Rural Postal Services: Sustainability

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the sustainability of rural post offices.

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. Balintore is a coastal village 595 miles from London and seven miles from my home town of Tain. It has no bank, a fair number of elderly residents and a bus service that is, to say the least, infrequent. When the people of Balintore and the neighbouring villages of Shandwick and Hilton heard that the local Spar shop would no longer provide a post office service, they were downcast, to say the least. There seemed no way to avoid the complete disappearance of the local post office.

Then, step forward one Maureen Ross. Maureen, a Seaboard village local, has long been a dynamo of community work. True to form, she did not disappoint. Maureen dared to ask whether the post office could be part of the local community hall, the Seaboard Memorial Hall in Balintore. The hall is already much used by the community and is a provider of excellent meals and coffee.

Maureen, in true form, approached the Post Office bosses with that innovative proposal. Fast forward to today, we have a successful local Balintore post office, open five mornings a week. Pensions are collected, bills are paid and cash withdrawn. It is the place where older folk can go about their day-to-day business and stop to have a cuppa and a chinwag.

I am delighted to hear about the success story in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. When a rural post office closes, as he mentioned, a post box often remains in the vicinity. Residents will be keen for the post box to remain functional, as is the case at (Stoke) post office in Hayling Island in my constituency. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that keeping post boxes functional, even where the post office has closed, can help make post offices and postal services more sustainable and successful in the long term?

Indeed, the hon. Gentleman makes a wise point. A final point on Maureen Ross: she has protected a fundamental pillar of that community. It is no surprise that a few weeks ago she was elected as a member of the Highland Council. She recognised that a network of local post offices is integral to the social fabric of our nation.

It is worth bearing in mind that our banks have pretty much vacated our towns, villages, high streets and communities over the past few years. They must have saved themselves hundreds of millions of pounds in salaries, upkeep and all the rest of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the banks should be forced by the Government to pay a far higher fee to post offices, so they can be sustainable in the long run, perhaps even becoming a front for all Government activity in their communities?

My hon. Friend is correct. He represents a remote constituency, as I do. When I talk about the social fabric of the nation, it is important to have a network of post offices in those remote areas.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this forward. It is more than just post offices; it is about rural communities. Does he agree that isolated communities rely heavily on a reliable, frequent service, and investment should be made to ensure that daily deliveries, as the postie does his rounds in our rural constituencies, are not a bonus but are a standard? Would he join me in thanking posties and delivery personnel who carry out this vital service on difficult roads in difficult conditions at the right time for us all?

Again, a very good intervention; I completely agree. I have described a success story, for which I thank the Post Office for seeing that it happened. Now I turn to a more difficult situation. On the north coast of Sutherland, in my constituency, there are two local post offices at villages called Melvich and Bettyhill. They are now worried about their viability.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the previous Labour Government stripped post offices of many of their unique services and the current Government have not supported post offices as they should have done during the recent difficult times. Does he agree that that has made the sustainability of post offices all the more challenging, particularly in rural areas such as Brodick on the Isle of Arran, which is now facing the closure of its post office?

The point is well made. I will give this specific detail: until now, Royal Mail, which is a separate organisation, has paid each of the two post offices I described to have a parcel and letter sorting facility at the back of their shops. Technically, that is termed a scale payment delivery office or SPDO, which is where posties go to sort the letters and parcels, to avail themselves of toilet facilities and, indeed, to have a sit-down to eat what we in the highlands would call their piece at lunchtime. I have been told that those contracts are due to end this coming January, leaving the shops without the funding for an SPDO. In the case of Bettyhill, the shop will lose a significant sum of money. It means that posties will have to meet in the public car park to sort the mail and swap parcels between vans. That is a pretty unpleasant prospect when we think about some of the weather we have had recently in my constituency.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. This year, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee produced a report on rural mental health, and pivotal to that was rural isolation, with people needing access to vital services, including postal services and banks. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is beholden on both central and local government to work with communities to protect and uphold those services for the benefit of rural constituents?

I absolutely concur with that, and it brings me to my next point. When nature calls for our posties, they have been advised that they will simply have to use public toilets rather than what was at the back of the shop. At this time of year in the highlands, many public toilets are closed. This is about the overall approach described by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, and getting all the services, the council and local government to act together.

What happens if there is a parcel for Mrs McKay on the north coast, but she is not at home when the postie comes to deliver it? In the past, it would go back to the local post office and would be put, in the case of Bettyhill, in a safe room and stored there. Now, however, it has to go all the way back to Thurso, which is a good 30 miles from Bettyhill and 17 from Melvich. That is far beyond the usual access criteria set by the Post Office, which says that those living in rural areas should live “within three miles” of their local branch. That is no good to my hypothetical Mrs McKay. She might not drive, she might be elderly and, as I have said, she can hardly rely on public transport.

There is a point about staffing of rural post offices. Eggborough post office in my constituency has to close at 1 pm on most days due to staffing pressures. Does the hon. Member agree that specific support could be allocated by Government to meet some of those staffing deficiencies so that rural post offices are more viable in future?

Yes, indeed. I completely agree with that. I hope that some constructive thinking will now be forthcoming. As I have said already, this is part of our social fabric.

Earlier, I touched on loss of income for shops. The post office at Bettyhill will lose almost £7,500 a year. As I have said, that could mean not only further post office closures but shop closures. Pillars of rural communities will be demolished by cost-cutting tactics: we see all too much of that in the highlands, with that weary drumbeat of closures and cutting back.

This comes on top of a situation that most sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses already face, where the individual transaction costs that they are paid for are actually more than the money they are given from the Post Office. Does that not make the bleak scenario that my hon. Friend outlines look rather inevitable?

My right hon. Friend represents the furthest constituency—even further away than mine—so he indeed knows what he is talking about.

Money is lost. There are, however, other ways to ensure the sustainability of rural post offices. We have heard how we can do this from the numerous interventions, for which I thank all hon. and right hon. Members.

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and for tabling this important debate. There has been an issue in my constituency—which I think can be described as semi-rural—with the post office in Darfield regularly not opening. I am hopeful that we will have a solution, and perhaps the Minister can pick up on this, because it has been tricky to get the Post Office to act when there have been regular closures. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it has a real impact when residents cannot access the post office due to regular closures and the travel time is not sustainable?