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Plenary, 21 Dec 2006

21 Dec 2006 · S2 · Plenary

Item of business

Post Offices

Leckie, Carolyn SSP Central Scotland Watch on SPTV

It is important to place the debate in context, including a political context. The Central Scotland region lost a total of 19 post offices in the most recent wave of closures. Nine of those were in socially deprived areas of North Lanarkshire such as Sikeside, Viewpark, Clarkston and Holytown. That did not happen by accident or in isolation. It is part of the Government's ideologically driven right-wing offensive on public services.

I am sure that, as is always the case, the Tories will confirm that point. They are prepared to be honest about that kind of agenda but, since the Labour Government came into power, it has used the politics of stealth. At least Thatcher was honest about what she was doing. Public services, including the Post Office, have been subjected to the unbundling, as it is called—as business calls it, in fact, because it recognises the process that is going on and is prepared to be honest about it—of parts of the business. That unbundling has taken place not only in post offices, but in the Royal Mail, in the job cuts that are proposed for the civil service, in local government and in the national health service. Either Labour members have been hoodwinked about that or they are complicit in and collude with the Government's smoke and mirrors tactics.

The closures are part of a strategic, co-ordinated and systematic ideological offensive on public services and on the concept of community planning and social need in favour of the eventual complete marketisation and privatisation of all Government and public services. That is a global agenda, which the Parliament should be capable of debating and confronting.

The offensive needs to be confronted with a coherent alternative ideology—that is why I am a socialist and I am clear about that. However, that is where the main opposition parties run into bother, especially the Scottish National Party. It does not put forward any coherent ideological opposition.

As the Tories have confirmed, the Government's excuse for closing post offices—that they are not viable—is a direct result of their policies of unbundling and privatising Government services. Post offices should exist according to social need, as the Communication Workers Union makes plain in its briefing, which I recommend. It contains several recommendations that would make post offices viable, even in the current climate. As the CWU says:

"No counters network in the world has achieved stable and sustained profitability."

Using the Government's measure is a con trick, and unless members understand the ideological context that the measures are part of, they have been successfully conned. Either that, or they accept that context, which would at least be honest.

As we have heard, if services are not planned according to community and social need, it is the most vulnerable who suffer. I remember Labour in opposition goading the Tories for having a go at the same vulnerable groups who will be most affected by post office closures.

Appealing to this neo-liberal, ideologically driven Government to help protect public services is like appealing to Dracula to stop drinking blood. Unless there is a complete reversal of Government policy on the post office network—by returning Government business to post offices, by expanding the Post Office card account to deliver free and accessible banking to excluded communities, and by paying the proper rates for the services that post offices provide—closures are inevitable. They are inevitable because the Government has planned it that way, and we need to confront that and deal with it.

I move amendment S2M-5349.2, to insert, after second "Government":

"to begin paying post offices adequately for the government services they provide, to return services that it has withdrawn, such as issuing television licenses, to post offices, to begin the development of post office accounts as a banking facility for those living in deprived and rural communities and to consider providing assistance to communities in deprived urban and rural areas to open community post offices to prevent the loss of vital local services, and thus".

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Plenary, 21 Dec 2006

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