Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Jo Stevens Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda]

Will my hon. Friend give way briefly?

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Lisa Nandy]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), as she has not yet spoken.

[Jo Stevens]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am losing my post office in the centre of Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. It is our last post office in the city centre. Does she agree that the Financial Times got it absolutely right when it said:

“Once a high street without a WH Smith seemed unimaginable. Now it seems almost inevitable”?

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[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans.

The post office has historically been a focal point of any community. Until recently, in my own community—in my constituency—there were five post offices within walking distance. Now there is one, which is inside a general store. We still have a few post offices in Swansea, but most of them are franchised, including the Crown post office in Morriston.

Crown post offices offer a crucial service to the local community and their potential loss will always be a great concern to that community. Citizens Advice tells us that over half the population consider a local post office to be one of the most important services in the local community. Moving Crown post offices into private hands is a worrying trend; most importantly, we do not want it to lead to the number of post offices on our high streets declining further, and we certainly do not want any more job losses than have already occurred. It is becoming a real problem in Wales, where we have seen the greatest percentage drop in the number of post offices, with 25 closing between 2017 and 2018.

Current employees of the Crown post office must have their employment protected. That issue is being championed by the Communication Workers Union with its Save Our Post Office campaign. The CWU rightly makes the argument that the decision to franchise Crown post offices to WHSmith will hugely affect those who are currently employed by Crown post offices, moving them into lower quality jobs with WHSmith, with inferior wages and hours.

[Jo Stevens]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does my hon. Friend agree that, although staff moving from the post office to WHSmith, for example, will have their terms and conditions protected under TUPE, their pensions will not be protected, and so they stand to lose a significant amount from the transfer between one employment and another?

[Carolyn Harris]

That is of great concern to staff members I have spoken to. WHSmith, as we have heard, was recently voted the UK’s worst high street shop. Why are we transferring a cherished brand, the Post Office, into the hands of a negatively viewed private retailer? Since 2012, 484 post offices around Wales have been modernised or moved into premises such as convenience stores, newsagents and pharmacies. Citizens Advice carried out mystery shopping in 122 of those post offices across Wales and found accessibility concerns about one in five of them.

We cannot let the transformation of post offices across the UK alter the service that they offer to our communities and particularly to vulnerable consumers. Crown post offices are integral community hubs, offering valuable services to our high streets, and the decision to franchise a further 74 is a grave mistake. It is putting jobs at risk, putting services at risk, and potentially eroding the good will and spirit in our communities.

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[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend may say that, but by all judgment, Appleton’s has won the prize for the best pie shop in the nation.

To get back to business, the reality is that York’s post office is a profitable post office that works for my constituents. It is in the prime location. If the post office could choose its location, it would still be exactly where it is. However, the post office will be moving to WHSmith in Coney Street. That is not far, but the post office will be going into an area of the city that is struggling and where shops are shutting. The number of empty retail outlets that we see as we walk around is growing year on year and month on month, which is of great concern. People will not be able to pull up in their vehicle outside the post office because it is a pedestrianised area. That means that the post office will be inaccessible, particularly for disabled people but also for older residents.

The area will also have tighter controls in future. Mail vans will not be able to pop by because of the counter-terrorism measures that our city is taking—the Post Office was not even aware of that during the consultation process. If a van were to go there, it would have to be well out of hours because of the new counter-terrorism plan. It would have a very precarious route down a dark alley, which leads down towards the river and has been deemed unsafe under health and safety inspections, let alone if someone were to be in that alley with money—they just would not go there. It is deeply concerning for staff, who would have to use that as the only means of accessing the building other than going through the shop itself.

The post office will be located at the back of WHSmith. It will not be the first business to try to succeed there. Costa Coffee had a business at the back of WHSmith and it failed. In its current location, just down the road, Costa Coffee is thriving, but at the back of WHSmith it did not work. This does not make sense for the future of the post office. Therefore, its current location is the right place for it.

[Jo Stevens]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised this situation where the post office is transferred and shoved right at the back of an existing WHSmith store, which is exactly what is proposed in Cardiff Central. We know that very few people are going into WHSmith because it is an ailing retailer. Walking right to the back of an ailing retail shop will not make it easy for people to access the postal services they need.

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful point. This has to make business sense and, where it does not, it should not proceed. I also highlight the fact that custom will be lost from retailers in the city who bank and place deposits within the post office. They do not feel safe having to walk through and then queue in a retail outlet. They have already said that they will be transferring their business away from the post office. That has to be taken on board. This does not make business sense or economic sense, nor does it make sense for our high streets or my city.

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[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and a particular pleasure to follow a very powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). It was a salutary warning, and I suspect that some of my comments will echo the concerns of others about the so-called consultation process. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on her powerful introduction. She speaks for all Labour Members on these important issues.

The announcement a few months ago that Cambridge was one of the post offices to be put through this process was met with incredulity in my city. People are absolutely furious. I will say a few things about our local circumstances, trying not to repeat some of the points that have been very well made already, and then make some general reflections.

The Crown post office in Cambridge has around 15 very experienced staff, who between them have 150 years of experience—experience that is likely to be lost if this process continues. The post office has already been moved across the street—that was not a popular decision eight years ago—from one of the many fine buildings in Cambridge, in order, we were told, to secure its long-term future. There are some interesting definitions of “long-termism” in the modern world. That post office is one of the most successful in the region and possibly, I am told by my colleagues in the Communication Workers Union, in the country. It has been one of the top-selling post offices for travel currency, travel insurance, travel-related products and passport checking. It is one of the top-performing post offices in the area, so we might expect it to be celebrated as a success story.

That post office is also one of the few nationally to carry out biometric services and provide international driving permits, which is what I want to focus on. There has been a huge change in our country for those coming here to work or study, which most of us—who do not have to go through such processes—are probably only dimly aware of. Those people have to have biometric residence permits. If we are to have that system, we also need a system to allow them to register their biometric data, and in my area it is the Crown post office in Cambridge to which they are directed.

[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]

In conducting the research for this speech and talking to people locally about how the whole system works, I stumbled on what can perhaps only be described as a coincidence. In November, just after the announcement of the consultation, guess what quietly happened? That biometric information system has been very quietly transferred from the post office—although it still exists there at the current time—to the local library. However, it is hard to know how anyone would find that out, because if they go to the Home Office website or Post Office website, they will still be directed to the Cambridge Crown post office.

Let us, for the moment, continue to follow the public advice, because biometric residence permits are needed by all foreign nationals from outside the European Economic Area if they want to stay in the UK for longer than six months, extend their visa, or settle in the UK or have other interactions with the Home Office. In areas such as mine, which have huge numbers of people coming to study or work, and contribute to our local economy, this issue is enormously important. For instance, I am told that almost all the 2,000 non-EEA staff at the University of Cambridge will need to have used, or will need to use, those services, and if they cannot go to Cambridge, they will have to go to Huntingdon, Harlow or Romford, which requires hours and hours of travel on public transport.

[Jo Stevens]

I have a similar situation in Cardiff Central, where the biometric centre was in our post office, which is due to be put into WHSmith. I met with the post office to ask whether the biometric service would transfer to WHSmith, and guess what? It will not. Does my hon. Friend agree that that creates another barrier for people who are already in a vulnerable situation?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I totally agree, and that is an important point. Apparently, only 37 WHSmith stores across Britain have the wider access for wheelchair users, and if that is no longer available, people from my area would have to travel to Luton, Milton Keynes or London—a major diminution of service. It may be possible that those services can be provided elsewhere. Frankly, who knows? Maybe the Minister can enlighten us. Maybe she can tell us whether the timing of this transfer was random chance or coincidence. Maybe she can guarantee the future of our local library. I do not know, but my guess is that the Government have very little clue about the future, and I doubt that any answers at all will be offered. We shall see.

Other Members have mentioned disability access, and I concur entirely with the comments made about WHSmith in general, which I will not repeat. What I will say is that those of us who have been in and out of WHSmith in Cambridge know that it is already a crowded store. It is not listed by WHSmith as one of its wheelchair-friendly stores, and the idea that it is going to be a pleasant experience for people seems almost unimaginable, frankly. We have huge doubts. These services should be available to people and properly accessible. I say to those running the campaign on behalf of the Post Office that they should be careful of who they are taking on, because we have some pretty powerful campaigners locally. Councillor Gerri Bird led a campaign a few years ago to stop the toilets in the Lion Yard shopping centre in Cambridge being moved from one floor to another. After months of campaigning, she won and the other side lost. I say to the Post Office that it should be careful who it takes on. It would do much better to back down soon, gracefully.

Let me turn to some of the wider issues. As we have heard, the Government have said that they are worried about the high street. That is understandable; we all are. There are huge challenges, but we should not make them worse. This is not just about where a service is provided; as other Members have said, it is about the kind of institution. Many years ago, I worked for John Garrett, the former MP for Norwich South—some Members may just about remember John. He wrote a book, presciently entitled “Westminster: Does Parliament Work?”, which is good reading in these troubled times. I remember going around the local post offices in Norwich early in the morning with him, and the thing that struck us was that at every post office, there was a queue. An accountant, I suspect, would say, “Why are these people standing outside the post office when, if they came an hour or two later, they could just go in and be served?” The answer, of course, was that this was the occasion when most of those people got to see their friends. They were standing outside; as other Members have already said, it was part of a wider social issue. For the bean counters who are looking at the Post Office balance sheet, that probably does not count for anything, but it really counts in looking at the NHS balance sheet, in terms of the impact on people’s mental health from loneliness and so on. That is why the Post Office is a public service, not just a business.

People may also remember a recent, much-loved BBC television series, “Lark Rise to Candleford”. Some will remember the inestimable postmistress Dorcas Lane, who was at the heart of that local community. I suspect that series was much loved partly because it spoke to a conception of Englishness—one of fairness, kindness and public service—that many people still crave. As other hon. Friends have already alluded to, that also goes to the heart of the debate that is happening in the Chamber just a few yards away. Others have written eloquently on these related issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), who was in the Chamber earlier, wrote of the then coalition Government back in 2011:

“The government is not conservative; it is liberal and extreme. Through its indulgence of the banks and corporate and media power, and attempts to sell off parts of our English common life to the highest bidder—forests, waterways, ports, the Post Office, sport and culture—it is systematically destroying the hard-won victories of generations and, in so doing, unravelling the essential fabric of this country.”

These post offices are part of that fabric. For my city of Cambridge—high-tech Cambridge—our post office is part of the essential fabric of our city and our community. I may be dismissed as a romantic socialist, and I would not disown that label, but I will conclude by posing a question to the Minister: what kind of conservative does not understand the place of the post office in an English country town or community?