Postal Services Bill

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on my very short Amendment 23A, which I put before this House partly to have the excuse to name and shame and, perhaps more importantly, to give the Secretary of State in his annual report to Parliament the opportunity to name and shame. My decision to put forward this amendment came through a conversation with Age UK, which was careful to point out to me that in 2006, when it did its survey of older people, "““44% … used the post office to collect their pension, 43% for access to cash and 56% used it to pay their bills””." That demonstrates what an important role the Post Office played in the financial life of older people. Age UK welcomed the Government’s announcement, as did I, last November that their ambition is for all UK current accounts to be accessible through the post office network. Of course, the significant majority of high street banks are now going along with providing that service, but there are two major exceptions. Here is my opportunity to name them: HSBC and Santander. They do not make their standard current accounts accessible at post offices. Age UK has pointed out that older people could say, ““This is very inconvenient””. Perhaps they are in deprived areas or in rural communities where there are no easily accessible bank branches. They could transfer their accounts to one of the banks that use the Post Office, but the reality is that switching accounts is complex and difficult. There are endless forms to fill out and I know from experience that it frequently goes wrong. To put that additional burden on older people is unacceptable. We had a good discussion not long ago when in every part of this House there was real concern for the post office network, but even more for the communities to see more financial services available through the Post Office with its trusted name and accessibility and to keep people out of the hands of loan sharks. There were endless reasons, and it is important to provide the Secretary of State with the little reminder that there is a mechanism that can be used to name and shame. I hope that it will not be needed and that the banks will have fallen into line, but if they have not they ought to hear themselves declared on at least one of the Floors of Parliament.