Post Office

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I thank my noble friend Lord Stoneham for his very strong and broad support for what the Government are doing. He makes the very important point that the post office network, and individual post offices, whether local or main branches, will now be in a much better position to compete and to offer much better, streamlined services for the customer. The whole point is that we want to create a more stable environment so that the customer can come in and have a greater offering of retail opportunities, including the financial options.

The Post Office is making good progress towards meeting its commitment to provide affordable and accessible financial services, including current accounts. In May 2013, as the noble Lord will know, it launched a current account pilot, with a national rollout expected in 2014. Alongside that, the Post Office continues to offer an extensive range of savings, credit card and mortgage products. I have no doubt that this offering will be extended as confidence is brought in again and increases in the network around the UK.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I should probably declare an interest as a director of a mail order firm. I know this debate is nothing to do with Royal Mail whatever but the firm that I am director of uses the local sub-postmaster branches somewhat extensively.

More than 20 years ago, I was in the Minister’s position speaking for the Post Office in your Lordships’ House. At the time, I wondered why sub-postmasters, in particular, were not allowed to hold passport forms, so I welcome this half-change that the Government have made in considering allowing the Post Office to digitise the passport application forms for customers. However, of course, in this day and age, many of us think too much in terms of computers. A vast number of people in this country would not dream of either owning a computer or using somebody else’s computer—for example, the post office’s. Therefore I maintain my plea from all that time ago that the post office, sub-postmasters particularly, be allowed to both issue and receive completed paper passport forms. In my view, that is long overdue.

The other thing I would like to say is that of course it is not only for the Government to produce services for the Post Office to offer. For example, you can go into my local post office in a village on the outskirts of Taunton and ask for either dollars or euros. That is not a government service; that is an arrangement with the banks. If I wanted some Argentinean pesos, they would probably take only three days to arrive. There are all sorts of other non-government services that the Post Office should or could be able to provide. I hope that it is thinking along thelines of extra activities that it could offer; for example, booking airline seats. I congratulate theGovernment on a small step in what I regard as the right direction.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I thank my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale for his support for what we are doing. I am glad that he has made it clear that we are not talking about Royal Mail today and that the focus is indeed on the Post Office for once—a very important part of our life in the UK. I am also glad to hear that he frequents his local post office.

I agree entirely that as the post office system looks towards becoming more confident and settling into offering different types of services, the range of services will entirely depend on the remit of the contracts between the independent post office sub-postmasters and the Post Office. But I am sure that most of them will be thinking about how they can best make their post offices pay and offer the best possible range of services to customers. These extra activities could include the opportunity to get online and go on to a computer, and even perhaps introducing some coffee shops into post offices—who knows?

With regard to his point about passports, the situation is going to remain that those who wish to renew passports will be able to do so, primarily at the main post offices. We do not want to create lengthening queues at local post offices when people want simply to buy a bar of chocolate or some stamps. These issues have been well thought out. Bearing in mind that we want to stick to our pledge of having 93% of the population living within a mile of a post office, being able to renew driving licences and passports is very important, and that is all very much part of the future.