Alice Humphreys

The decision to close all 7 of the threatened post offices in Mole Valley Constituency is a disgrace. Despite the views of thousands of local people who signed our petition against the possible closures, all earmarked post offices are closing. To rub salt in the wounds, the Post Office at Tadworth is now also under threat. There are all the hallmarks of a consultation that, as far as the Post Office was concerned, was a foregone conclusion.

The policy pursued for a long time both by the Labour government and their Conservative predecessors has been a gradual chopping away at this important local service. Up to now Labour have closed 4000 post offices. The Conservatives closed 3500 in their time. Sadly there will be further closure programmes in future.

The Liberal Democrats are the only party to have fully costed practical plans to modernise Royal Mail and safeguard the Post Office network for the long-term. These plans include -

Demerging Post Office Ltd from Royal Mail, giving the Post Office freedom to develop services for all mail delivery companies.

Selling off a 49% stake in Royal Mail to the private sector and make a further 50% available to provide an employee trust for the workforce on the John Lewis model. This will give Royal Mail the freedom of a private sector business to borrow and invest, allowing it to compete with lean and effective private sector businesses in the main UK mail and parcels market.

Using the proceeds of the asset sale (49% of Royal Mail, which we estimate could release £2bn) to fund the product/service investment desperately needed to make post offices profitable

Ensuring that the Post Office network is the cornerstone of the programme to provide every UK citizen with access to a basic bank account. Post offices can play a key part in financial inclusion. They want and need the additional trade that offering basic bank accounts would provide.

One thing the Government did get right, was changing its mind on selling off the Post Office Card Account. Below is our press release about this.

Alice Humphreys Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate for Mole Valley has welcomed the Government decision to abandon proposals to hand over the payment of pensions and benefits from post offices to a private company.

Thousands of elderly people, carers, disabled people and claimants in Mole Valley currently use their local post offices to receive their pensions and benefits through the Post Office Card Account.

But earlier this year ministers invited bids from private companies as well as the Post Office for the contract to pay out pensions and benefits from 2010.

Had the Post Office lost the contract, up to 6,000 more post offices could have gone to the wall as a result of the lost business – as well as the 2,500 closures which have already gone through, including 7 in Mole Valley constituency.

“The Government’s u-turn is welcome here” said Alice. “It means our post offices have a better chance of staying open. But this should never have happened in the first place. The Government should have realised the importance of post offices to communities and awarded the new contract to them without these months of delay.

“Hopefully, local branches can now plan ahead knowing they will continue to pay out pensions and benefits. But we are also calling on the Government to carry out another u-turn. They must stop putting pressure on pensioners and benefit claimants to get their cash paid through the banks. People should have a choice.”