The great Post Office debate in full

For those who want to read the full debate on post office closures last week, you can find it either on the Hansard pages on the House of Commons website, or at the "Theyworkforyou" website at the following URL

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-03-19b.946.1

For residents of Copeland who have not already seen this from the News and Star, you may like to know that the following motion to stop post office closures was supported by Conservatives, Lib/Dems, Scottish Nationalists, Welsh Nationalists, and Independents, and also by 19 Labour MPs who were willing to put the interests of their constituencies before their party.

"That this House regrets the proposal to close up to 2,500 post offices;

* recognises the vital role post offices play in local communities;

* notes the concern and unpopularity amongst the general public of closing such a large portion of the network;

* has concerns that the access criteria laid down for the closures consultation do not adequately take into account local geographical factors and public transport networks;

* is concerned that the consultation period is only for six weeks rather than three months, as recommended by Cabinet Office guidelines;

* believes that post offices must move with the times in the services they offer and that options for business expansion and developing business opportunities with local authorities should be explored further;

* and calls upon the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to instruct Post Office Limited to suspend the compulsory closure of sub-post offices while these issues are re-assessed."

The MP for Copeland voted against this motion by supporting a government amendment which deleted everything in it except for the first three words ("That this House").

Then, within hours of supporting the closure programme, his office started to ring round the threatened post offices in Copeland asking them to put up petitions against closure and offering to help them to campaign against the programme he had just voted should continue.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more