§ Mr. Frank Fieldasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list the costs incurred by his Department by the industrial dispute at his Department's centre in Tyne and Wear; and if he will break down the costs under each main heading giving details on a weekly basis since the dispute began.
§ Mr. NewtonThe additional costs incurred by the Department so far include payments to the Post Office for operating emergency encashment procedures, costs of casual staff and of overtime necessary to handle additional work arising from the dispute, costs of publicising the emergency procedures in the national and overseas press, and an accumulating liability for postage on cancelled stubs when the dispute is over. These have been offset to some extent by savings on the salaries of those on strike and on postage and other items at Newcastle central office.
It is not possible to give a detailed breakdown of these costs. The scale of payments to the Post Office is still a matter of commercial negotiation, and a full accounting for the additional work will not be available until after the dispute. The dispute is also affecting the computer on which the Department's payroll is normally prepared, so that we have only estimated figures for salary costs. Overall, we estimate that the net additional costs up to the end of September were in the range of £30 million to £40 million.