is purely to ensure the safekeeping of equipment. It is standard practice until such time as the equipment can be reinstalled.

As the representative of a rural constituency, I fully understand the considerable distress and inconvenience that the closure of any post office causes to a community. That is why I am so delighted to be in a position to say that this Government are investing in the post office network, not spending large sums of taxpayers’ money closing it. I am well aware of the inconvenience that the temporary closure of Torphichen post office is causing the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, but I can give him this reassurance. Post Office Ltd has not considered the permanent closure of Torphichen post office, and is actively engaged in measures to re-establish the post office service there.