Post Office Closures

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, although I must say that I miss seeing my friend Sir David Amess sitting in that chair, here in Westminster Hall. If the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is a season ticket holder for Westminster Hall, then I am an aspiring season ticket holder. Of course, another Member who was in here very often—if not in the chair, then on the Benches opposite—was Sir David.

As this is the first opportunity I have had, I place on record my sincerest condolences to Sir David’s wife Julia, to his children, and to his staff—particularly Gill, who worked for him and has been such a support to the all-party parliamentary group on fairs and showgrounds, which David led superbly. I know that we will all miss him enormously.

I also want to acknowledge and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) for initiating this morning’s debate. She is a tireless campaigner for post offices, whose work has shown their importance to our local communities right across these islands.

[Marion Fellows]

I crave everyone’s indulgence; I lost the last five pages of my speech, but I really must use this opportunity to raise a couple of issues. A moratorium on the closure of Crown post offices, which was negotiated by the Communication Workers Union, is due to end next year. Will the Minister please confirm that it will continue? Will he also speak to other Departments within Government to find out what other services they can put into post offices, with charges that will help sub-postmasters’ remuneration?

[David Linden]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on being so versatile as to ask questions to the Minister through me. I feel like the Cilla Black of Westminster Hall here in pulling people together, but she is right to place on record those questions to the Minister. I join her in paying tribute to the Communication Workers Union, which has campaigned tirelessly on Crown post offices. We very much reaffirm to the Minister the need to see more progress.

Over the course of this debate, we have had 11 contributions from Members in all four constituent parts of the UK. That in itself shows that this is not an issue that affects only Scottish MPs, but that there are wider issues around the sustainability of the post office network right across these islands. In my own consistency of Glasgow East, even in my short time as an MP we have seen the closure, both temporary and permanent, of post offices in Cranhill, Garthamlock, Tollcross and Parkhead. That is four post offices in the four years I have been here.

The closures have had far-reaching consequences for my constituents, and many have felt the absence of the postal services in their local area. Post offices provide essential services for local communities across these islands, from mailing and posting to accessing pensions and benefits. On the subject of benefits, the decision by the Department for Work and Pensions to move away from the Post Office card account is particularly damaging for the sustainability of post offices. As I have said many times before in the House, we must ensure that vulnerable people and particularly our older constituents still have access to cash. I will return to that point later.

Despite all the vital services they provide, post offices are routinely being shut down across these islands. In 2001, there were just over 1,900 post offices in Scotland; pre-pandemic, their number had dipped to 1,300, and we know there have been further casualties in the network since then. In August alone, my small urban constituency saw the closure of not one, but two post offices, in Garthamlock and Parkhead. Though there may be light at the end of the tunnel for residents in Parkhead, the broader picture suggests that local services in the east end are being decimated, with communities being abandoned as the post office network collapses like a pack of cards. Put simply, it leaves my constituents and I continually worrying about which post office will be the next to close. I have a lot of time for Mark Gibson at the Post Office, but every time I see his name in my inbox it spells out that yet another closure is coming.

As part of the campaign to save Garthamlock post office, I and a hard-working local councillor, Ruairi Kelly, met with CJ Lang & Son Ltd to better understand how the situation came about and continues to crop up. I also met with Calum Greenhow from the National Federation of SubPostmasters. I have raised this issue in the House before, but through my meetings it has become clear that Post Office Ltd struggles desperately to get sub-postmasters to take on branches and indeed keep them on. For many, it is an inescapable fact and a financial reality that branches are not economically viable, forcing them into the difficult decision of closing down. For operators such as CJ Lang, which at the end of the day is a private enterprise, that is a black and white commercial decision, which I understand from a very crude profit/loss perspective.

I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw who mentioned that in many cases, it is more profitable for CJ Lang to have a Subway store or a Costa machine. That highlights some of the major problems. Clearly, there are problems with the fundamental business model for post offices, which needs addressing. That is something that I and many other Members have raised with the British Government, but it appears thus far to have fallen on deaf ears. As we see post offices being closed, we risk inflicting huge and long-lasting damage on local communities, which rely heavily on post offices and the services they provide, particularly after banks have long taken flight.

The importance of post offices in providing access to cash is a particularly prevalent issue in my constituency in the east end of Glasgow. The consumer group Which? has recently undertaken research that identifies 259 communities from across the UK with poor cashpoint provision or no ATMs at all. The Federation of Small Businesses has reminded us that when an area loses cashpoints, it has real impacts on surrounding small businesses: sales fall as customers who want to pay with notes and coins are left in the lurch, and footfall drops as shoppers head to other areas with greater access to cash. The recent decision by Barclays to continue allowing customers to freely access cash at post offices was the right one.

We need to see continued support from banks for the post office network, not least because we know that banks, when—I was going to say when consulting, but actually more often when giving us notification of closures in our constituencies—often say to us, “Oh well, the Post Office can step in and backfill,” only for the post office network to be eroded further after that.

In the 2020 spending review, the Treasury announced £227 million worth of investment in the Post Office, including a subsidy of £50 million to protect customers’ access to essential services in commercially challenging locations. I question whether £227 million of funding is enough, but it is a step in the right direction. I hope the Minister can provide an update today—specifically on which locations have been deemed to be commercially challenging, how the money will be allocated and what the timescale will be. Given that I lost not one but two post offices in the space of the month this summer, I suggest the east end of Glasgow ticks the commercially challenging box without a doubt.

Thus far, the British Government are failing way short of meeting their responsibility to provide and uphold postal services in our communities. As a constituency MP, I am clear that the continued threat to post offices puts vulnerable and older constituents in Glasgow at grave risk of losing yet more vital services in an area that has already been hit extremely hard. To be blunt, Ministers in Whitehall must stop viewing post offices through a narrow commercial prism; instead, they must see them as pieces of vital community infrastructure that need protection and investment. I say to the Government very clearly that they cannot level up communities when shutters are being pulled down.