Postal Services Bill

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Amendment 28 agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel)]

If Amendment 29 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 30 because of pre-emption.

Amendment 29

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, as you are all very aware, post offices continue to provide a lifeline to residents in rural and urban deprived areas, not only through access to postal services but as a shop front for government services, a means of benefit collection and, often, as the only source of cash withdrawal in an area. This amendment aims to ensure that proper consultation procedures are followed when a post office closure is considered. It is not intended to prevent all post office closures; it simply aims to strengthen stakeholders’ opportunity for input into the consultation process. It also provides for a longer consultation process on potential closures in rural and urban deprived areas.

Rural and urban deprived areas clearly suffer disproportionately when a post office closes. Post offices have closed in vast numbers in recent years, both through formal closure programmes and through natural wastage when sub-postmasters close their businesses and post offices are not replaced. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, proposed a 16-week consultation period for rural post offices due to close to give time to find an alternative. Over the past 10 years, the post office network has declined from 17,845 in 2000-01 to 11,905 in 2009-10. This is in large part due to two major closure programmes: the urban reinvention programme from 2003 to 2005 and the network change programme from 2007 to 2009. Approximately 11 per cent of the post office network is in urban deprived areas. Consumer Focus clearly states:

“Urban offices play an even more important role in urban deprived areas, particularly as they provide free access to cash, plus pensions and benefit payments”.

The 2003-04 urban reinvention programme was an attempt by Post Office Ltd to reduce the size of the network with a view to developing a more commercially viable network. It further hoped to manage the so-far unplanned decline in network size that arose from sub-postmasters’ decisions to close their businesses. At the time of the programme there were serious concerns over the fate of post offices in urban deprived areas. The Government stated that they would not close post offices in urban deprived areas unless there was another branch within half a mile, or unless there were exceptional circumstances to justify the closure.

The Post Office’s code of practice for network change programme closure consultations included a six-week consultation process. Many stakeholders felt that the consultation processes were inadequate. This was in large part because of the criteria for closures and the decision to close 2,500 post offices had already been made prior to the consultation process. This meant that opportunities for preventing individual closures were very limited.

Post offices are still closing every week. More than 150 closed on a long-term temporary basis in 2010 alone. There is no guarantee that these will reopen; many are likely to stay closed indefinitely, as Consumer Focus has said. Since the last programme of post office closures finished we have continued to see a dwindling in the overall number of branches. According to the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters, 900 post offices—an unusually high number—are currently up for sale. Many sub-postmasters are retiring or leaving the business because of the low levels of revenue generated by some offices. The Post Office is struggling to find alternative premises and service providers. It is vital that adequate measures are in place to protect rural and urban deprived communities from these closures. I urge support for Amendment 37, which puts current practice into law, allows extra time for rural post office closures and ensures consultation ahead of any closure, planned or unplanned. It also provides additional protection for rural and urban deprived post offices. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I have to inform your Lordships that there is a misprint in proposed new subsection (3) in the Marshalled List. It should read:

“No decision to close a Crown post office shall be taken within 12 weeks of the start of the consultation required by subsection (1)”.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, one of the best things that the Government have said in the context of the Bill is that there will be no more mass closures of post offices. I am very conscious of the damage done by closures in recent years in an area that is not necessarily “urban deprived” but where quite a lot of poor people live. It is the area surrounding Vauxhall, which in the past few years has lost three post offices. The result is that the nearest post office is right across Vauxhall Bridge, half way to Victoria station. Whenever one goes past or tries to use that post office, there are queues that reach out into the street. It has been a disastrous programme for that part of London. Therefore, I very much welcome what the Government have said about closures. Of course, one cannot have an absolute ban on closures because inevitably sub-postmasters die or fall ill and businesses are sold. Although great efforts are made to try to keep the post office going, it cannot always be guaranteed. However, that is totally different from the sort of mass closure programme that we had over the past decade.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, I have been very impressed by the potential offered by Post Office Local. Up to 2,000 Post Office Locals may be coming forward in the next few years, offering the great majority of services that are available in a Crown post office. They will be able to offer the customer a much better deal because they will be open during shop hours. One knows that many of the shopkeepers, who are often from minority communities, work very long hours and their shops remain open long hours—and so, of course, will the post office services offered by Post Office Local. This is perhaps one of the brightest and most optimistic scenes on the horizon. It will make post offices a good deal more viable than they have been. However, post offices also need new business. I have been impressed by what I have heard about the plans—in some cases these are already being trialled—to let these post offices offer identity services, as it were. They can check identity through biometric photographs and this service is already being used by the UK Border Agency. There must be government departments which could make good use of such services. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench can expand on that.

I too have talked with the chief executive and was impressed by what she had to say about the range of services which need to be available in post offices. This will require investment and nobody is going to pretend that Post Office Ltd will become a fully self-sustaining business; it cannot. It will continue to require support, and everybody has recognised that. However, it seems to me that if it is given the freedom to expand into new areas and the Government support it through government departments using its services, thus enabling it to be, as it were, the front office for government, there is every chance that the post office network will survive and prosper in a way that it has not done in recent decades. Therefore, I very much support what is being planned.

I accept the argument that my noble friend put forward when we were discussing a previous amendment —that some of the proposals we are putting forward may not be necessary, but no doubt we will hear about that. In the mean time, I very much congratulate the Government on the efforts that have been made to make Post Office Ltd a more viable business than it has been in the past.