Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
Main Page: Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Labour - Life peer)Postal Services Bill
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts“( ) Before making any direction under subsection (2), the Secretary of State shall give full consideration to the creation of a Post Bank and shall, following consultation with relevant persons, lay a report before Parliament.”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, in earlier contributions many noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, expressed concern at the removal of government services from the post office. Particular concern has been expressed over the recent loss of the green giro account to PayPoint, which took away another source of business from the post office.
The post office network is a unique national resource. It has as many social and community functions as it has business activities. It is woven into the fabric of all our lives. Communities, businesses and individuals all depend on it, and I believe it should be protected and grown. I welcome the Government’s commitment that there will be no closure programme for post offices, but we are seeing the loss of many hundreds of post offices across the country. It is therefore paramount that we take action to ensure that there are no further closures of post offices by looking to build and strengthen the business.
We suggest “a cunning plan”. A post bank based on the post office is in many people’s view one of the best ways of strengthening the post office by building up and extending its current financial services and thus securing the future of the network. As both bank and post office branches have closed in many local communities, particularly the poorest, many people and small businesses have seen their direct access to postal services and essential financial services disappear. Establishing a post bank would ensure the provision of financial services based on a return to basic banking principles under which bankers are situated in and understand their local community and its needs. With its network of branches throughout the country and the high levels of trust that it enjoys, the post office is ideally placed to house a post bank. The proposal also builds on the central idea that post offices are there in great numbers, and it seems sensible to build on what we have rather than to think of other ways to use the service.
A post bank would hugely increase post office custom and would enable the Government to increase the work they pass to the post office. It would enable the post office to build up its business profitably. It would also enable the Post Office card account to be embedded in a trusted bank and would thus remove the threat that it could again be put out to tender. The post bank would be an economic driver, lending at small margins and supporting local enterprise in local communities. The current banking crisis surely provides an opportunity for a radical redesign of retail banking, including combating financial exclusion and creating an accessible and trusted banking system.
One way of doing this would be to put in place a universal banking obligation, similar to the universal service obligation placed on Royal Mail, to create a post bank in the model of the post office with statutory obligations to provide a service. A post bank would allow every local post office to offer current accounts, access to credit and direct debit facilities and to expand its present savings capacity. It would not be shareholder driven and would be able to act in the best interests of local communities and local businesses. It would be localism in action.
Baroness Wilcox
Yes, that wide network will be there.
We strongly believe that funding for the Post Office will be best spent modernising and maintaining the network. The funding that we have provided to the network will mean that the Post Office is better placed to compete for new business and to further develop its offer to both local and national government, in its ambition to become a front office for the Government. As part of this strategy, we will of course also support the Post Office in expanding its financial services offering, but at this time we believe that that is best done by offering access to the existing high street banks through the post office network.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked a number of further questions on credit unions. It would be best for me to deal with those concerns when we discuss credit unions specifically in the later amendment under Clause 11. I hope that it is possible at the moment for the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her reply. I suspect that I made a mistake in trying to bring a touch of levity to the debate by quoting “Blackadder”—it was picked up by only a couple of people, one of whom used it to beat me over the head with. I suppose that that is the risk of quoting Blackadder, who seemed to have a singularly unsuccessful way of making his plans come to fruition. I should probably never use that again, so I will not.
We are delighted that the Minister has confirmed that she has looked so hard at the question of a post bank—given the coalition agreement, it would have been rather hard not to do so. I am surprised, given the way that the coalition agreement seems to permeate so much of the business in this House, that my proposal has not been given more of a favourable wind, but there we are. It got a lot of support in the speeches that my noble friends and others on both sides of the House made, and I still think that it is a good idea.
My amendment was an attempt to express the frustration that came out in the intervention that the Minister took. In some senses, we seem to be underplaying the capacity of the existing network to do so much more for society. These post office branches exist. In most cases they are active, vibrant places. People use them—I quoted the figures in my address. We need a complete rethink about the way in which the Government do business. We should take the post office network and use it to achieve more than it is currently capable of doing, given the single use that we are making of it.
How do we save our declining post offices? We use the brilliant brand. We use the securely established places that these post offices inhabit in wonderful locations, with huge footfall, in every part of our country. They are used and valued by people but we do not use them properly to achieve the further output of government. They are places that people go to for their services. People use them for transactions and pick up more information to learn—
Baroness Wilcox
If the noble Lord will bear with me, I must intervene. We do believe that there is an exciting future, so much so that we are supporting 11,500 post offices. The previous Government closed them, but we are not closing any.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I am afraid that the Minister did not quite get my point; I was in the middle of a wonderful peroration which, had she heard it to the end, would have made it clear.
I am talking not about post offices qua post offices but about post offices as an engine for doing more for the whole of government. That is what I am trying to argue the case for. The post bank would therefore be one of a number of things that, if it were located in post offices, used and built on, would be able to sustain the network and perhaps to build back to the numbers that we want to see. However, given that this is not the time to make that sort of speech or to make these sorts of arrangements and that the amendment is framed very narrowly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, this amendment seeks to embed employee involvement in the operation of a mutualised Post Office by including representatives from the workforce, particularly the sub-postmasters, on the board of the mutualised entity. We on these Benches are not opposed to the principle of the mutualisation of the Post Office, but for that mutualisation to work effectively for those running the business it is logical for them to have a direct say in the operational management of the business at board level.
Mutualisation is not a new concept; its origins date back to the establishment of the Co-operative movement in the 19th century, which has many facets and is still going strong today. We on these Benches all support the Co-operative endeavour and can trace the roots of the Labour Party to it, but surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly, mutuality is still not a particularly common concept today. The John Lewis Partnership is considered to be an outstanding example of how a mutualised business can operate. In that respect, the John Lewis Partnership is admirable, but there are very few other mutualised entities of a similar size to the one which the Government propose in this Bill. Indeed, in the financial services sector, where there is a history of mutualisation, the tide has rather been flowing the other way and only a few building societies have survived as mutuals. I understand that the Government’s mutuals task force is looking at how government can stimulate the transfer of assets of NHS bodies and local government to mutual status.
Understandably, public sector workers have been hesitant to jump into new and untested structures. Recently, the Trades Union Congress claimed that a ballot at a south-east Sussex PCT showed that 90 per cent of staff were opposed to being “spun out” as a mutual—those are their words. The TUC stated with regard to that case:
“The moves towards mutuals are being driven by management rather than bottom-up. That makes a nonsense of the model because it relies on a buy-in from staff. You can't force mutuals”.
Now there is potentially a new kid on the block—the Post Office. It is indeed an interesting idea and there is clearly an opportunity to establish that business as a thriving mutual. All of us want the post ffice network to prosper, and, we hope, one day be free of subsidy, but at a level that provides coverage for the whole of the UK. I understand that the Minister has said that the minimum number of post office branches required to sustain a universal obligation is 11,500; indeed, she said that only a few minutes ago. We welcome that and look forward to receiving more detail about how that number is to be sustained. That is an important point to make in respect of this amendment. While we welcome the mutualisation of the post office network, we want to understand in more detail how this might work in practice.
In one respect mutualisation might be a straightforward share of any profits made among the members of the mutual, primarily its workforce. That is a common form of mutualisation, particularly in the Co-op, but given that the post office network relies on a significant subsidy that far exceeds its profits at present, such concepts as profit share might not appeal to the workforce if it means sacrificing their collective bargaining rights. Perhaps in this case a more attractive mutualisation model will be one that extends the participation of the workforce in the day-to-day running of the business beyond simply being the passive recipients of profit share schemes. That kind of model may also assist organisations such as the TUC to overcome their scepticism.
The logic is equally strong for the participation of a sub-postmaster representative on the board. After all, sub-postmasters run their own businesses. They know what works and what does not. There is disquiet among members of the postmasters’ federation about this Bill—a disquiet reinforced by the decision by the DWP to announce the cancellation of the green giro contract during the passage of this Bill.
As I have suggested, mutualisation can take a number of forms. My own party when in government looked at industrial democracy concepts for the Post Office way back in the 1970s and the party opposite did the same in the 1980s. Both those schemes ultimately came to nothing because quite simply employees in such businesses are always loath to give up their collective bargaining rights. Who can blame them? Therefore, in order to make the offer of mutualisation more attractive we would expect to see the Government bring through a package of measures that give the employees, managers and agents of the Post Office a real and genuine say in how the business is run. That should include direct participation on the board of Post Office Ltd.
The amendment is not prescriptive; it would leave the decision on who is elected or appointed, and how they are elected or appointed, to the employees and sub-postmasters to decide. The employees, for example, might decide to nominate an outside expert or elect one of their own trade union officials. That is a matter for them to decide. The board would benefit significantly from the input of two people directly representing the interests of the core of the workforce, and that would make the prospect of mutualisation more attractive to those who may be hesitant to embrace the concept of democratic ownership. I beg to move.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for this amendment. The Government are very keen to see sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses and staff of Post Office Ltd—the very people who know the network best—involved in the running of the business. That is why this Bill contains provisions that enable the mutualisation of Post Office Ltd.
We believe that mutualisation could help to ensure that sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses, staff and communities could in the future all have a say in how the Post Office is run. Co-operatives UK is seeking the views of the Post Office’s major stakeholders and will soon report back to my department on proposals for a mutual Post Office. The work that Co-operatives UK is carrying out seeks to address questions such as who the members of a mutual might be and which stakeholders should play key roles in how the Post Office is run in the future. A mutual Post Office must be established with the best interests of the company, the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses and the wider public, who are its customers at heart. It must be allowed to develop organically, with the willingness and participation of its members. We believe that it simply would not work if government imposed a rigid top-down structure.
Indeed, it is by no means clear at this stage that the selection of sub-postmaster and sub-postmistress and employee representatives to the board by election would necessarily be the best option for the Post Office network. There is an obvious reason for this; the mutual has not been designed yet, so we cannot know its governance structure. Enshrining its governance in legislation now and then trying to develop the mutual within these requirements goes completely against our commitment to ensuring that the mutual is developed by the people who know it best.
The Government strongly believe that the Post Office and its key stakeholders should be allowed to form their own mutual governance structure as appropriate. In the light of this, and in view of the work that is being carried out on the mutualisation of the Post Office, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her positive remarks. I am certainly interested in seeing Co-operatives UK’s report because that will obviously help us to progress this debate. I have little further to say. There are dangers in not specifying a little more what the Government really want out of mutualisation, but I accept that it is early days and that there is plenty of time for that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.