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the Press Release Index
25th March 2008
Set Back in Bid to Save Post Offices
North East MSP Alex Johnstone has expressed
his extreme disappointment at the House of Commons failure
to support a Conservative move to suspend the Labour
Government's plans to close Post Offices across the country.
The vote took place last Wednesday evening when a
Conservative motion was defeated by 288 votes to 268 with
the support of 20 Labour rebels narrowing the potential gap.
Since 1997 a total of 4,000 Post Offices
have closed across the United Kingdom with a further 2,500
now scheduled to close by the end of 2009. A consultation
exercise designed to facilitate closures in the North East
of Scotland will now proceed in May of this year.
Speaking after the result became known, the
MSP who will be the local Parliamentary Candidate in the
next General Election said;
“The massive programme of Post Office
closures under Labour will hit West Aberdeenshire &
Kincardine hard and will leave elderly people, the disabled
and those in our many rural areas particularly distressed at
the longer journey to their nearest branch and the mail,
benefits, licensing and bill payment services that they rely
on it to provide."
“The so-called consultation exercise that
precedes each raft of closures has so far been a horribly
botched exercise, with post offices seemingly earmarked for
closure based simply on their geography and not on their
viability. Conservatives are representing the views of
thousands of Scots who want the closure programme suspended
and every aspect of it reassessed.”
"I am doubly disappointed that, of the 20
Labour MP's who voted with the Conservatives, not a single
one represented a Scottish constituency. This tells me that
Labour have nothing to offer rural Scotland and that only a
Conservative Government can reverse the injustices of the
last 10 wasted years."
Conservative Post Office Action Plan
Freeing up Sub-Postmasters
We will rewrite Sub-Postmasters' contracts,
allowing them to provide a greater range of products and
services, including private mail services.
Using Post Offices as Government GP
service
We will investigate a scheme whereby people
who have concerns about a range of Government services, such
as tax returns and pension entitlements, can use their local
Post Office as a kind of 'Government GP'.
Campaigning on the Post Office Card
Account
This scheme is hugely important to those
people who do not have bank accounts and around one million
of our most vulnerable people cannot get a bank account.
Encouraging 'Council Counters'
We will encourage local councils to see what services they
could provide though Post Offices and whether they could use
the Post Office network in their area to better engage with
local residents.
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