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Post Office Closures

It is a great pleasure to have this opportunity to initiate a debate about post office closures in the London borough of Sutton. The issue is of great concern to many of my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who hopes to catch your eye, Sir John, and who has the agreement of the Minister to contribute to the debate. This debate is a continuation of one that started in the chamber of Sutton council just last week when the local authority debated its concerns about the network change programme that is about to be unleashed on the residents of Sutton. On behalf of the local authority, I pass on to the Minister its serious concerns about the methodology and adequacy of the envisaged consultation, and its desire to sustain and support a proper network of sub-post offices in the London borough of Sutton and to engage seriously with the team that is conducting the consultation. I come here with three pleas. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that the first is a plea to abandon the plans that are unfolding around the country, and to seize the opportunity to launch a rethink about future ways of securing the network. However, if that plea falls on stony ground, I have two others to which I hope the Minister will give further consideration. The first is that there needs to be more time for the consultation regarding the network change programme if it is to be meaningful and if the public are to have any confidence in it. My final plea concerns the need for greater flexibility in the decision-making process. I come to this debate with experience of the network reinvention programme of two or three years ago, which saw six post offices close in my area. Many of my constituents believe—I share their belief—that the consultation exercise was little more than a sham. It started with the suggestion that substantial sums of money would be offered to sub-postmasters who opted to close, and they signed contracts, which effectively tied their hands to a decision by Post Office Ltd. Those financial incentives made the consultation exercise unfair, and the consequence was unplanned gaps in the network. My constituency witnessed the closure of Belmont village post office, which left a lot of my constituents many miles away—bus journeys away—from the nearest post office. Lack of common sense behind the proposals led to, for example, the closure of the Cheam village post office. Again, that post office was well used not just by local residents but by local businesses, which must also now go further afield to bank their cash. The intention was that the network reinvention programme would be a strategic process to stabilise the network, but how long was it supposed to stabilise it for? Here we are again, with more proposals on the way. The network change programme threatens every local sub-post office in the land. We understand that in Sutton the proposals are being rushed out on 19 February next year for six weeks' consultation, which brings me to my first substantive point. The six-week consultation period is just not enough to do justice to the proposals that we are likely to face. It is a breach of the Cabinet Office's rules, which say that the written consultation period should be a minimum of 12 weeks. I know that it is not a Government consultation, but it flows directly from Government policy and should therefore follow Cabinet Office guidelines. Six weeks is not enough for customers, and it is not enough for my constituents. It is certainly not enough for local authorities and other local organisations to engage meaningfully, to criticise, to scrutinise and to examine the justification for the proposals. Indeed, I agree with the report of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which will be debated later this week, that it was hard to understand why an extra six weeks could not be justified, given that, despite the argument that that would create further uncertainty for sub-postmasters, they have been living with uncertainty since 1999 at the very least. Slightly more time for consultation would help to ensure that if the closures go ahead, the outcome will be more durable and will not result in our returning to the matter in two or three years to seek another set of closures to stabilise the network again. My second point concerns flexibility. Predetermining the number of closures—2,500 on this occasion, of which 1,250 are in urban and suburban areas—turns the consultation exercise into little more than a data validation or checking exercise. There must be more flexibility on the number of post office closures, so that the consultation is seen to be meaningful and genuine in affecting the outcomes and totality of closures. My constituents want to be reassured that the methodology for selecting post offices for closure is fair and well grounded in evidence. There should be transparency, even if that only helps to validate the data on which the decisions are made. We also need to be sure that when the Post Office says that 90 per cent. of the population will live within a mile of a post office and 99 per cent. within three miles, that is not just an exercise of drawing circles on maps, and that real weight is given to local knowledge, transport infrastructure, the way in which major roads and railway lines disrupt access, and commercial and regeneration factors. If those matters are not included in the decision making, I fear that we may have a network that looks perfect on paper but is not fit for purpose on the ground. The Government must make a clear decision about what they are doing to support the post office network. Departments have made a number of decisions that continue to destabilise the network. For example, the decision of the Department for Work and Pensions not to renew the Post Office card account contract beyond 2010 means that £1 billion of post office network revenue will be lost. Local post offices are a vital lifeline. They contribute to the vitality of the local economy, and their closure causes difficulties and hardship. Research by Help the Aged found that between 2001 and 2005, the proportion of elderly people who use post offices once a week went up, which is an example of more people wanting to use post offices. If their local branch closed, 88 per cent. of older people would have to make special travel arrangements. The fear is that this further round of closures will not stabilise the network, but will simply leave it in an even more vulnerable condition. It remains unclear what happens when an unplanned closure takes place. If the programme goes through and we have a new, lean, mean network, and if branches start to close, how will the gaps be plugged, and what guarantees are there that those gaps will be plugged? Instead of managing the decline of the network, why do the Government not take steps to improve the competitiveness and diversification of services? Why not unlock some of the value of the Royal Mail to reinvest in the network, and to bring new capital into the business? My constituents have seen the number of post offices fall from 16 in 1999 to seven today. The local postal network is already full of holes, and more closures will result in more even more holes. We were told that the network reinvention programme was the answer, but we are debating the matter again today. Clearly, it was not the solution for stabilising the network. We are now told that the network change programme is the answer, but will it be? If there must be more closures, I hope that the Minister will say today that there will be more time for consultation so that there can be meaningful dialogue with local people and their representatives, and that there will be more flexibility regarding the outcomes. If that is not possible, my constituents will rightly draw the conclusion that in February next year they will be faced with yet another sham consultation and yet another piece of evidence that the Government are content to preside over the decline of our postal network.