Tory-led bid to halt closures defeated (From The Northern Echo)

Tory-led bid to halt closures defeated

2:02am Thursday 20th March 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

A PROPOSAL to halt the compulsory closure of up to 2,500 sub-post offices - many of them in the North-East and North Yorkshire - was defeated last night.

But the Government's majority was slashed to only 20 as several Labour MPs voted against the Government in a Conservative-initiated debate on the closures.

A move to suspend the closure programme was rejected by 288 votes to 268, after 19 Labour MPs, including Easington MP John Cummings, joined the revolt by backing the Tory motion.

Labour MPs had been urged to rebel by shadow business secretary Alan Duncan, who said 90 of them, including seven Cabinet ministers, had campaigned against proposed closures in their own constituencies.

Reacting to the result, sub-postmistress Cheryl Clark, of the Simpasture branch in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, last night said she was disappointed, but not surprised.

She said: "I'm gutted about it, but not surprised because Gordon Brown said it wouldn't make any difference and the closures would still go ahead."

Mrs Clark said she had been delighted by the support given to a campaign to keep the branch open from the town's Labour MP, Phil Wilson.

And she said a petition against the closure, which she is preparing to submit, now has 4,500 signatures on it.

She said: "We're still carrying on with our campaign, which is going really well. It's not over yet, not by a long shot."

Sheila Mulgrew, sub-postmistress in Toft Hill, County Durham, also expressed her disappointment at the result.

But she said the vote had come too late for her anyway, because she is losing customers "hand over fist" in anticipation of the closure.

She said her takings were down by 50 per cent on this time last year.

She said: "It's gone beyond the tipping point, so I don't want to be saved now because the business won't be viable.

"I just feel hollow inside. If it's going to close, please let me close now because it's like death by a thousand cuts."

Neverthless, she said she had been heartened by the support she had received from more than 600 people, who have signed a petition against the closure.

Mr Brown said he wanted to see good post office services in every part of the country, but stressed the organisation was losing £500,000 a day.

During Prime Minister's Question Time, he said the Tory motion did not propose extra money for the Post Office, adding: "Unfunded promises are empty and hollow promises to the people of this country."

Opening the debate, Mr Duncan said the fact that so many Cabinet ministers were campaigning to save their local branches made a mockery of the principle of collective responsibility.

But Business Secretary John Hutton condemned the opposition motion as a cocktail of false hopes, flawed economics and opportunism of the highest order.

Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather pointed out that Conservatives closed a total of 3,500 post offices - the equivalent of four a week - during their last term in office and lambasted Labour ministers and MPs for shedding crocodile tears on the issue.