Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing this important debate.

Crown post offices, like the postal service itself, are at the heart of our communities. Up and down the country, post offices are hubs for local people and their neighbourhoods. They bring people together, they connect people, and at a time when community institutions, from pubs to community centres to libraries, are closing at record rates, we need our post offices as never before.

I pay particular tribute to the post office staff serving my constituents in Croydon North. I had the opportunity of visiting the Post Office depot in Factory Lane just before Christmas; I repeat here, on the record, the thanks I offered the staff there for the fantastic job they do for the rest of us all year round, not only in the very busy Christmas period. It is sad in the extreme that, instead of protecting these vital and publicly owned assets, the Government are complicit in what my hon. Friend calls their managed decline. It is particularly galling for the public that they are paying more while getting less. The costs of getting rid of staff and refurbishing the franchisee’s stores are met by the public, but they all lead to a reduced service.

It is a tragedy to see our postal services being run down in this way. Fewer counter positions means more time spent queuing, especially at busy times of the year such as Christmas. The loss of post offices presents particular difficulty for older and disabled people who are less able to get around—particularly, as we heard earlier, if new facilities are situated above ground floor level—and overworked staff have less time available to offer help and advice to customers who may need it.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about people with mobility difficulties. One of the issues that has been raised with me is that of people who have other conditions, perhaps neurodiverse conditions, who find the overload of being in a busy shopping centre particularly difficult. Does he think that has been properly recognised in the proposals to franchise into shopping centres?

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes an important point; clearly that has not been taken into account at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan referred to an attempt to site a post office in a retail outlet called Bargain Booze. How inappropriate is that for many people—children, for instance, who might be going to a post office to use its services, but are walking through aisles of cheap, low-quality alcohol? That is entirely unacceptable.

[Gordon Marsden]

I endorse what my hon. Friend has just said. We had exactly the same situation in Blackpool, where a very well used sub-post office was transferred into that position. We managed to get some amelioration of the presentation of the booze, if I can put it that way, but it is not a welcoming environment for people to go into late at night to get the services of a post office branch.

[Mr Reed]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend’s important point.

Of course, it is not just customers who are suffering from the current franchising model. Many staff lose their jobs, only to be replaced in due time by lower paid staff. That, fundamentally, is how franchise partners deliver a service more cheaply. They cut staff numbers, they cut staff pay and they cut staff terms and conditions. In all seriousness, we are not going to protect our high streets or tackle growing levels of in-work poverty through a race to the bottom.

My final point is about the lack of a real forward vision for our post offices. Of course services have to change as society changes, but change does not only mean closure. The CWU has called for the Government and Post Office Ltd to set up a “post bank”, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan referred to earlier, along the lines of those seen working effectively in other European countries. Thornton Heath is an important district centre in my London constituency. Like many towns outside our cities, it no longer has a bank at all since Barclays closed its branch last year. Many small businesses in such areas trade in cash, and they need a bank in the locality—in the neighbourhood—to deposit the day’s takings. Not all businesses are digital and not all businesses are online. We are driving small businesses into ruin by allowing basic facilities like banking to be withdrawn. What a fantastic opportunity a post bank would be to revitalise our Post Office and our hard-pressed high streets at the same time—and what a crying shame that we lack a Government with either the ambition or the vision to seize it.