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Post Office Closures

Consultations have not yet started in my constituency, just as they have not in that of the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice). As the area plan is drawn together, the local authority will no doubt be contacted to give its view. I have already started to contact my local authority and the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses in my constituency to ask for their views. I am writing to the chief executive of the local authority because I want to be sure that he has taken the geographical aspects of my constituency into consideration when he writes to Post Office Ltd to give it information on the area plan. The Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform was directed to consider the new post office plan because in previous inquiries, such as that into the urban regeneration programme, our attention had been drawn to the fact that financial losses and haphazard closures were resulting in a run-down of the sub-post office network in an unplanned way that could be greatly to its detriment. Consequently, our report of 7 February concentrated on those areas and, in particular, the consultation process. In paragraph 7, we refer to the complexities of the network and say that in answer to a parliamentary question about what size the network would need to be in order to meet the national criteria, the Government replied that just 7,500 post offices would suffice. We came to the view that it was not satisfactory to accept that the network should continue to shrink haphazardly and drift towards that figure, and that Post Office Ltd. should be obliged to use its best endeavours to keep the network at the figure of 11,500 that has been worked to. In citing that figure, I must also draw the House's attention to a figure that Post Office Ltd used during the inquiry when it said that there could be as many as 12,000 post offices plus 500 outreach post offices. The eventual figure could therefore be anywhere between 11,500 and 12,200; perhaps the Minister will comment on that when he winds up. In any event, whether there are to be 12,200 post offices plus 500 outreach post offices or 11,500 post offices, there is no doubt that the network will require a great deal of support.