§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ian Fraser.]
§ 10.23 p.m.
§ Captain L. P. S. Orr (Down, South)The matter I want to bring before the House is not a very complicated one. It arises out of a dispute between myself and the Postmaster-General about the future of the head postmastership in Banbridge, County Down. I make quite plain at the outset that I have no complaint about any discourtesy on the part of my right hon. Friend in his dealings with me. He has been most courteous in replying at great length to the letters I have written to him and in seeking my advice about what was done. My only complaint is not that he did not seek my advice, but that he did not take it.
To understand the background of this matter, I must tell the House something about the problems. Banbridge is not only a beautiful and interesting old town in County Down on the main road between Belfast and Dublin, but it is one of the more important towns in my constituency. It is important not only as a centre of industry, but because it serves as a centre for shopping and trading for a very wide rural district around it.
County Down is somewhat odd in the sense that it is divided in a unique way between east and west. The ancient county city of Downpatrick is very much the eastern side of the county, and to some extent one can say that in a sense Banbridge is the western county capital of County Down. Because of that and because of its services to the rural agricultural area around, it has naturally, and very rightly, developed a very strong sense of civic pride.
It is also necessary to consider as a background to what I am saying the unemployment problem in Northern Ireland, about which the House knows very well. But what the House may not appreciate, because we hear much about the affairs of the aircraft and shipbuilding industries, is that the essential core of the unemployment problem in Ulster lies in the country. Because of what 172 the Secretary of State for Scotland the other day called the incredible efficiency of our farms, because of the great mechanisation which we have undertaken, there has been a drift from the land in Ulster, particularly now that the small farmers are suffering a decline in their income.
It is essential to look to towns such as Banbridge as potential nuclei for the building up of rural industries. The right way to deal with the unemployment problem is not to force people off the land and into the cities nor to try to keep them on the land by enormous subsidies at the taxpayers' expense. The essential thing in country areas is to build up the growth towns and around them to attract and build new industries.
This is the background against which I want the problems of the head post-mastership in Banbridge to be considered. What happened was this. The head-post mastership became vacant some considerable time ago, and in late August last year the Postmaster-General indicated that he was thinking of not replacing the head postmaster and of transferring the managerial operation to Portadown in the neighbouring county. He said that the saving involved would be about £4,800 a year.
My right hon. Friend received a sharp and justified reaction from me, from the Banbridge Urban District Council and from the local chamber of commerce, who pointed out to him that this would be a severe blow to the civic pride of Banbridge, apart from anything else, and that it was a thoroughly unpopular decision in the whole neighbourhood. My right hon. Friend assured me that the facilities provided by the post office at Banbridge would not be altered and that he will make a saving by it, and he has suggested that no great harm is likely to be done.
I suggest that he has completely missed the point. It is not so much a question of where the services will be located, although I am not entirely convinced that by the downgrading of the post office at Banbridge from head post office to an ordinary post office the service will not be impaired. Apart from anything else, a number of employees will lose their jobs in Banbridge 173 and are likely to swell the unemployed register, even though there are not many of them.
But this is not the point at all. The point is that one hopes to see this town, like others, develop. One hopes to see them becoming growth areas and growth towns. I suggest that the Government should not only encourage this to take place but should be seen to encourage it, and that nothing is more calculated to knock the heart out of people where we are trying to attract and build up industries around their towns than for them to have any sense in their minds that they are being down-graded and tacked on to something else. This is particularly so with this town because of what has taken place recently in two other towns of similar size, in Lurgan and Strabane.
The case of Lurgan is particularly illuminating. The town is nearer to Portadown than is Banbridge and, in the development of the new city which we are to build, is to be amalgamated with Banbridge. The head postmaster-ship in Lurgan became vacant but the post was filled. Consequently, the people of Banbridge feel with some justification that they have been singled out for this treatment and that Banbridge, in the eyes of the Post Office, is being down-graded.
I have every sympathy with my right hon. Friend in his endeavour to streamline the Post Office and make every possible saving. The Post Office needs to spend more on telephones and the provision of new services. I have every sympathy with my right hon. Friend in his attempt to reduce expenditure without impairing the service. Looked at narrowly from the point of view of Post Office finance, the proposal at Banbridge would appear to be the sensible thing to do.
My right hon. Friend, however, is a member of the Government. He is responsible not only for Post Office services, but also for the whole of Government policy. I should have thought that to deliver a blow to the civic pride of the town, against the views of the Member of Parliament, the local authority and the chamber of commerce, was quite wrong and was completely out of tune with what we are trying to do in Northern Ireland at present. We 174 spend millions of pounds in trying to attract new industries and vast sums of money on advertising to the same effect and yet, for a saving of a paltry £5,000 a year, we take the action of which I complain.
I earnestly ask the Postmaster-General not to close the door and to say that either he will consider talking the matter over with representatives of the local authority and me, or that he will discuss it with the Northern Ireland Ministry of Commerce, or that he will consider the possibility of some form of compromise.
I have suggested that my right hon. Friend might retain the head post-mastership in the meantime and appoint a head postmaster and perhaps combine some of the services, if they are expensive, until Banbridge has developed and is large enough to support a bigger organisation. I can think of many ways in which a compromise might be achieved, but whatever he does I hope that my hon. Friend does not close the door. If he does that it may not be the prestige of Banbridge that will suffer in the long run but the prestige of the Post Office and the good will accorded to it.
§ Mr. Roy Mason (Barnsley)What is the population of Banbridge?
§ Captain OrrI cannot say precisely offhand, but I will let the hon. Member know. The population of Banbridge is not exactly relevant, because I am concerned here not with the town itself but the fact that it serves a very large surrounding rural area.
§ 10.34 p.m.
§ The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Ray Mawby)I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) on the cogent and persuasive way in which he has presented his case tonight. I welcome the opportunity which the debate gives me to clarify the position, put it in perspective and, I hope, allay the fears that my hon. and gallant Friend has expressed on behalf of the people of Banbridge.
It may be helpful if, first, I outline briefly how the local management of our postal services is organised. The local unit of organisation for postal and telegraph work within the nine territorial regions of the Post Office is the head post 175 office area. Altogether there are over 450 of these. Each is under the control of a head postmaster, or a district postmaster in Central London. He is responsible to the director of his region for the efficient handling of the postal, counter and telegraph business of his head post office as well as of all the various branch and sub-offices in his area.
The daily operation of these services is familiar to all of us. We buy our stamps or postal orders. We transact savings business or collect pensions, and we see the postmen and mail vans on their rounds. But perhaps we do not sufficiently realise that none of this would be possible if there were not behind the scenes the supporting staff to keep the organisation going, to organise the work, plan new developments, distribute stores, pay staff wages, look after the many records of staff, mail and vehicles, conduct correspondence, account for the £4,400 million that passes across the post office counters every year, and so on.
Much of this work is carried out at the head post offices. As I have said, there are over 450 of these head post office areas. They vary widely in size and character. There are very large ones, such as Birmingham or Belfast, controlling 200 or 300 sub-offices, and quite small ones with only a score or so, such as that at Banbridge, whose case we are debating.
The location of head post offices to some extent reflects conditions of transport and communications that are very different from those of today. It would be surprising if we could not find scope for streamlining the organisation to effect economy and improve efficiency. Indeed, it is clear that the distribution of head post offices throughout the Kingdom, though it serves its purpose very well, needs adjustment from time to time if it is to function efficiently and economically under the constantly changing conditions of modern life. We should lose no opportunity of achieving greater efficiency if we are to succeed in our policy of providing high quality communications at the lowest possible cost and at economic prices.
This, then, is the general background, and I now come to the particular case that my hon. and gallant Friend has 176 raised. Banbridge is one of 16 head post office areas in Northern Ireland. Banbridge itself is the head office town. It is near the north-western border of the area it controls, which stretches to the coast of County Down around Newcastle. It is one of the smallest head office areas, and we came to the conclusion, not at all lightly but after careful examination of all the relevant factors, that it is no longer an efficient or economical way of managing the local postal services to have a separate head post office with a head postmaster, assistant head postmaster and supporting staff at Banbridge. My right hon. Friend therefore proposes that, with the exception of a small south-eastern section to be joined to the Downpatrick head office area, the area should be put under the control of the head postmaster at Portadown.
What exactly does this change involve? One thing it does not involve is any change in the postal services. They will remain exactly the same, and so, too, will postal addresses. The change will be entirely confined to those behind-the-scenes activities of management to which I have referred. There is no need for that work to be conducted from a head office at Banbridge, with all it entails in staff and accommodation, to look after this particular area. Most of the clerical work can be done more efficiently from Portadown, which is only 11½ miles away.
The head post office there is well sited geographically to serve the area; it can handle every aspect of the work just as well and with the addition of only one to its staff. On the other hand, by this internal reorganisation we can reduce our costs at Banbridge so as to make a net saving of nearly £5,000 a year; and, I repeat, without any change whatsoever in our service to the public.
I do not think that I can emphasise this point too strongly. In cases such at this, our first consideration is to see that the public, who are our customers, do not suffer in any way. We do not propose any changes of addresses; counter services will remain unaltered; deliveries will be unaffected. There will still be in the town a responsible post office representative, a postmaster, who will be in charge of the local services and able to deal with local questions. 177 The post office will remain a Crown office, staffed by civil servants. A change of title in the window notice, from "Head Post Office" to "Post Office", will be the only overt sign of the change.
I know that the Banbridge Urban District Council has been disturbed that this change should follow on the curtailment of road and rail services.
§ Captain OrrBefore my hon. Friend leaves the actual effects of the change, will he say how many men will be unemployed as a result?
§ Mr. MawbyI do not want to shirk that at all. I shall, if I may, deal with that point in a few moments.
Our services will not be affected in any way. This being so, I find it hard to credit what has been suggested, that industry will fight shy of Banbridge because it does not have a head post office. There are many thriving towns, some of them many times the size of Banbridge, where the absence of a head post office has not affected their prosperity.
It has been suggested that Banbridge has been singled out for unfair treatment in relation to other similar places. This is not so. Banbridge is not a unique case. Similar changes have taken place elsewhere, and I am sure that others will take place in the future. We are constantly examining our organisation to see where we can usefully make economies, but we always look carefully at their effect on our services and on the members of our staff concerned.
The occasion at Banbridge was an unfortunate one in that it arose from the sudden death of Mr. Weir, the former head postmaster, but it was obviously right that we should take the opportunity of the vacancy to review our organisation there. My hon. and gallant Friend pointed out that the head postmaster-ships at Lurgan and Strabane recently fell vacant and were filled without any changes in organisation there. Both these offices did, indeed, fall vacant, and they were examined, just as Banbridge was examined, to see whether they could be regraded. In the event, it was not found possible to do so with advantage in either case.
I am sorry that anyone should look upon the regrading as a blow to the pride and prestige of Banbridge. I need hardly say that it is not intended, nor do 178 I think that it can be fairly construed, as such. Managerial control of the post office at Banbridge from Portadown is a matter of internal post office organisation only, and it need not reflect or even impinge on the independence or corporate pride of either town. Relations between the post office and the council and people of Banbridge have always been excellent, and I am sure that they will remain so.
My hon. and gallant Friend asked me particularly about the effect on the staff and ha was concerned lest some might be unemployed as a result. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to effect the change without hardship to our staff in Banbridge. We have been able to place them in other jobs in places that are acceptable to them. There has been a saving of staff, but, because of vacancies elsewhere, there has been no redundancy, and all the staff associations concerned have given their agreement to our proposals. I am confident that the staff who remain, and the incoming postmaster, will continue to give of their best.
I should point out that in Northern Ireland itself there is a salaried sub-office town, Bangor, with a population of 25,000. In England, there are towns of over 50,000 population, for instance, Beeston, Sale and Sutton Coldfield, with a salaried sub-office similar to what will be the new position in Banbridge.
I do not underestimate the local strength of feeling, nor do I undervalue tradition and civic pride. They are important, and it would be wrong not to foster them when we reasonably can. But, equally, we must not overlook our obligation to provide a good postal service as efficiently and cheaply as we can. It world be an abrogation of that responsibility if we were to overlook an opportunity where, without any detriment to the standard of service provided, we can increase our internal efficiency and save money into the bargain. It is in the best interests of everybody that we should do this. We simply cannot call upon our customers to pay—for that is what it comes to—to maintain an outmoded organisation at Banbridge or anywhere else.
My right hon. Friend must, therefore, adhere to his decision and the change will shortly take place. I have, how- 179 ever, absolute confidence that the gloomy prophecies that have been made about its effects on the town will prove to be quite unfounded.
§ 10.45 p.m.
§ Mr. Roy Mason (Barnsley)I intervene for only a few minutes, because I am a little perturbed. I do not want to see an unsavoury drive to commercialisation in the Post Office, especially when we have witnessed recently the limitation of rural kiosks and the gradual killing also of the telegram service. Now, thanks to the fact being raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Down, South (Captain Orr), we see that Banbridge Post Office is not being regraded, but is being downgraded.
I asked the hon. and gallant Member what was the population of Banbridge, but he could not give me the answer. I therefore address my question to the Assistant Postmaster-General, who referred to the fact that Bangor had a population of 25,000 and said that there were postal districts in England with a population of 50,000 which were on this level. What is the population of Banbridge?
I agree that there has to be efficiency in the Post Office, but I do not want the hon. Gentleman to keep reiterating the slogan, which is becoming publicised by Post Office spokesmen, of efficiency, or efficiency and cheapness. I want him to be able categorically to state that he wants to see efficiency from the Post Office allied with public service. Let him not forget that on these issues, which are raised every time in the House, public service from the G.P.O. still matters.
§ Mr. MawbyThe population of the Banbridge Urban District Council area is 6,113, but I understand that the population of the area which is covered—
§ Mr. Mawby—is at least 16,000.
The hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) raised the difficult point that is always raised—it is a question that worries all of us: how we can continue 180 to provide a public service and yet, at the same time, ensure that we can balance the books. That is one of the difficulties that we face every day. The hon. Member raised also the question of rural telephone kiosks. Obviously, this is a matter in which we must take account of the fact that if we installed more kiosks which did not pay their way, the average telephone user would have to pay a higher rental to ensure that those which do not pay are subsidised. This is a balance which we must take into account.
The hon. Member will, I think, agree that the line which the Post Office has always taken is that the service has a social content which we always recognise. If he looks at the number of services in which we lose a large amount of money, he will realise that we do not lose sight of our public service requirements. At the same time, however, it must be understood that while we accept this responsibility, obviously it must be paid for by someone and it must be spread over the remainder of the users, whether they be posters of letters, senders of telegrams or the users of the public telephone.
§ Mr. MasonI hope that the Post Office is not laying down any specific rule regarding catchment areas that will determine whether a post office is to be a head post office or otherwise. I hope, therefore, that he can assure me before this debate finishes that this rule will remain flexible according to the conditions of the area.
§ Mr. MawbyIt has always been the case, and it will remain so in the future, that we operate a flexible policy and decide each case on its merits. Certainly, what we have always done in the past is not to make drastic changes, but to make changes where circumstances arise in which it is possible to make them with the minimum amount of disturbance, as in this case. I assure the hon. Member that this is the policy of the Post Office and will continue to be so.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes to Eleven o'clock.