Rural Postal Services: Sustainability Debate
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Tim Farron
Main Page: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)Department Debates - View all Tim Farron's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
Rural Postal Services: Sustainability
Tim Farron Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Jamie Stone
Indeed, the hon. Gentleman makes a wise point. A final point on Maureen Ross: she has protected a fundamental pillar of that community. It is no surprise that a few weeks ago she was elected as a member of the Highland Council. She recognised that a network of local post offices is integral to the social fabric of our nation.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is worth bearing in mind that our banks have pretty much vacated our towns, villages, high streets and communities over the past few years. They must have saved themselves hundreds of millions of pounds in salaries, upkeep and all the rest of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the banks should be forced by the Government to pay a far higher fee to post offices, so they can be sustainable in the long run, perhaps even becoming a front for all Government activity in their communities?
Jamie Stone
My hon. Friend is correct. He represents a remote constituency, as I do. When I talk about the social fabric of the nation, it is important to have a network of post offices in those remote areas.
Kevin Hollinrake
Drop and go branches perform an important service, as do mobile post offices, of course. However, there is no doubt that there are challenges in maintaining the size of the network, which I will come to shortly. Of course this is public money that we are spending, so we must ensure that it is spent well, while being appropriate to the need locally, particularly in rural areas.
The percentage of the network serving rural communities has remained steady at 53% since 2016. We appreciate that it is very challenging for communities that lose their post office service and the Post Office endeavours to restore services as quickly as possible.
Tim Farron
The Minister is a good man; I am very grateful to him for being so generous, indeed super-generous, to my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) earlier.
The thing about individual post offices is that I can think of a couple of villages in Westmorland and Furness —Hawkshead and Shap—that have lost their post office and where Post Office Ltd. is working hard to restore them. Will he pay particular attention to those communities to make sure that we get those replacements over the line, because we are all but done with getting them back on the street and back open?
Kevin Hollinrake
We are very happy to take up any particular issue that Members raise, as we do regularly through correspondence and other measures. Where there are closures of post offices, we will endeavour to reopen them, but that can be challenging. However, if there is a particular issue, I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss it.