Postal Services Bill

Debate between Fiona O'Donnell and Brian Binley

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Binley]

I thank the hon. Lady for supporting my point.

In addition to the community networking element, post offices have a social work element as well. I have hinted at that, particularly—as was just said—in relation to the elderly and young mums in our communities. Many of those young mothers, who are building families and creating the generations of tomorrow, have only one car. Many of the elderly do not have a car. If such people are not close to a post office, they are, frankly, even more socially deprived.

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, during the bad weather that we had at the end of last year, the role of local post offices that have been combined with small shops was even more important in constituencies such as mine because people could not travel to large supermarkets?

[Mr Binley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her comments. I think that these interventions are making an impression on the Minister. I am sure that he is well aware from his own experience of the social role that post offices play and that he will have taken that into account. I hope that when I sit down after having made a suggestion to him, he might be able to agree with me, throw me a little red meat, be kind and make all of us feel a bit better as a result of the debate.

I have talked about support for the elderly and young mums—the people without transport. The Government say that there is not a social element to their thinking, but there needs to be, as they will surely find out, as individual Members of Parliament. If people find out some six months or a year before the next general election that that has not been taken into account, those colleagues will be kicked pretty hard, I can assure them, because that happened to many of us in the previous round of closures.