Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Debate between Liz McInnes and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham.

[Liz McInnes]

Follow that.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will, but in my own manner and style. [Interruption.] Do not worry, there is no risk of passion. It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Graham. We have not quite had 48 Members talking about posting letters today, but I hope you feel at home nevertheless. Labour Members are much less fractious, which is helpful.

We have had such a high turnout because of the excellent timeliness of the debate. We have had a good debate, and that is thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who always captures the zeitgeist. As a former Hammersmith Broadway councillor, she will know how much we have grievously suffered in Hammersmith and Fulham from the depletion of the post office network. Indeed, the Crown post office in her ex-ward moved some years ago and was franchised into WHSmith. In the past few weeks and months, I have had complaints about the service operating there.

One by one, we have lost every Crown post office through closure or through their being stuffed into a WHSmith branch. Last year, we had one left, which was the Shepherds Bush post office on Shepherds Bush Green. It is a good site and a dedicated building, and it is quite famous, because one of its frequent customers was the comedian Richard Herring. When he had his Metro column, he used to write about the Shepherds Bush post office and the more eccentric members of the constituency who he used to meet on his almost daily travels there. It was a good, friendly place, and it had wonderful staff with long service there. It was a busy branch, made more so by the fact, as is often the case in town centres nowadays, that banks were closing branches and referring people to the post office. We thought it was good.

Last year, we were told that the post office had to move because the lease was up on the building and the landlord was redeveloping. Reluctantly, we accepted that. I spent a long time helping to look for another site in the town centre. I spoke to the local shopping centre and we tried to provide something else, but talking to the Post Office is like banging one’s head against a brick wall, because the only deal in town is WHSmith. I do not know what the commercial terms are, but I suspect that the Post Office gets the space for free, or something like that, because WHSmith is so desperate to increase footfall in its pretty lousy shops. The Post Office is made an offer it cannot refuse on those terms. That is what happened.

The post office closed and moved a five or 10-minute walk away, depending on mobility, to the Westfield shopping centre. As we have heard, the office is hidden away in the back of a WHSmith with no natural daylight. Because it is the largest shopping centre in Europe and has a good footfall, the office has survived and kept its busyness and activity, but with a completely different clientele. I am glad to see that we have the support of the National Pensioners Convention and many disability rights groups in pointing out that it is not just about the facilities in the post office, but about the accessibility. Most of the elderly and local people who used to use that post office now go to sub-post offices half a mile or a mile away because they are more accessible than where the Crown post office has moved to. None the less, things continued.

The one thing we were told was that, despite the disruption and despite moving to a less favourable and less convenient location, the branch would remain a Crown post office. In all the meetings I had with the Post Office—this was only a year ago—it said that the branch would be a Crown post office with all the advantages of that. Guess what? When the wholesale franchising and closure programme was announced last year, we found out that, no, the branch would become franchised and part of the WHSmith network.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) and many others, I pay tribute to the CWU, which has run an effective campaign drawing attention to the issue. The Post Office thought it could get away with it because the public would not notice a change in ownership. The changes were not necessarily, as was the case with Shepherds Bush, about moving the facility, so the Post Office thought there would no apparent change. The CWU has done an excellent job in drawing attention to the matter, because the implications are severe.

To take the example of Shepherds Bush, the manager will leave and retire after more than 20 years’ service. She has been excellent. Half the staff are similarly going to take the settlements on offer and go. The others all want to move elsewhere in the post office network, to those few Crown post offices and other services that remain open. Not one wants to join WHSmith, even though some of the staff at Shepherds Bush have already moved there from other Crown post offices closed in the recent past, including the Acton post office in the seat of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq).

Why do people not want to work for WHSmith? It is not too difficult to work out. When I looked at the new rosters, sometimes less than half the number of staff will be on duty. I was there just before Christmas, and it is a busy office with queues, yet WHSmith thinks that where five staff are on at the moment, it can manage with two in future. That is bad for the customers and for staff, too. The terms and conditions are appalling in terms of pensions, holiday and pay. People will be on the minimum wage and could be on half the pay they would have earned as an experienced postal worker working for the Post Office. I am sure that many of the staff at WHSmith try to do a very good job, but as an employer it is appalling. Anyone who does not believe me should follow the Twitter account, @WHS_Carpet, which is a rather tongue-in-cheek look at the extraordinary way in which that business conducts itself. We do not know whether it will have a future. What a risk to take, putting post offices into those stores.

I am afraid that Post Office Ltd has shown a contempt for very loyal staff, who have often stayed with it over many years. It has also shown an attitude of defeatism. Where is the leadership? Where is the confidence in the services that it provides? There is none. It is all about cutting back.

That comes on top of a number of other initiatives that have depleted the network. I know that we are not talking about sub-post offices today, but within the last two to three years I have also had three sub-post offices—two of which were the nearest ones to Shepherd’s Bush Green—close “temporarily”. I think one has been temporarily closed for more than three years now, on the basis that we cannot find anywhere for it to go.

Overall, the service that is available is becoming worse, and for those who rely on it, which is still many people, there are longer distances to travel and longer queues to stand in. I would like to know from the Minister what the justification is for paying out quite large sums from the public purse to try to induce members of staff to retire, move on or take redundancy at this point. Presumably that only helps WHSmith, because it does not have to inherit those staff under TUPE conditions.

I would like to know what happens to all the equipment in the post offices. Very expensive and often quite new equipment has been fitted there. Is that simply handed over to WHSmith, or are payments made? I would like to know why senior managers in Post Office Ltd have received 7%—in some cases 9%—pay rises this year, given what they are presiding over. The staff have received less than 3%.

I feel that I have been misled over what has happened in relation to the post office network in my constituency. I also think that the Communication Workers Union and the staff have been misled, because they have worked in good faith over many years to try to ensure that the business is profitable. That has meant, in some cases, reducing staffing—by agreement and in the proper way, through collective bargaining—in a joint effort and in the belief that the management were sincere in their efforts to ensure that this viable Crown network would survive. All they have actually achieved is to do the dirty work of the Post Office, which now has fewer staff that it has to pass over to WHSmith. That makes it easier to do, but even so, it is relying on money.

There has not been a proper public consultation. I was struck by the comment from Post Office Ltd to the all-party parliamentary group that this is

“a commercial decision for us, not them”,

“them” being the public. This is a matter of great concern to the public, and it has not been given proper consultation or publicity.

I end by asking the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, a moratorium on the closures and changes. Please can we look again at the network, and have a proper review of services before we proceed in this way? Otherwise we will stumble through this and be back here again in six months to a year facing more closures of Crown post offices, until the network does not exist at all. It is part of our heritage, and part of something that we can be very proud of in this country. It still provides an excellent public service where it operates, and we are letting down not only the organisation’s staff, but all the customers who rely on post offices across mine and each one of our constituencies.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Debate between Liz McInnes and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

In my previous employment as an NHS scientist, I was extremely concerned about the implications of TTIP for our NHS, and for all our public services, and I remain so. In my new job, I have been contacted by many constituents expressing their concern about TTIP, which is a subject on which the public appear to be very well informed.

[Mr Slaughter]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Members of Parliament are not putting pressure on their constituents, as the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) claimed; rather, constituents are saying that they are concerned. They are concerned, for example, that small businesses are being disadvantaged in comparison with large businesses, that monopolies are being encouraged among pharmaceutical companies, and that the NHS is in danger of privatisation. We have a duty to give them an explanation. There is huge disquiet out there among the public, and we ought to address it. There is terrible complacency among Government Members about this.

[Liz McInnes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments; he has pre-empted what I was about to say. I am not going out scaremongering; my constituents and my previous colleagues are expressing to me their real and legitimate concerns about this agreement.

As I said, this is a subject on which the public appear to be very well informed. That surprises me, given that a major concern expressed to me is that the negotiations seem to be taking place in secret. Perhaps there is a lesson here: the more secretive a deal appears to be, the more effort people will make to try to seek out the truth. If ever we needed an argument for openness and transparency, this is it.

We have already heard a lot about the ISDS mechanism, which is causing my constituents and ex-colleagues major concern, particularly in relation to our public services—specifically, our NHS. People are telling me— again, this is not about me going out scaremongering—that they are really worried that this could result in private companies seeking compensation from our public bodies for loss of potential earnings. We have already heard about mechanisms in agreements in other countries whereby those countries are being sued for things such as regulating medicine and energy prices, raising minimum wages, and putting health warnings on cigarette packets, to name but a few. There is a real fear that this mechanism is not about enforcing contracts but about giving businesses huge new powers to intimidate policy makers. There is major concern that the ISDS provisions could lead to enforced privatisation of our NHS and other public services. Governments have a right to be able to legislate in the public interest, and that should be protected in any dispute resolution mechanisms.

The European Commission has instigated several changes that have improved the transparency of the agreement, and that is welcome. However, it is right that the Commission has decided temporarily to suspend negotiation on ISDS until the final stages of the negotiations. I urge the Government to use this opportunity to call for greater transparency on exclusion for legislation that is in the public interest, such as that relating to the NHS.

An online consultation by the European Commission has revealed huge public opposition to TTIP. Again, this is not about me or any other member of my party going around scaremongering. The Commission received an unprecedented 150,000 responses, more than a third of which were from the UK, mainly opposing TTIP and many calling for the NHS and other public services to be exempt from it.

Other countries have sought to exempt areas from the agreement, but this Government have not done so. Instead, their position on the NHS and TTIP has been muddled. They have told the British Medical Association that the NHS will be “protected”, and the Department of Health has said:

“We have no intention of allowing the TTIP to dictate the opening up of NHS services to further competition, and it will not do so.”

However, the Minister for Trade and Investment, Lord Livingston, said in September that TTIP would not have any impact on the NHS and therefore the UK negotiation team would not be pushing for its exclusion. Those mixed messages are of great concern and are troubling. This Government need to commit to the NHS being exempt from the final TTIP agreement and look carefully at its impact on other public services.