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Plenary, 21 Dec 2006

21 Dec 2006 · S2 · Plenary

Item of business

Post Offices

Morrison, Mr Alasdair Lab Western Isles Watch on SPTV

I welcomed Alistair Darling's statement last week in the House of Commons—the primary forum for a debate of this nature—in which he set out a clear strategy for the preservation of our national post office network.

We all appreciate that the network must change and adapt if it is to meet the needs of citizens in 21st century Britain. The notion that Government can ignore how citizens choose to do business, which some members have promoted, is laughable.

Of course we must acknowledge—as many members of all parties have done—the post office network's role in the economic and social well-being of our islands. In my constituency in the Western Isles, some 64 post offices serve 28,000 people. Some members' comments on rural Scotland seemed to suggest that people who are fortunate enough to live in rural or island Scotland are incapable of embracing new ways of doing business in an ever-changing world, but I can happily report that my constituents are more than capable of embracing change in their lives and work and in how they engage with public services.

On the island of Great Bernera, off the Isle of Lewis, the community faces the prospect of losing its post office. However, because the community is part of the initiative at the edge programme, it has found innovative and sound ways of delivering public services. At the modernised village hall site, the local authority has based a couple of development officers, the health board has constructed a surgery for visiting general practitioners and the fire board bases its volunteers' fire tender. The pre-school facility and local historical society are on the same campus. The approach demonstrates sensible and pragmatic thinking about how to share costs. Such innovative and practical action helps to sustain and maintain services in areas that are distant from the headquarters of the council, the fire board, the health board and the Post Office.

For far too long, public agencies have presided over the demise of many communities, but as a result of programmes such as the initiative at the edge, agencies are working together to provide services in places like the Western Isles and the west Highlands—all it took was insistence that public servants sit down together to discuss their plans and priorities and how to refigure and deliver services. The postal service is no different. It must ensure that it finds ways of providing services throughout the country. It is doing that, but four million fewer people are using post offices than were using them two years ago, as I think Duncan McNeil said.

John Swinney, who moved the motion, blamed Government and claimed that Government has decided to "engineer the closure" of post offices. He did not acknowledge the £150 million per annum that has been paid to post offices since 1997, although his colleague Alasdair Morgan had the good grace to acknowledge that contribution. Mr Swinney went on to berate citizens for using modern methods to receive pensions and benefits. He said that the Government should encourage more transactions. He wants people in nationalist Scotland to go back to queuing in the rain for their pensions and benefits—[Interruption.] I applaud Duncan McNeil's humorous dissection of the fallacies that the nationalists promote. I hear the nationalists shouting from the sidelines, but I will not comment on the dreary and mournful dirge from Richard Lochhead.

Sylvia Jackson rightly referred to the prospect of substantial investment, subject to European state-aid approval, of up to £1.7 billion over the next five years, to support the post office network and enable it to be rationalised, modernised and placed on a more stable footing.

The UK Government wants the Post Office to identify opportunities and to set up 500 innovative outlets for small communities, which will include mobile post offices. For 60 years, the Royal Bank of Scotland has provided banking services to Western Isles villages. Last year it bought a new fleet of mobile banks, which bristle with the latest technology. Although there is understandable attachment to bricks and mortar—or stone and lime, in the Western Isles—we must embrace new ways of doing business.

I hope that Alistair Darling, in discussion with the Post Office, will urge it to extend the mobile post office pilot, which currently runs in Wick, serving five villages. I have great confidence in the secretary of state and his commitment to the post office network. I urge him to examine the Western Isles and west Highlands in considering ways of delivering postal services in rural Scotland. I urge members to support Sylvia Jackson's amendment.

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Plenary, 21 Dec 2006

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