Backbench Business

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), with whom, unusually, I found myself agreeing quite a lot. It is a pleasure to be here in the interests of the community I have the privilege to represent. Just over a month ago, the Post Office told me it was opening a short consultation on the proposed closure of a Crown post office in Tonbridge. That is a post office that many people rely on. I wrote to the Post Office on 14 October asking for details and the reasons for the closure. I wanted to know exactly which services it was to discontinue and which it was to carry on providing in a nearby stationer’s. After a month, they had not responded, and when I finally did get a response it did not answer the questions I had asked.

That was particularly disappointing because the Tonbridge Crown post office, like many around the country, as we have heard—indeed, as far afield as Northern Ireland and the Cotswolds—is essential to the community, just as post offices are across our land. They are, of course, the very beginning of our true national identity, when the Post Office really did tie the nation together, with the penny post, linking it through the train network and creating one truly United Kingdom.

For too many, that idea has gone. That is wrong, because the post office sits as an important part of our newly refurbished high street in Tonbridge. It is not just important for the elderly; it is particularly important for those with accessibility needs. My community is privileged to have a post office that is near to disabled parking bays and which has good accessibility, appropriate seating and wide enough aisles. It is therefore suitable for people with accessibility issues. In the proposal, such services would not be offered and the narrower corridors and seating would cause problems.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. The survey I mentioned in my speech about WHSmith franchises said that they do not provide for people with disabilities in the same way as Crown post offices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and that is what we may see in Tonbridge if the decision is not reversed. I will ask the Minister to raise her voice in support of the petition.

I would like to quote Gordon Lawrence, a resident of Tonbridge who wrote to me last night. He said:

“As you have rightly said, the town is undergoing a transformation, certainly since I arrived here in 1984, almost unrecognisable in the way the character has changed. The building programmes that have been initiated over recent years, with those still to come, have increased and continue to increase the local population”.

In the context of a growing town with an increasing population, it baffles me that the Post Office feels that a site that it only recently spent an awful lot of money redeveloping to make more accessible and approachable should now close when it is clearly being heavily used. Indeed, when I go to the post office, as we and many of our constituents do, to send large numbers of letters, I notice clearly how many people are using it at many times of the day.

Having failed to get satisfactory assurances from the Post Office to address the concerns I first raised at the start of the consultation, it has become clear that this move is not in the best interests of the people. That is why I launched a petition just over a week ago calling for the Post Office to change its decision, and already 1,500 people have signed it. From Tonbridge, a town of 30,000-odd people, 1,500 is a significant number—it is 5%. As we all know from petitions in our communities, that is a hell of a return. Indeed, 99% of the people I spoke to indicated that they were unhappy with the closure.

The proposed location is another WHSmith, as the hon. Member for Luton North identified, with narrow corridors and without seating or accessibility. The point the Post Office seems to make is that that will lead to longer opening hours. Well, opening hours are not everything, especially for those who cannot get inside or get the services they want. Opening hours are certainly not everything if the services needed, whether biometrics or parcel post, are not available.

Sadly, I have seen that not only in Tonbridge—I know many people are talking about the same in other communities—but in another area I have the privilege to represent: the village of Hadlow. The community has benefited from a local post office, but again that is being squeezed. The term “local” has a specific meaning in the Post Office business model that I would like to explore a little more. According to the Post Office, a local post office is one with extended opening hours. That sounds good, but the House of Commons Library tells us that a local post office does not have all the services of a traditional Crown post office. That is why I am campaigning in my community, as I know many others are in theirs, to have stand-alone Crown post offices defended, because for so many of us they offer that essential link not only to keep the nation together, but to keep people in touch with their families and enable all the wonderful trade that we have seen grow—in internet packages and all the rest of it—to develop even further.

In villages from Cowden to Mereworth, which have lost post offices over the last century, it is essential that we reinforce the need for the stand-alone Crown post office. I will lodge a petition on that with the House this evening, and I would welcome the Minister’s support in changing the Post Office’s decision.