HC Deb 04 June 1974 vol 874 cc1184-96
Mr. Kenneth Baker (St. Marylebone)

This is the first occasion—

Mr. Speaker

Order. I must ask hon. Members to retire as quietly and quickly as possible.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Coleman.]

Mr. Baker

This is the first occasion on which I have ever had an Adjournment debate, although I had to reply to several in the life of the last Parliament. I believe that an Adjournment debate should be used only rarely. It is a delicate weapon and should be used only in the interest of one's constituents. Therefore, I am bringing the interest of my constituents before the House tonight, because I want the House and the Government to appreciate the extreme inconvenience and difficulties which my constituents are placed in by the failure of the postal services in central London.

My constituency covers the postal districts of W1, NW1, and NW8. The general standard of postal deliveries in these areas is now deplorable. The time that it takes for a letter to be delivered is now up to 14 days. I believe that the House and the Government should be aware of this, because the Government at least seem to be blissfully unaware of the chaos and harm arising from the situation.

The problem arises from the fact that the post office which deals with the main part of my constituency—Rathbone Place, just north of Oxford Street and close to Tottenham Court Road—and deals in particular with the W1 postal district, has been suffering a series of industrial disputes and, over a long period, under-staffing. This means that an enormous backlog has been building up in the neighbourhood.

Last week, the Post Office admitted that the backlog of unsorted letters amounts to about 2½ million. I dare say that over the holiday period this figure has grown. I want the Minister to appreciate the difficulty in which this places many of my constituents. I hope that he will appreciate that in representing a central London constituency one does not only have, as it were, ordinary constituents but a great number of business concerns, large and small. The headquarters of Marks and Spencer, for example, is in my constituency.

Marks and Spencer told me yesterday that it had received about 72 bundles of mail, that 38 of them were posted last Thursday, Friday and Saturday—which is not too bad, although we should remember that the first-class postal service is supposed to guarantee delivery the following day—but that 34 bundles, nearly 50 per cent., were posted between 21st and 24th May, 10–14 days earlier. In the particular case I have quoted, it takes 10 days for a letter to go from Hyde Park Corner to Baker Street, a distance which could be covered in under 10 minutes with a brisk walk.

Not only large firms are involved. A small company in the clothing industry writes: This Office is concerned mainly with Exports and we find it impossible to carry on this business when we can place no reliance on receiving mail from Overseas in a given period, or our Overseas Customers receiving our letters in any reasonable time. A mail order company operating close to Oxford Circus writes: Our very existence is being threatened as we depend largely on mail orders to keep going. At this point, since no business is being received, the question of staff redundancies looms very large. … Customers are 'phoning us daily accusing us of neglecting their orders and, since they are unaware of the difficulties, questioning our honesty and lack of interest and business integrity when we say we have not received their orders or remittances. Are they not entitled to be fully informed of what is going on? The answer to that is "Yes", but the Government so far have made no announcement about this acute postal situation.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe)

As one of the hon. Member's "abnormal constituents" with a business in this area which is very much concerned, may I ask whether he is aware that I was refused the chance to put down a Question on this very subject? We now have a return to the 18th century and the use of linkmen. To deliver letters even to Whitehall we have to bring them by hand.

Mr. Baker

That is an immediate and unexpected testimony to the difficulties of my constituents. Several Socialist Members live in my constituency—on the whole, Conservative Members cannot afford to live there—and they are seriously inconvenienced by the lack of postal services.

I have here a telegram on the subject. My constituents have stopped writing to me; they now ring me up or send me telegrams. The telegram says: Postal deliveries taking up to 13 days this area. As am currently seeking new job emphasise this delicate process will probably be dislocated to extent that I end up with wrong job. All business and many other activities will be similarly loused up. Country will get reputation for total inefficiency. It is not the country that will get that reputation but the dear old Post Office, and this Government, who have stood by and done nothing to resolve the dispute.

A telegram is the ideal form in which to administer abuse, and I have an example here: Is there anything you are doing to get us an efficient postal service in this area? You must surely be aware of the situation. Act for your constituents and give us service. My constituency covers Harley Street and Wimpole Street, and I have a communication also from a surgeon, who writes: I am sure you will agree that for a professional man to have reports and X-rays on his patients delayed for such a time is extremely inconvenient and could be hazardous. That is a serious point. My outgoing mail has to be posted in Chiswick by my secretary". Another of my constituents does not have to go so far afield: I now have to walk to W2 or SW1 to post my letters. This is an absurd inconvenience.

The coup de grace came from the district postmaster himself. I stress that he and the managerial staff are coping very well in this difficult situation. He wrote: Unfortunately, your letter was also held up in the backlog of mail… I am very sorry to have to tell you that the staffing difficulties have still not been settled and a further overtime ban was imposed"— this is on 29th May— by the staff on the bank holiday, resulting in the non-collection of mail from posting boxes in the area. Notices about this were exhibited on all boxes in advance of the holiday period. Mail posted from other parts of London and the rest of the country to the W1 district is still taking up to a week to be delivered and we are continuing to advise our customers to post ordinary correspondence prepaid by postage stamp outside the W1 area. That is a grave admission of failure by the postal services in central London. Indeed, it is not too much to say that they are moving towards a complete breakdown in this essential service.

In effect, there is no difference for my constituents between first- and second-class mail; it is all fifth class. It is ironic that, later this very month, the charge of the postage stamp will rise by 1p. So the Government will be asking my constituents to pay more for a worse service. This is a strange aspect of the social contract.

What will the Government do about this? The Cabinet Minister responsible—I appreciate that he cannot be here tonight—is the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), who knows about the Post Office. I should expect him to take a personal interest in this breakdown of services.

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is spending a great deal of his time in the Cabinet and in his Department devising yet more glorious schemes to take private firms into public ownership. As I understand it, he wants to extend to efficient private firms the advantages now enjoyed by the Post Office. It seems extraordinary to me that the right hon. Gentleman and his ministerial team should be devising even more schemes for nationalisation when they cannot even run efficiently that which is already nationalised. They should get their priorities right.

What are the Government doing to resolve this dispute? I do not believe the issue can be left entirely to the Post Office and to Sir William Ryland. My constituents feel that the Government have a responsibility here, but as far as I can see they have done nothing about the dispute. I should like to know when the Minister feels that the dispute will be resolved. I should like to know what steps the Government intend to take to deal with the backlog. These millions of letters which are piling up in Rathbone Place include many important documents. I have mentioned a few of them tonight, but I am particularly concerned about the medical documents of many of my constituents, and the practitioners in Harley Street and Wimpole Street whose medical reports are lying in this enormous heap. What do the Government plan to do about that? I believe this requires a very special effort.

What is the nature of the staffing problem in Rathbone Place? That goes to the centre of the matter. I dare say that the Minister will say that it is to do with pay and stage 3 and with the fact that it is very difficult to recruit postmen and other public servants in central London. Any Member who represents a central London seat knows the extreme recruiting problems not only for postmen but for teachers and other public servants, including nurses. I believe that the staffing problems of the Post Office are to some extent unique. Are the rumours correct that there is an unofficial ban in the Post Office on the widespread use of women and part-timers to do this work? I have heard, but I would not know whether it is correct, that there is an unofficial restrictive practice which prohibits the widespread employment of part-timers and women. Of course, the nature of the postal service is such that women and part-timers could contribute a great deal towards it. I would hope that the Minister will be able to deny that rumour and to say quite explicitly that women and part-timers can be and are or will be employed in doing postal work.

I hope that the Minister will hold out the prospect of some improvement in this situation. It is intolerable that an important public service like the post should suffer in this way, and I ask my hon. Friends to reflect upon the inconvenience they would suffer if their post in this House was delayed by up to a fortnight. I appreciate that they might experience a momentary sense of relief in most cases if they did not receive letters for a fortnight, but they know that their constituents would get exceedingly annoyed, not to say extremely stroppy about it.

My constituents are fed up. This has been going on for about three or four months, and each time I have raised the matter with the Post Office it has told me that things will be getting better. I have not seen any improvement, and I only hope that the Minister can say tonight that the dispute will be resolved, that starring problems will be overcome, and that the sort of service which is available to the rest of the country will be available to my constituents.

10.15 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Michael Meacher)

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Mary-lebone (Mr. Baker) on seizing this unexpected opportunity to raise the question of the postal services, which we all recognise as being most important. Certainly, the Government recognise this and have no intention of accepting any decline in the standards of service which the Post Office has always aimed to provide.

The hon. Gentleman commented on the commitment of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to nationalisation, for other reasons which the hon. Gentleman well understands. I remind him that it was a Tory administration who nationalised the Post Office in the first place.

Before dealing with the particular problem of the postal services in central London I should remind the House of what is involved for the Post Office in providing the service which we all enjoy.

The postal business is a service industry which delivers mail to every home, farm, factory and firm throughout the country. In the letter service alone, every working day about 35 million letters are collected from 125,000 posting points for subsequent delivery to about 20 million addresses. Of those 35 million letters about 20 million are posted in, or pass through, London, including over 500,000 posted in the W1 area. This means that the Western District Office, in which lies the W1 area, is a key office in the postal system. Every day it handles nearly 2 per cent. of the nation's entire postal traffic.

I am confident that the Post Office does its best to meet these high standards of service, but it is impossible to achieve 100 per cent. success. Some letters are posted too late to reach their destination next day, and all letters are subject to factors wholly or largely beyond Post Office control, such as adverse weather conditions, transport failures, badly written addresses or staff shortages; and, of course, as with any other organisation, there are from time to time a few errors by staff. They are comparatively few and are inevitably a matter of human failings.

Over the past year the service has also been particularly affected by bomb threats—I am sure that the whole House will join me in expressing our appreciation of the way in which the postal staff have met these threats—industrial disputes on the railways, power shortages and fuel shortages. But without doubt the most serious problem is the continued staff shortages.

The result has been that the Post Office has not been able to maintain as high a standard of service as it would have liked. Nevertheless, over the past year, it has delivered by the next working day after posting some 89 per cent. of all first-class letters posted and by the second working day after posting over 85 per cent. of all second-class letters posted. When one considers all the difficulties, one sees that this is a creditable achievement. But I know that the Post Office is disappointed that it has not been able to do better. It is not complacent about its performance, and it is constantly endeavouring to improve it by careful monitoring of the service and by making special efforts to overcome particular difficulties.

That is the general picture. It is only fair to give it at the outset, to put this special problem into perspective.

I turn to the particular problem of postal services in central London. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I fully accept that the deterioration of postal services in the area is a very serious matter. The principal cause of the deterioration is, as the hon. Gentleman indicated, the serious staff shortage which the Post Office, like other public undertakings in the capital, is experiencing. The Post Office tells me that nationally there is a shortage of well over 9,000 postmen, or 9.6 per cent. of total requirements. In inner London the figure is as high as 14.1 per cent., and special local circumstances combine to make individual office figures higher still.

The figure at the Western District Office, which serves the W1 postal area, is now well over 20 per cent. The hon. Gentleman asked about the effect that staff shortages have had. That figure for the Western District Office has meant that, for example, in the week ended 26th May, 27 postmen there performed more than 40 hours' overtime, excluding Sunday attendances. Over 300 more performed between 20 and 40 hours overtime, so that they worked half as long again on overtime as their standard duty attendances.

I understand, too, that the problems of recruiting for this office are aggravated by the fact that only two or three postmen live in the W1 area, perhaps for the reasons which the hon. Gentleman amusingly referred to, out of over 1,600 staff required to man this office. Men have to travel some distance to get to work and in so doing pass other offices where the vacancy situation is sufficiently high that they can obtain work at these other offices which are, of course, nearer their homes. Thus at the W1 office, in order to provide service to the public the Post Office has found it necessary for many months to call for excessive amounts of overtime to be performed.

I should also add, since the hon. Gentleman referred to this, that about 100 posts are covered by postwomen or by part-timers. The Post Office would very much like to be able to use more female and part-time labour, and indeed is hoping to negotiate relaxations to achieve that purpose, but this is a matter, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will understand, for discussion with its own unions.

Mr. Baker

Could the hon. Gentleman elaborate on that point? He has said that the Post Office employs 100 postwomen or part-timers out of, I believe 1,200 or 1,300. He then said that it is hoped to negotiate some relaxations—relaxations of what? What restrictions are there which seem to operate against the employment of women and part-timers?

Mr. Meacher

There have been traditional rules, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, regarding the employment of women for postal work, partly because of the differences of load. I am informed that the postwomen's maximum load has been fixed at a somewhat lower level than the maximum for postmen, and this is responsible largely for the differences. 1 gather that there is a real hope that it may be possible to negotiate some improvement, but it would be wrong of the hon. Gentleman to imagine that any increase in numbers of postwomen or part-timers could be sufficient to remedy the problems at this particular office. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that no amount of relaxations regarding the employment of female labour are likely to make that amount of difference when there are 350 places short of full establishment at that office.

Following the spring bank holiday weekend, the Post Office experienced acute difficulty in obtaining staff. The backlog of mail awaiting delivery in the W1 area rose to 2½ million. During the week immediately preceding the bank holiday the Post Office and the UPW carried out a joint inquiry into the circumstances in this office. The inquiry made recommendations to the Director of the London Postal Region, but subsequently requested the district postmaster to resume negotiations with the local staff representatives, taking this report into account. Negotiations are still continuing in the hope of finding a formula that may be acceptable to both sides, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman appreciates that this is essentially a matter for the Post Office and its unions, and I feel that it would be unhelpful of me to comment any further on that tonight.

The hon. Gentleman referred to a further matter, and I think it would be helpful if I were to make a statement about the increase in charges. The House may find it unfortunate that in view of this admitted deterioration in service, the Post Office has chosen this moment to raise its postal charges. The fact is that we must be prepared to pay the price of maintaining what is, i am still convinced, the best postal service in the world. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget Statement has already informed the House how, when we came into office, we found on our desks the most urgent proposals from the nationalised industries for a round of price increases, and he went on to say quite rightly, that we could not allow the existing state of affairs to go on. Costs have to be more closely reflected in prices. Not least of the effects of failing to do this has been the lowering of morale in those industries suffering heavy financial losses. We have taken action on this, and the House will know that the Post Office Users' National Council has accepted the need for the postal business to be brought back to a sound financial basis. We have made a start, which should have a beneficial effect for the Post Office.

Looking to the future, I have no facile assurances that I can give to the hon. Gentleman that there is an easy solution that will prevent a situation like this occurring again or that will provide an immediate remedy. As I have already said, the situation of staff in London is critical in many of the public services, not just in the Post Office alone, and a joint manpower study is now being conducted by Government Departments in collaboration with the Greater London Council and the other London boroughs to examine this serious problem. The House will know that the Pay Board will shortly be reporting on its studies on London weighting. Pay is obviously very important, although I am not sure that it is the answer in itself, as unsocial hours can easily make certain jobs much less attractive. But, despite the strong case put forward by both the Post Office and its unions in the past, it has not been possible for the Government to move to allow remedy under the consent procedure of the current legislation.

Mr. Baker

I find this a rather oblique and depressing reply because it seems that there is very little hope in it. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the manpower study. Does he not accept that it is important in this respect that there should be a special manpower study relating to the problems of the Post Office in central London, a special and separate study following which there should be an urgent report made to him?

Mr. Meacher

The hon. Gentleman intervened at a point when I was turning to the conclusion, which he may find more satisfactory, but if there were to be a special manpower study related to the Post Office I suspect that he, or one of his hon. Friends, would come back to the House with a further Adjournment debate because of the effects which this study would have on staff availability in other public services. It has to be a general study of the problems of staff shortages in London.

We are now moving into a different situation in which we aim to abolish pay controls as soon as possible in July after the Prices Bill is enacted, and in this situation I am glad that my right hon. Friend has been able to write to the Post Office and its unions today to tell them that the Government can now see their way to agreeing that negotiations should proceed to reach an agreement on pay increases effective as from the end of the statutory pay control.

The Government think it essential that the Post Office and the unions should accord priority to restoring the relative position of the lower paid staff which, of course, include postmen.

I feel confident that this assurance that the Government look to see the relative pay position remedied in the near future will help to encourage recruitment and so enable the Post Office to provide the much valued service which has gained for it and its staff a well deserved reputation as servants of the public.

I hope, too, that the recognition that the appropriate pay machinery has now been set in motion will have a significant early effect in easing the staff shortages in the W1 area and I also hope that this will give some early relief to the hon. Gentleman's constituents and their correspondents, whom we recognise with sincere regret have been so seriously inconvenienced in this matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock till Monday next, pursuant to the Resolution of the House yesterday.