Andy Furey to MPs: ‘Post Office leadership must change’
Postal May 22 2019“Post office bosses’ strategy is all wrong and the current leadership needs to go,” urged Andy Furey this morning, as he left senior politicians in no doubt as to where blame lies for the Post Office crisis.
Giving evidence to the Business, Energy and industrial Strategy Select Committee, Andy called for “a brand-new approach, with innovation and investment – and we can be successful,” adding that the CWU’s Post Bank proposal could be the key to saving the network.
Chaired by Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves, the Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Select Committee began its inquiry today into the Post Office network, with a brief to cover ‘the franchising of Post Offices, the reduction of Government subsidies, and the long-term resilience of the service’.
The Committee Members, who are all senior backbench MPs from across the political divide, heard first from the CWU, Citizens Advice and the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters (NFSP).
Callum Greenhow, speaking for the NFSP made the surprising claim that “services in franchised offices are no different,” but Andy told the Committee that the Post Office’s transformation programme had been “an unmitigated disaster.
“The Post Office is sleepwalking into a nightmare,” he added, pointing out that “many postmasters cannot make ends meet and many will just give up.
“We’re looking over the precipice.”
Part of the CWU’s written submission to this inquiry is a call for postmasters to be granted ‘worker status’ under law and full trade union recognition for the hundreds of CWU postmaster members.
And during the evidence session, Stirling MP Stephen Kerr questioned Mr Greenhow about the NFSP’s credibility, saying: “You are bankrolled by the Post Office, so how independent are you in representing postmasters?”
The NFSP CEO claimed that his organisation has 8,000 members, but Andy responded by pointing out that the Post Office “auto-enrols” postmasters into the NFSP when they sign up to run offices.
“And the vast majority of them don’t even know they belong to it,” he commented, adding that “postmasters deserve greater rights and protections and they deserve an independent trade union to represent them.”
- Here are written submissions to the BEIS Inquiry from postmasters, Mr Khan, Mr Dawkins, and Mrs Bourton, who set out in detail the struggles they are having to make a living.
Post Office consultations ‘a sham’ says MP
The recent spate of Crown Post Office closures and the prior consultations that the Post Office has run in affected communities also came under the spotlight, when Rugby MP Mark Pawsey asked Anne Pardoe (Citizens Advice policy manager) whether communities are consulted enough over franchising.
Ms Pardoe told him of the lobbying that her organisation has done to try to mitigate the worst aspects of the changes and in particular to try to ensure access form people with disabilities.
Andy told the Committee that, out of 74 Crown Post Office franchise plans, only one had been stopped and said: “The evidence is that people are not being listened to.
“it is a tick-box exercise,” he insisted, adding that, even where every single person in a community opposes a franchise plan, the Post Office still goes ahead.
Mr Pawsey asked: “Is the consultation a waste of time?” To which Andy said: “Yes.”
Ms Pardoe said: “We have secured changes on accessibility – but we don’t have a veto.”
Hove MP Peter Kyle asked her for an example of a consultation in which the franchise was stopped in response to opposition and Ms Pardoe said: “I think there was one,” to which Mr Kyle said: “The consultation is a sham isn’t it?”
- Later in the day, the MPs grilled Post Office interim chief executive Alisdair Cameron, WH Smith director Carl Cowling and Edward Woodall from the Association of Convenience Stores.