Neil Carmichael
Main Page: Neil Carmichael (Conservative - Stroud)Post Office Network
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Michael Connarty
The hon. Gentleman is slightly over-egging the pudding. I think that the National Federation of SubPostmasters has tried such an approach. It is not as though that organisation has been standing still; it has been talking to its members about innovation and getting more footfall, as the footfall declines. Let us be frank. Many of us are now semi-urban dwellers who travel to large centres to do our shopping—we drive past our post office, regardless of the service it provides. I am and always have been a post office user, but my local postmasters and postmistresses tell me that very few people from the big estates in my village use the post office there; they drive to the centre of the town, where there is a big supermarket and post office.
Michael Connarty
I shall not give way, because I am conscious of the time. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not mind, but I think that other hon. Members want to speak.
My third concern relates to the structure of the Post Office itself. There are two types of post office: Crown offices, whose closure causes the most damage in terms of people’s perception of what they get from the post office, and privately owned, subsidised sub-post offices. The plan was that in 2011 we would need £180 million to maintain the subsidy. Many such post offices are rural; very few are in urban areas.
There was an early Crown post office closure model in my area; a sorting office was kept in Grangemouth in my main town, and a Crown office was retained and rented out to a former post office manager. He has a wonderful shop there. However, the Government are now talking about restructuring in such a way that they will take the sorting office and delivery office away, and it will become completely unviable for an individual to rent such a unit.
In Linlithgow, which used to be the county town, the sorting office went first and then the Post Office said it was unviable to keep the front shop so the post office was moved into a large sweet shop—everyone will know the name, but I will not give it any publicity. Every Monday, it is overcrowded and people cannot get in when it is bucketing down with rain outside. That post office is at the far east of the town. Anyone who knows the geography of Scotland will know that from South Queensferry at the bridges there is no post office until that one in the east of Linlithgow. After that, there are no post offices until Polmont in Falkirk. Post office provision has been unbelievably stripped back.
That is what happens when delivery and sorting are taken away. The same thing happened in Bathgate, where the post office is at the back of a supermarket. If there is a market model, the structure of the Crown offices, which will be given over to Post Office Ltd, will mean there is temptation to do the sensible thing—under a market model—and move away from retaining such buildings in the centre of towns and put them in easier areas outside the town, such as industrial estates. That will be a real threat to Crown offices, which are fundamental to the viability and perception of post offices.
The final problem I shall mention is PayPal. Someone who now works for the Communication Workers Union used to work for PayPal at quite a senior level. They left PayPal and eventually came to the CWU. They said that the board of PayPal would take a loss-leading position to strip out the Post Office monopoly on the things it does now with Royal Mail. That is its aim. PayPal also wants to do cash deliveries. At the moment, there is a system of secure cash deliveries to post offices. PayPal wants to do that. It also wants to pay out benefits—it wants to do everything. PayPal will undertake a campaign to undermine Post Office Ltd, regardless of whether it is a mutual.
The Government are throwing Post Office Ltd to the wolves. The subsidies will not continue, or they will have to grow exponentially. Will the Government explain what safeguards there will be? As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Gregg McClymont) suggested, will they write in a guarantee that every community of a certain size will have a post office and that the Government will subsidise it? If not, they are sending Post Office Ltd to destruction.