A peer who campaigned on the Post Office Horizon scandal says its network of branches should be expanded and more services offered, as the company consults on cutting stores.
Lord Arbuthnot, who drew attention to the scandal which saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly convicted due to the Post Office’s defective accounting system, told a debate in the House of Lords on Monday that he “believes” in the Post Office and said it should broaden its offering to customers.
The Post Office is consulting on the closure of 115 directly owned branches within its 11,500 branch network.
About 1,000 jobs are at risk under a sweeping overhaul as the group looks to boost postmaster pay by £250 million over five years.
The Conservative peer said: “I believe in the Post Office. And I think that the future of the Post Office is as a network of essential hubs, spread throughout the country, holding communities together, giving people the chance to do their banking, to meet on a social basis, to interact with Government and other agencies and more services, including healthcare.
“And that’s a future that would build up the country’s resilience, and if that is right, should we not be expanding the network rather than reducing it?”
Lord Arbuthnot had become involved in highlighting the IT issues at the Post office when he was approached by former subpostmaster Jo Hamilton in 2009 while MP for North East Hampshire. He entered the House of Lords earlier this year.
Ms Hamilton had been convicted of false accounting and had to pay the Post Office £36,000, because Fujitsu’s Horizon software wrongly said she owed the sum.
He eventually supported other subpostmasters who had been wrongly convicted, and later met executives at the Post Office including Paula Vennells, its disgraced former chief executive who ended up handing back her CBE.
Lord Arbuthnot told the Post Office inquiry that it was the “greatest scandal I have ever seen in the criminal justice process”. More than 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015.
Labour business minister Baroness Jones of Whitchurch said the closures were not guaranteed and alternative funding options were being considered to keep them open.
“We are trying to find a way to keep these post offices open in whatever way that we can, whether it is providing different services or under different management,” she told the House of Lords.
There is potentially a rosy future for the Post Office in exactly the way he described as a network of basic service provision hubs
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Responding to Lord Arbuthnot, Lady Jones said: “Firstly I should pay tribute to (him) for all the work that he’s done on this issue over the years, and nobody in here knows the challenges better than he does.
“I absolutely agree with him. There is potentially a rosy future for the Post Office in exactly the way he described as a network of basic service provision hubs, in addition to the banking hubs that we have also seen expanding.
“So, we need to ensure that we get the finances of this right. But I think we can all see the potential of the Post Office network to provide far more than it is doing at the current time, providing the community hub in the way that we were just talking about, but also providing public service hubs.
“Particularly when we move towards a lot of services being digital and online, the Post Office will have a role to provide for those people who are digitally excluded in some way, so that they will have that point of contact, a face-to-face person will be able to help them access those services, so they do have an essential role in the future.”