Post Office campaigner peer calls for branches to be expanded with more services

A adjacent who campaigned connected the Post Office Horizon ungraded says its web of branches should beryllium expanded and much services offered, arsenic the institution consults connected cutting stores.

Lord Arbuthnot, who drew attraction to the ungraded which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted owed to the Post Office’s defective accounting system, told a statement successful the House of Lords connected Monday that helium “believes” successful the Post Office and said it should broaden its offering to customers.

The Post Office is consulting connected the closure of 115 straight owned branches wrong its 11,500 subdivision network.

About 1,000 jobs are astatine hazard nether a sweeping overhaul arsenic the radical looks to boost postmaster wage by £250 cardinal implicit 5 years.

The Conservative adjacent said: “I judge successful the Post Office. And I deliberation that the aboriginal of the Post Office is arsenic a web of indispensable hubs, dispersed passim the country, holding communities together, giving radical the accidental to bash their banking, to conscionable connected a societal basis, to interact with Government and different agencies and much services, including healthcare.

“And that’s a aboriginal that would physique up the country’s resilience, and if that is right, should we not beryllium expanding the web alternatively than reducing it?”

Lord Arbuthnot had go progressive successful highlighting the IT issues astatine the Post bureau erstwhile helium was approached by erstwhile subpostmaster Jo Hamilton successful 2009 portion MP for North East Hampshire. He entered the House of Lords earlier this year.

Ms Hamilton had been convicted of mendacious accounting and had to wage the Post Office £36,000, due to the fact that Fujitsu’s Horizon bundle wrongly said she owed the sum.

He yet supported different subpostmasters who had been wrongly convicted, and aboriginal met executives astatine the Post Office including Paula Vennells, its disgraced erstwhile main enforcement who ended up handing backmost her CBE.

Lord Arbuthnot told the Post Office enquiry that it was the “greatest ungraded I person ever seen successful the transgression justness process”. More than 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted betwixt 1999 and 2015.

Labour concern curate Baroness Jones of Whitchurch said the closures were not guaranteed and alternate backing options were being considered to support them open.

“We are trying to find a mode to support these station offices unfastened successful immoderate mode that we can, whether it is providing antithetic services oregon nether antithetic management,” she told the House of Lords.

There is perchance a rosy aboriginal for the Post Office successful precisely the mode helium described arsenic a web of basal work proviso hubs

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Responding to Lord Arbuthnot, Lady Jones said: “Firstly I should wage tribute to (him) for each the enactment that he’s done connected this contented implicit the years, and cipher successful present knows the challenges amended than helium does.

“I perfectly hold with him. There is perchance a rosy aboriginal for the Post Office successful precisely the mode helium described arsenic a web of basal work proviso hubs, successful summation to the banking hubs that we person besides seen expanding.

“So, we request to guarantee that we get the finances of this right. But I deliberation we tin each spot the imaginable of the Post Office web to supply acold much than it is doing astatine the existent time, providing the assemblage hub successful the mode that we were conscionable talking about, but besides providing nationalist work hubs.

“Particularly erstwhile we determination towards a batch of services being integer and online, the Post Office volition person a relation to supply for those radical who are digitally excluded successful immoderate way, truthful that they volition person that constituent of contact, a face-to-face idiosyncratic volition beryllium capable to assistance them entree those services, truthful they bash person an indispensable relation successful the future.”