Postal Services Bill

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.