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SPECIAL CONFERENCE
Thursday 18 - jay 19 June 2015
Holiday Inn, Birmingham Airport
Thursday 18 June 2015
OPENING OF CONFERENCE
NATIONAL PRESIDENT MR JIM NOTT: Welcome to Birmingham. Thank you very much for making the effort
to come to the Special Conference so closely after our National Conference. Can I please hand over to David
for the Health and Safety?
DAVID MILNER (National Executive Officer): Thank you National President. Morning ladies and gentlemen.
The toilets, as you've probably found out, are out of the entrance to the room, turn to the right, there are some
gents on the right hand side and the ladies are further around past reception. But apparently if it's congested at
lunchtime there are some through the first door to the right and down the stairs.
In regards to fire alarm activation there is a planned alarm for twelve o'clock tomorrow lunchtime, so nothing
today but twelve o'clock tomorrow lunchtime. There is only one exit out of this room so please if the alarm goes
off you need to form an orderly queue behind me. (laughter) But it's the way you came in and then straight out
through the double doors and you congregate at the far end of the car park. But please, it's quite congested, if
there is an alarm form an orderly queue. I'll hand back to the National President, thank you.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you David. Just further to that, lunch will be at half-twelve today is in Marco's
and the bar which is the reception where we came in. There will be a tea break at 3.00pm and dinner will be
served at 7.00pm in the Lancaster 1, which is the unit next to us here.
That's our agenda for today. We'll be running through the background of the change, the network
reconstruction and why we can't stay the same. We'll outline the three choices for our future and at the end,
number seven, there will be questions and answers. What we would ask you to do when the questions and
answers are open to the floor, please use the rostrum that's available. Can I hand over to George Thomson.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Colleagues, friends, thanks for coming today, this is probably the
most important conference for a long, long time for the Federation, and just to give the background of where we
are. Now, if you go back to 2003 the turnover of Post Office Ltd within Royal Mail, without any subsidy, and
remember we had the benefit books at the time, 2003, £1.2billion. Now, if you look at the government inflation
calculator from 2003 to 2015 inflation has been 45.35%. Now what does that mean? That means that
£1.2billion just to have stayed the same as a turnover for a company would have had to have grown by
£544million. So our turnover, to be as a big as we were, as a company, Post Office Ltd 12 years ago should
have been in the region of £1.8billion. The reality is without subsidy it is now less then £900million. So that
emphasises the background to where we are.
Now the customer numbers have drifted down and I just want to say, before we get much further into the
presentation, in the right location with the right attitude and the right business mix you can still run a very
successful, profitable post office but it is becoming harder and it's becoming harder for the reasons I've already
indicated. If we look at the 28million, it's drifted down to 16million and the reality is the Post Office are still
losing 500,000 customers per week per year. So this year the number will be down to 15% million and if we
don't address it it will be 15million and the year after it will be 14% million. So the reality is whatever we do as
an organisation the numbers, whatever we pick, CWU, NFRN, the MOU, we're still in a very, very difficult
trading environment.
Now I don't have to go on too much about the change in new technology. The reality is many of the people
when they came down to the airport, their boarding pass was on their mobile phone. Apple are doing an app
very soon where people will be able to pay their bills. At the moment you've got a credit card and your debit
card and it's contactless. Apple are bringing out an app where you'll actually be able to do with your phone
what you do at the airport with you boarding pass. £5.50 at Starbucks, okay they won't pay any tax on it, £5.50
in Starbucks, you'll touch your mobile phone in the future. So things are changing enormously. How many
people shop online now? I booked a holiday to Turkey for next week and it's online. We all do that, you go onto
the different websites, the Trivago where you compare the prices and there's four or five booking.com, we all do
it now, railway tickets, we know what's happening out there.
The high street has become ultra-competitive and one of the things that's really been a big struggle for all of us
is that newsagents, convenience store operators, they're so desperate to survive now that they're doing
competitive products against us for rates that they wouldn't have even entertained 20 years ago.
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So everybody is involved in a race to the bottom, everybody, and if you look at the bill payment, if you
remember bill payment used to be in your core tier payment and it was worth about eight years ago, 23p, 25p
per pop. Now for a bill payment you're getting 6p, 8’2p, mobile phone top-ups the rates have collapsed, so you
all know what's happening out there.
Now again, I want to re-emphasise that this is not a silver bullet, whatever we do for the future of the Fed,
there's some really hard choices coming our way, some really hard decisions coming our way and I believe it
would be wrong for me not to tell you that we had a conference, a special conference in West Bromwich 16, 18
months ago, November 2013, and this is the presentation that we gave the delegates and this was to endorse
Network Transformation 2 which allowed more compensation to leave, more investment money to stay, a
degree of compulsion, but one of the pages we've got 18 months ago 'Don't miss the boat.’ and what we say,
every likelihood in three years’ time there will be no money available for changes, no government money for
restructuring, no government money for compensation and fixed pay could disappear for everybody.
So in the next two days regardless of what choice you made there will be a letter going out from the Post Office
to the people that have not engaged with Network Transformation. Not the Community offices, and not the
5,500 that have said ‘Right I want to go." 'I want to stay’ but what that's going to say quite clearly is that fixed pay
is going to disappear from the network apart from the Community offices. The logic behind it is what I said at
conference, the government subsidy three years ago was £210million a year, it's now down to £130million, the
government want the subsidy to go down to £50million or £60million and the subsidy, as far as their concerned,
is to pay the fixed pay of the rural Community offices predominantly and some urban deprived. That is it. So in
the future there will not be the money, fixed pay is about £110million a year still for everybody, there will not be
the money in the future for fixed pay for everybody. So the letter is going to say 'You have to engage with the
programme, you have to tell us by 31 December if you want to go, if you want to stay, but you cannot sit on the
fence any longer’ and if you sit on the fence from 1 January fixed pay will disappear if you do not make your
mind up what you want to do. Again colleagues, the Federation were the people four years ago that allowed
you to stay on the contract you were all on and not have to engage in Network Transformation.
So there's big issues coming down the line regardless of the choices you make today, and if you think by joining
the CWU you can stop fixed pay disappearing for most people, that will not be the case. If you think joining the
NFRN will stop it happening, that will not be the case and signing the MOU we will not be able to stop that
either. The government are not going to pay the kind of money they have to to keep fixed pay for everybody, it
will not happen.
Now turning to the Mails market. The Mails market is massively aggressive, the myHermes, the CollectPlus,
things are very, very difficult out there and the Post Office are a little bit concerned that maybe in the past
they've closed too many offices and maybe there are some parts of the country where there's a post office
desert, not enough post offices, and that myHermes, CollectPlus, DPD, do not have sufficient post office
competition.
Now one of the things that we didn't tell you at conference because we actually stopped the Post Office doing it,
we were at a meeting last September and lan Kennedy, who has now left the company, lan Kennedy thought it
would be a great idea to have 8,000 new post offices, 8,000 new points and actually we stopped him doing it.
lan Kennedy has been sacked and any extension to this network will be controlled, it will be managed and it will
be tiny, it will be tiny, because if you had 8,000 new post offices then we would have all went bankrupt. So this
Federation never, ever sits on its backside, we always fight our corner and that threat is away and if you recall
what Paula said at conference, she's opened the equivalent of 2,000 new post offices because of the extra
hours and that making Network Transformation work is the most important thing.
And the last point up there, the customer base is still diminishing. Government services are declining. It's still
their policy that the government should deliver Front Office of Government strategy but it is not going to happen
I know some people feel that we should try again to launch a campaign. For 20 years different governments of
all political persuasions, so this is not attacking Labour, it's not attacking the Lib Dems, it's not attacking the
Conservatives, none of them have delivered new work and that's because new technology, quite frankly, is
happening so fast and society is changing so fast that the government are being left behind and they've now got
to save money, so it isn't going to happen in a serious way.
You all know this here. We have supported, if you like, three major restructuring programmes. Urban network
reinvention 13, 14 years ago, Network Change very recently eight or nine years ago, NT1 and NT2. Now
Network Transformation 2 was just a tweaking of Network Transformation 1 but what it did do, and just for the
avoidance of doubt, if you left in the past with Network Transformation 1 you only got 18 months compensation.
The Federation got it up to 26 months. If you converted to a Local the only money you got to help you
reconfigure your shop and become more of a retailer was 18 times your fixed pay, so if your fixed pay was
£1,000 you only got £18,000 to help you. We got that increased that you get one year of your normal pay, so if
you changed to Local and your pay is £40,000 a year or your salary or your remuneration, whatever you want to
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call it, you got £40,000. Now that happened under NT2 as well, so Network Transformation 2 made it quite a lot
better and we supported it.
Now there are some people who have said to me ‘George, the Federation have sold out. We've supported
three lots of closures, it's not worked’ and really if you look at the fact it's not worked is neither here nor there. I
would have loved it to work, all of these programmes have tried to turnaround the fortunes of the post office
network in a world that's changing and the customer is changing and it hasn't worked in the sense that we're
really in front of the game or it's worked tremendously and we're all making a lot more money, but what these
three programmes have done is help roughly about 7,000 of our guys and girls leave with compensation. The
ones that are staying, some of them have had £80,000, £100,000 of investment and the question I would ask
this conference is how much worse would the situation be facing subpostmasters if there had not been any
network restructuring over the last 13 years? It would be chaos, there would have been thousands of people
leaving with the keys getting handed in, so surely it was far better to do this than to actually have sat back on
your bums and done nothing at all. I make no apologies that my predecessor Colin Baker, previous Executive
Councils, myself and the team for the last 8 or 9 years, we make no apologies that this Federation has
supported Network Transformation, Network Change, all the network restructuring. It would have been carnage
for the network if we had not done that.
But there has been a price and the price for the Federation, quite obviously, is that the game is up. We were
historically, and we've been around 118 years, we were an organisation that was independent, and we still will
be, but we represented predominantly standalone postmasters, postmasters with not a lot of retail and maybe
some cards and stationery, exactly as I was 25 years ago. That's what we've done and the network is
changing, the multiples will have 25% of the branches, more and more people are becoming retail focused. Our
National President became a Local and invested the money he got in becoming more retail focused because he
realised that no-one owes him a living and he has to change because if he didn't change he wouldn't survive.
The downside for the Fed is we're just the vast majority of our membership base and we knew it was coming.
We knew every time we went into meetings if we support this this is another 2,000 members away, but we did
the right thing, this Executive Council did the right thing. We put our members' investment first even though we
knew, as an organisation it was bringing forward the day of reckoning where we could not survive on our own
and that's exactly where we are now.
Now the first discussions with the Post Office on a MOU were probably well over three years ago, certainly
intensive over the last two years. Now some of our colleagues have said to me 'George, why can't we stay the
same?’ and the reality is we just physically do not have the critical mass and the economics, the scale of
economies to stay the same, because if you've got 10,000 members or 5,100 you've still got to have an
Executive Council, you've still got to have a headquarters and we've cut back, there used to be 20-odd people
in headquarters 10, 12 years ago, there's 12 now. So we've, as Assistant General Secretaries have gone we've
not replaced them, we've always made savings on an ongoing basis as we lost membership. But you're now
down to a situation where 5,100 members running about 5,400 branches run our outreaches, we don't have the
critical mass anymore to survive, we're running a deficit now probably of £200,000, £250,000, £275,000 a year.
For the Federation if 20 people turn up at a branch meeting it almost costs as much as 40 people turning up. If
we have a conference, if we've got 100 people that doesn't give you a big saving from 140, so just because you
get smaller doesn't mean to say your costs go down dramatically, they go down but not dramatically. So we are
struggling to maintain going forward. We've got about £2miillion in the bank and our headquarters is worth
about £1million. That's where we are.
The big issue for us isn't just money. Because we're a standalone organisation and we represent post office
specialists, the new people that are coming into the network, the Local operators especially are not joining the
Federation. They're saying to people like lan Park and myself and Paul Haines 'Look my shop turnover is
£20,000 a week, my post office salary is £10,000 a year as a Local, why do I want to join a post office specialist
organisation? Retail is what interests me.’ The big worry, in my opinion, if we do nothing is that quite rightly I
believe that Post Office will say in the future 'You only represent 12% of Locals, we'll speak to you about the
Community offices, we've speak to you about the Mains’, because we've got about 50% of the Mains, ‘but we
won't speak to you about the Locals' and there's going to be 6,000 Locals, more than half the network and that
is a big, big worry for us. New people are just not joining.
So the message from this Federation is quite clear, we would love a situation where we could continue as we
are, we would love a situation where the post office network was 20,000 as it was 20 years ago. We'd love a
situation where we had 12,000 members, we'd love a situation where everybody joined and it was almost a
closed shop, but that is not where we are. The Federation cannot stand still it has to move on and there is not a
better time than moving on now.
Now I'm going to hand you over to my colleague lan Park for the choices for the future of the Federation and
lan's going to give part of the presentation and then big Jim and Paul Haines are going to go through the rest as
well. Okay lan.
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IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Okay, thanks very much. Well, as George has just explained,
we can't stay as we are, we recognised that probably two, two and a half years ago. We started making
enquiries, we started doing some research, down at headquarters there was a lot of work done, what are we
going to be able to do, what sort of options have we got? We looked at the possibility of a couple of options
which would be to join other unions, we looked at a couple of options which were going to be changed and
merge with other associations. So although we've only got two other options now and the MOU I'm going to tell
you a couple of little bits about two options that we've not got to consider this morning.
We did consider approaching Unite, or we did approach them, we considered them as an option as an
alternative union. They represent a couple of million people, they are a massive organisation and it became
clear actually, very soon in the piece, that we would be completely swallowed up in their organisation, and truth
was that when we approached them they also said they weren't really very interested in us. So that was a
nonstarter.
We looked at the Association of Convenience Stores. That is also a big organisation, it claims to represent lots
and lots of independent traders. It turns out that actually it is an association of some very big retailers, some
very big wholesalers and it turned out that the likes of myself, because I'm a Premier Store, I'm represented by
them. Nobody's ever told me I'm represented by them, a lot of these people supposedly are being covered by
them, they claim to be speaking for an awful lot but in truth they speak for a bunch of retailers, big retailers, big
wholesalers and big companies like Coca-Cola producers. So that was not really the right way to go.
So the options that we did have were a merger with the National Federation of Newsagents or a merger with the
Communications Workers Union. When we get to looking at what those are you will see that there are certain
similarities, that's not by chance, that is absolutely by design. We wanted a situation where we would go
forward as best we can, that the new organisation that we'd become, be it one of these others or be it with the
MOU, as close as possible on day one of the new organisation we will be how we were on the last day of the
existing Federation of SubPostmasters. We wanted the same people to be represented, we wanted the same
representation. Not only did we want that, Post Office wanted that, they don't want to have a completely clean
sheet of new people who've got no experience with it, who've got no history with it, who don't really know the
industry terribly well to come along and start being the ones they have to negotiate with or to be negotiating on
our behalf and subpostmasters' behalf. So there are some similarities. There are similarities, obviously, in the
MOU proposition because on that one it's absolutely intended to be as close as possible to what it is now.
So where are we? Moving us on. The NFRN offering. The NFRN, why did we choose them? They are very
similar in many ways to what we are. They do have a branch structure, a regional structure, a national
executive, they're quite similar in the way that they're set up and so there would be some easy long term
methods of getting ourselves together, the type of set up that we are at the moment would fit into theirs, we
would be able to have joint meetings, joint regions, joint executive at some stage. That would be the future, but
it would have been a long way down the line.
There are also some other similarities, and these are more on the downside to be honest. They're an industry
in decline, newsagents, absolutely an industry in decline. For all the reasons that George talked about this
technology, there are less people buying newspapers, they're buying them online, they look at them on their
tablets and the iPads as they're going into work on the train and that type of thing. I'm a newsagent, I can tell
you with absolute certainty over the last four or five years my news bill probably dropped by 50% and we do not
want particularly to be joining with another industry which is in decline. They've also got falling membership, the
same as we have. Again, not a good situation.
But what would be the upsides and what would be the options that we would have with the NFRN? We would
remain an autonomous organisation, we would be kept separate, we wouldn't be on the merger point
straightaway, we wouldn't be on joint meetings straightaway, we would keep our organisation pretty much as it
is right now, local branches would stay, regions would stay, Executive Council would stay. The headquarters
would stay, that's quite important to us, not only because we like the people who work in headquarters but
actually they've got a huge wealth of experience, they've got a good history and there is a real good reason for
keeping them on board if we're going to have any sort of new organisation we will still need those people.
We would retain the principle negotiating rights in terms of dealing with the Post Office and that would
absolutely be the necessity. The NFRN have got no history whatsoever of negotiating with the Post Office,
although they do have some members who have post offices in their buildings they don't represent the post
office part they represent the newsagent part. So that way we would retain the specialisation.
So what are the pros and cons of the NFRN offering? They represent about 15,500 small self-employed
independent, and they are all independent they're not multiples, they don't look after the likes of Co-ops and so
on, they are small self-employed independent business people and we are the same, so that would be good.
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They do have a significant commercial offering, rather better than ours in fairness and that's partly what keeps
them going. They're finances, they're also losing membership, they're also losing subscriptions, but they do
have a very good commercial department which is keeping them going and they have good assets.
It would, for the time being at least, keep the critical mass of both organisations and the two together when they
were talking with government about things would obviously be claiming that they speak for that many extra
members. It would keep that pressure going when they're talking to government, when they're talking to the
industry in terms of saying we now represent, what would it be, 17,000,18,000, more, 20,000 maybe, because
there are some common members.
What it would mean is that actually when we did go down the path of merger completely in three, four, five
years’ time, you would be talking then in terms of having lost the specialisation. They would obviously be
starting to try and learn that specialisation but it would not be an easy learning curve, it would be quite difficult if
the existing people are no longer on the team then they've got quite a steep learning curve if they're going to get
up to speed in terms of negotiations with the Post Office.
There's currently about 2,000 members that we think, although they claim nearer 3,000 of their members, who
currently own a post office, so it wouldn't be an absolute, the two, 15,500 of them and 5,500 of us, it wouldn't be
those two joining together, so it would probably be nearer 18,000 members.
But the other bit that is the most important part about their offering is that they have to say to us 'You look after
yourselves financially, we can't support you, we've not got the sort of resources behind us that will allow you to
be just taken over and we support you' so we have to stand on our own two feet with their offering and actually
we're not in a position to stand on our own two feet now, why would we be doing this if we were in a position,
George has explained why we can't stay as we are, whilst there would be some savings, some centralised
costs, they would not be sufficient to keep us going for any length of time we would still fall apart in my opinion if
we went with the NFRN.
So I'm going to talk a little bit now about the CWU offering and there are definite similarities here with some of
the things that I'm going to talk about so it probably won't take quite so long. We would remain autonomous, we
would keep a separate section within the CWU for five years. They also run with local branches, regions and a
national executive, so those things would stay the same and we would retain our branches, regions, executive,
we would have a seat on their national executive and they've probably have a couple on ours, but actually
essentially we would stay pretty much the same. Again they've agreed that our headquarters staff and
premises would be retained for the five years, so again we keep that wealth of knowledge and that experience.
The NFSP would be the ones who would lead on all matters with the Post Office and Royal Mail which are
relating to subpostmasters, but they do also have their own experience and their own expertise in dealing with
Post Office and Royal Mail. So the specialisation would be retained now and going forward when there was
more of a merger they've got some of their own specialisation and expertise, it wouldn't be such a steep
learning curve for them.
Our assets would be ring-fenced, they would not just take us over but actually they do also have big assets
behind them, they have big reserves and they are able to offer some sort of financial support when we get into
financial difficulties. We would also have, I think, a better option of being able to lean on them for some of their
centralised support, things like printing, their helplines, legal help, that type of thing. We would get a better
benefit from the CWU offering than the NFRN when we're talking about those centralised things, so from that
point of view there would be savings.
So the pros and cons of the CWU. They are a strong organisation, they've got a couple of hundred thousand
members. They are all basically in the same types of industry that we're in, the Mails, the telephony, the Crown
office staff that type are thing are mainly their members, so we've got similarities in that respect.
There is the concern, would we be swallowed up? I don't think we would be in the same way, it isn't so big and
when they presented to us they did make it clear that they have sections now and one section does not
necessarily fall foul of another one, if it does then they help them out, they don't keep the decision that says
‘Well actually if the cleaners have got a problem and that would cause a whole load of Crown office staff to be
out because there's no office cleaning, that's what they have to do.’ They don't say to the cleaners 'Well we
can't support you because it will upset the rest of the membership’. They have a way of getting around that,
they did explain to us that that's what we would be, we would be a separate autonomous section and we would
still get the right level of the support, we wouldn't necessarily just be outvoted if it ever came to that type of
thing.
They do understand the industry, there's no question that they understand the industry but it has to be said that
they stand on the other side of the industry when it comes to what they're supporting and who they're
supporting. How long have we been saying as a Federation it's time they got rid of Crown offices they lose us a
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fortune as an industry. The CWU are absolutely on the other side of that argument, they say 'No these are our
members, these are the people we need to support, we do not need to be closing Crown offices we need to be
keeping them open.’ In the past they've approached some of my staff and said "Would you like to be a member
of our union?’ I can't see how going forward that's going to be very helpful to me if they're representing me as a
member and they're representing my staff as members and there's a pay dispute between the two. Which do
they support? There are going to be tensions, they say they can get around them but there will be tensions.
But they do understand the industry, there's no question of that.
Dave Ward, when we met him, I quite liked him as a guy, but he did come across, to me at least, as a bit of a
traditional trade unionist, he sort of fulfilled the role in my eyes. That may not be fair but it's how I saw it. But
he's more progressive than Billy Hayes was when we're talking to him, although Billy Hayes has moved on now
and Dave Ward is the General Secretary, he seemed to be more forward-looking. He's absolutely keen to be
looking to be representing the self-employed section, they already have self-employed people, some of their
self-employed drivers and that type of thing. They do have members like that and they see no problem in being
able to represent self-employed subpostmasters, there is no problem in the way that there was with the
Certification Officer, with us being only self-employed. There's absolutely no problem with self-employed people
ourselves being part of the CWU because they would still have, the majority of their membership would be
employed. So those things don't come in to it. So those are the good sides.
The downsides would be that although we've got, that says 5,400 up there, that should have been changed to
5,100, we will not be taking all of those with us if we go to the CWU. That is not because they're not entitled to
it's because there's just a cultural change, some of our members as we've been going around holding these
meetings have absolutely said 'I'm a self-employed businessman, there's no way that I'm going to go and join’
what they perceive to be 'a militant trade union.’ That's just a fact. How many would go over is anybody's
guess, in a worst case scenario it might be 3,000,. 3,500 if we paint a really bad picture of what the future is and
we thought the CWU were going to save us from it. But, as George has said, we don't think the CWU are going
to be able to change us from the future that's going on right now, namely the change in the structure going
forward, that's as it is. They're not going to be able change the fact that government subsidy is what it is going
forward, we will be what we are.
For the same reason that existing subpostmasters are unlikely to join it is the same thing that George talked
about with new members coming along, most of the new members that are coming along have got a large retail
business and a relatively small post office alongside it. Those sort of people they're not joining our trade
association, our Federation, they're certainly not going to join the CWU going forward, so it is still going to be a
continuous diminution of numbers. And actually we will be faced, if went with the CWU, of actually winding up
just looking after existing subpostmasters, standalone subpostmasters largely, but there we are. That is how it
is at the moment, that's the offerings. I'm going to handover to Paul now and he's going to talk to you about
what the options are with the MOU. Thank you.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Thanks for that lan. Good morning, colleagues, friends.
It falls to me to take you on to the offering on the MOU which, I have to say, gives me great pleasure. There
were many times, George said this first came on the table maybe three years ago, but absolutely the very, very
tough work started 18, 20 months ago and it's been a long road and at many times down that road I absolutely
wondered whether today would ever come. So it's great to be here to be able to stand up and officially put this
to our members and the delegates here as to what they want to do and what choice they wish to make.
So what's different about this? Well, you can see from the first line that this is a 15-year deal, whereas the other
assurances from the other two organisations, the CWU and the NFRN are long term deals but there's kind of
five-year 'Well we'll see how we go for five years, you're all right for that five years, that's the assurance we'll
give you, but we'll have to assess it after that.’ I'm not saying it's going to stop with either the NFRN or the CWU.
after that but they're not daft, they're not just going to give us carte blanche for 15, 20 years and go 'Yes, get on
with it and we'll just support you come what may.’ They're going to want to see how it goes, if we join either of
those other two organisations.
So why is the Post Office one 15 years? Well, quite honestly because George and the team that George has
led through all these negotiations told them that's what we wanted and we weren't taking anything less. They
tried, the Post Office, when they saw, because it wasn't long after we had the talks with the NFRN and the CWU.
that it was pretty soon back to the Post Office and they were fully aware that the assurances we've got were
only 5 years and that was one of the major sticking points why this has taken so long, because they suddenly
came back to us and said 'Well you can have a 15-year deal but actually we'd like to review it every three years,
every two years maybe and we'll see how we go' and we went 'No' and I think that was a meeting we walked out
of fairly quickly. So they came back and they went 'Well okay then, you've got five years from the others, we've
give you a 15-year deal and we'll have a review after five years and ten years and see how we're getting on.’
So we left that meeting fairly quickly as well. So there were two days when we travelled down and I suspect the
meetings started at nine o'clock and by quarter-past-ten I was headed out of Old Street at the time back towards
Kings Cross to get on the train back to Doncaster. So we stuck at it and it came down to the eleventh-hour and
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we said 'No, this is absolutely it, it's 15 years or it's nothing and if it's nothing we'll just have to admit that this
journey is too hard to get this done’ and it was the eleventh-hour as well, it was not so very long ago and there
was a very tense hour or so when the Post Office team walked out of the meeting to go and check things with
legal advisors and get some further approvals from their slightly more senior colleagues. But all went well in the
end in that meeting and we stand here today with a 15-year deal, there are no breaks in this one whatsoever.
So what would it mean for us? Well we've talked about our finances and why we cannot go on the way we are.
Under the MOU, there are two strands to this. For our general costs and the cost of a national organisation
which potentially, should you delegates here today accept this, will represent 11,000 sub post offices, is going to
cost around £1.5million a year to run and our subscription income, currently diminishing, is not going to get
anywhere near that cost as we go forward. So it would secure the specialisation that we keep, the pressure that
we keep on government, the pressure that we keep on the Royal Mail and with the Post Office to support
subpostmasters and stop some very bad things happening and try as we move forward to turn this boat around
again, and it's like driving an oil tanker, to start getting you some good news coming in the future. The
£1.5million, so that's just our general day-to-day operating costs.
There is a second section which will be a minimum of £1million a year which will be for specific grants.
Certainly as I've gone around the country and it's one of my key ones that I really like, that it's been really
interesting that if you're travelling to a meeting and you drop into a couple of offices on the way, or if you've got
there early you go and see two, three, four offices in a day, and whether they agree with you or not, and I
remember being over in Belfast and there was a chap in Newcastle in County Down, I got that bit right, I
remembered where I was although I did have to check behind me for a nod but there we go, and he basically
perhaps tended towards a more militant side and would have wanted to join the CWU. We spent an hour in his
office, lovely shop, he told me all his problems, and he has got some even though it's a wonderful shop, but he
was so pleased at the end of it that somebody had taken the trouble to actually go and see him and spend an
hour in his shop. So I'd like one of these specific projects to get somebody out in the field in every region in this
country and they'd become paid employees of the Federation, but that won't come out of the £1.5million that will
come out of the specific grants going forward over the next 15 years.
So I've already said this will eventually practically double, or more than double, our numbers. So if you guys
accept this on 1 October all new model operators, so everyone who has signed up for a Mains or a Local will
automatically be enrolled by the Post Office into the NFSP. They will obviously have the choice of declining that
but they will be enrolled and then if they write in and say ‘Well actually I don't want to join you’ then we accept
that, but the Post Office are still going to pay for them because they'll still be entitled to any benefits that the
NFSP has for members, even if they don't want to be a member they would still be entitled to the benefits of the
organisation and that's part of the deal and I feel that's very important as well.
You might question why this is slightly different and I'll tell you why this is slightly different, all current members.
who have not changed onto a new contract will automatically cease paying subscriptions as of 1 April 2016.
Now you might say well why the six-odd month difference? Well actually we put it in there as potentially a
fighting fund if we needed to because George had said to you earlier on that they were talking about an
extension of the network of about 8,000 offices and we went 'Well we might be signing this MOU but if this
carries on we might be breaking it in about three months' time because that would have been so catastrophic for
our members that we probably would have had to.’ So that extra six months was designed to give us a bit more
of a war chest just in case because if they had said they were going ahead with 8,000 new offices it would have
been some time next year and then we would have had to have gone into a mode of maybe going to war with
them completely.
So we're obviously then also, the fourth point down, we're going to be able to continue as a separate
independent organisation and we will, undoubtedly, retain the sole representation rights of all subpostmasters,
all post office operators, whatever term you wish to choose, prefer subpostmasters myself, and the Post Office
have made that abundantly clear.
But we will have to do things a bit differently. What we'll never do is lose the specialisation because if a
member is in trouble with the Post Office going to an RTU, an appeal or anything like that, is something that
absolutely we will keep that specialisation, we will keep the specialisation in running a post office. But we're
also going to hopefully be able to tell you, not to tell you, put to you, ideas about how to run a better business, a
better retail business, and should this all go through I think one of the first moves that will be made would be
that a new retail specialist would be recruited at headquarters. We will need, and this is kind of tipping into
tomorrow's bit, but the move with the Post Office to an MOU will enshrine the journey from what we were, a
trade union, to become a trade association.
So the pros and cons. Well, I've already said, we'll keep the specialisation, we clearly and intimately
understand post office issues and problems, members’ problems.
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We'll have a stronger, a much stronger collective voice because we'll be telling government, not that we
represent 5,100 members, although we always tell the government we represent a few more than that because
you can always count statistics any which way you want to, but you'd be talking about over 11,000 and that's
got much more power to it when George has got to go and see the Minister at BIS, there's more punch to
11,000 than there is to 5,000.
And it will let us, as I've described, expand into other areas which we've probably never had the resource to
touch before. Yes we have a trading company but, to be fair, with such a small membership it's very difficult to
get trading partners excited about potentially supplying 5,000 people. Again, people like Bookers are going to
be much more interested in talking to us and helping us when we tell them ‘Actually we've got 11,000 people’
who are, you know, you put an advert in The Subpostmaster that's going to get seen in over 11,000 locations
around the UK.
So they're absolutely the upsides for us. It would be an exciting time, an exciting journey, I really do hope that I
won't be running a post office by the time this 15 years is up but what happens after that will certainly be a
negotiation for those who come after me and probably all of the rest of the team sitting up here.
The downsides. ‘Well yes, you'd be in the Post Office pocket, you know, they'd shout and you'd have to jump.’
Well no we don't, because unless it's absolutely something that is going to break the deal wide open then we
will discuss with them. Think back over 118 years, have we, well we have once asked you not to segregate
mail and they didn't like that, but once in 118 years. We don't do it every day of the week, we've got to be
pragmatic, I can't afford to shut my office, because I'm on a Mains contract, if it's not open I don't earn a penny
on that day although I'll still have to be paying my staff for that day, just because I've thrown my toys out the cart
and decided that I don't like what they're doing and I'm not going to open on that day as a point of principle.
Points of principle sometimes absolutely hurt your pocket.
I've heard again, it's kind of the same thing "You'd lose your financial independence, they could just threaten you
with pulling the money out and then you're absolutely stuffed’. But, again, they have a will, the Post Office, to
make this work. Paula Vennells absolutely wants this to work and I think if we do manage to convince you all
today that this is the right way forward for the future of this organisation then I absolutely believe it will work
because they want us to work collaboratively with them. So upsides and downsides. We put this in here.
Just to say that's probably £20 to somebody over there but I'm not sure whose it was. If that was yours Ged
that's absolutely £20. Right okay, it wasn't. No, no, you can tell me tales afterwards out of school.
But there's seemingly, or has been in certain quarters, a perception that this came easy. Well a negotiation that
took over two years to conclude certainly didn't come easy and the Post Office didn't come running to us with
the idea, George basically went to them and went 'This is absolutely what we need’ and we have dragged this
out of them kicking and screaming. So not easily won but an absolutely fantastic opportunity for this
organisation.
The other upsides. Over the course of history the likes of the Co-op, One Stop, Martin McColl's, have always
kind of resisted joining the organisation. They could have done and progressively over, I certainly know over
George's time he's made two or three absolutely grand efforts to go and recruit the likes of the whole of the Co-
op Group, but they will automatically become members. So 600-and-something, 625 offices I think they have,
overnight would join us on 1 October. All of the new operators automatically will become members and it's no
laughing matter when you go out trying to recruit that you've got a hit rate of 12 out of 100. It's very, very
difficult to get a Local to sign up because, absolutely what George has said, if you've got a £20,000 store and,
you know, George quoted a £10,000 post office salary, some of these Locals the post office salary is £5,000,
£3,000. I met a lady in Lincolnshire who had a Local, her post office pay at the end of every month was less
than two hundred quid. So automatically they will become members and a lot of them don't join because, well
actually from what they earn out of the post office they couldn't afford it right now in one term and, as George
said earlier on, for most of them the retail so dominates their business that can they really be bothered to join
us.
So it will allow us, as I've described, the ability to provide new services which will help you all, we absolutely
hope, run a more profitable post office and retail business combined and we're getting back our critical mass
which, if we carry on as we are we're losing and by next year, if we'd have done nothing about this, we would
absolutely have lost our critical mass.
This last point I have to make to you. If this is not accepted by the delegates here today, never will this come
back on the table. It's written into the MOU that if our delegates here today do not vote in favour of it the deal
falls and it will never reappear. There is not an ability for us to go back and change a word of it, it is what it is,
you're seeing it there but we will not be able to rescue it in three months' time if people say well 'I kind of like the
idea but I don't like this bit and I don't like that bit.’ We were warned in no uncertain terms last night 'Do not
come back to us saying we need to change three sentences in this’ it just will not happen.
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So your Executive Council recommend that looking towards the future is what we must do for this organisation.
It's all very well saying 'Well wasn't it grand 15, 20 years ago when I took over a post office and it was kind of
like falling off a log and you didn't really have to bother about retail.’ Times have become tougher and tougher.
But we're going to keep our specialist independent body and independent it will be.
We also believe that if we opt down the trade union route, and it's no disrespect to the CWU, I absolutely fear
that the Post Office would immediately cancel our rights of representation, I could honestly see that happening
within a month of us turning this down and going to the CWU and that would be a shame.
So we do believe that reconstituting the NFSP as an incorporated member organisation will provide the best
way that we can support the people who are most important to us and they are our members which includes all
of you sitting here today and everybody who is working out there on their post office counters in the UK today as
we speak. And with that I commend this to you and thank you very much. (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): And just to finish before it's opened up with the Chairman, last night
and this morning I had conversations with both Neil Hayward and Paula, Paula obviously just wishing us well for
conference and hoping that the right decision was made. But Neil Hayward, there was a Post Office Board
meeting yesterday and the Post Office Board unanimously endorsed this agreement if the Federation agrees to
vote yes to it and agrees to become an incorporated organisation tomorrow. It is their intention to make a public
statement in the next week and it is their intention to sign the contract in the next three or four weeks, so they
will be going public, if we make, if we make that decision today.
And I'd just like to, it is up to conference now, but I just want to say one or two things before I sit down. I think
as an organisation we have a duty, there's always going to be a post office network in Britain and it will be
different, but we have a duty as a team and as a conference to make sure that when we're long gone there's a
body in the UK that represents the UK's postmasters. I think if a specialist body disappears it will weaken the
brand, we're almost like the Post Office second eleven, and I make no apologies for saying that and if there
wasn't a Fed in society, in the UK, I think it weakens the sector, it weakens the Post Office and I believe that
there should always be an organisation specialising in representing subpostmasters. But I'll leave you with this
thought: People say ‘will we have to work closely with the Post Office?’ If you're a franchise holder in a
company, the franchise holders and the management have to work closely together. Yes you'll have
arguments, yes you'll have disagreements, you'll have falling outs, that's the nature of life. But what chance
does this company have and this network have if we do not work closer together with Post Office Ltd and try
and make a future for everybody in this room and all the postmasters in the United Kingdom. Thank you.
(applause)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Colleagues, can you hear? Can I first start with thanking our colleagues who arrived
after we'd started, thank you very much, we share your frustrations with travel but welcome and thank you very
much for making the effort. Lunch is at twelve-thirty in Marco's or the bar, which is just close to reception where
you entered the hotel. Tea will be at 3.00pm. Dinner at 7.00pm and if I remember from David's instructions, the
loos are outside. There is no fire drill today so if it goes off we've only got one exit and it's behind you and there
will be a fire alarm at twelve o'clock tomorrow. Right, can I open the floor now to any questions? Can I ask you
to come to the rostrum, just give your name and your region, if you have any questions, comments or
contributions you wish to make. Thank you.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Mr President, conference. Because of the importance of this
conference I have several questions so I'm not sure whether I should put all of those now for the committee or
how many questions am I allowed to ask?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): As many as you want.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Okay, thank you. First of all, I'm no legal expert and all that
kind of thing but I've heard somewhere that Post Office as a company cannot enter into a contract with us and
then effectively whatever money they're giving us would be as a grant and the reasoning goes that today they're
happy to give us a grant, tomorrow or 3 years' time they may not be happy to give us a grant. So can we have
some clarification on the legal side of that please.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Can you take that George?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Yes. Well I'm not a legal expert but I've spent a lot of time on this
one. That's a fundamental issue. When we first discussed with the Post Office about three and a half years
ago there was two ways you could look at it. We talked about should it be a commercial contract that is written
in such a way, a bit like the POCA when it was re-awarded to the Post Office, written in such a way that the
specialisation of the Federation means that although it was a commercial contract the Fed would have to tender
for it but almost certainly we'd win it. But the legal advice was "Yes you could do that but there's a far easier
way and that's grants.' The Post Office have spent probably tens of thousands of pounds on this and they're
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confident, any award can be challenged in court, of course it can, anybody can challenge any contract, the Post
Office and the Fed's lawyers are absolutely certain that this being a grant will stand up to any challenges. In
fairness, Paul mentioned one of the reasons why existing members are going to wait six months whilst we get a
fighting fund, it also means we don't expect a successful challenge, we think that any challenge, if it comes, and
it would have to come through the High Court and it would cost a fortune, that any challenge would be
unsuccessful. But nevertheless we'll be keeping the membership money in place to 1 April next year. So we
are confident that it is structured in a legal way, that it is an annual grant that is for 15 years that the Post Office
cannot get out of easily unless there's a termination event and that will withstand any challenge. And, again as I
said Ravi, the Post Office, once we make the decision in the next two days, it is the Post Office's intention to
make a public announcement in the next week and to sign the contract in the next three or four weeks. So as
far as they're concerned and we are concerned it is legally watertight but it is open to challenge. Anything in life
is open to challenge.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Just a comment on that, I guess your first challenge will
come from the CWU. The second question I had was that in the last 10 or so years, every time you've gone to
negotiate with the Post Office about our pay etc there has never been any money. So where are they going to
suddenly find potentially £2.5million a year out of nowhere to be paying this grant? (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Well can I say that in the last year the Post Office have got rid of
1,100 staff, now I don't like anybody losing their job, it's a personal tragedy, 660 people left the Crown offices, a
lot of them with two years' compensation, 170 have left cash-in-transit, 300-and-odd left head office last
October/November, another 170. So the point I'm saying is this, I would rather £2.5million a year was coming to
the Fed, if they have to sharpen their pencil internally and get rid of some of their bureaucracy so we have an
organisation that represents the people that make the money, the agents, I can live with that. If they make a
policy decision that they will, as part of their running costs, pay us £2.5million a year and they will make savings
elsewhere within the bureaucratic company then I can live with that.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): So surely it's better for this money to be paid into our pocket
in our pay and then we pay increased contribution to the Fed to keep the Fed going. (applause)
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): There is another side to this Ravi. It's a cost to the Post Office,
absolutely there's a cost to the Post Office, is it a cost worth paying? Yes it is because actually they are keen
that this organisation stays in place, continues to operate in the way that is does and that the Post Office can't.
When we go along to government and say 'You must keep the POCA going’ we've got a big political clout that
the Post Office cannot do. They can go along and say ‘Please sir will you keep the POCA going?’ but Paula
Vennells is employed by the government. If they say to her "You will just keep quiet, you will lose the POCA’,
that's what happens. The reason we got the POCA is because the Federation put pressure on government.
The reason we have got the subsidy that we've had over the years and the £5billion that's been put in in terms
of financing NT2 and all the other transformation projects that have gone on the last few years.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): With respect lan, that doesn't answer the question.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): It does answer the question Ravi, if we are not in existence any
longer because we can't keep going we can't put that pressure on. So it might cost us £2.5million to keep us
there but if we weren't there they would lose a lot more.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add to lan's point? And remember the more that one
person asks questions there's less time for everybody, but the point you said there was 'Why can't we get an
increase in our salary and we can pay the Federation more?’ but that doesn't recognise the fact that the vast
majority of new subpostmasters are not joining us. So in terms of tackling that issue Ravi, your solution
although it would maybe work for the existing members, it actually ignores totally that the fact that these new
retailers are not joining us. So if you like, that solution still means that eventually the Fed disappears. I
understand your logic but it means we disappear.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): I get it, I've only got two very small points.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: I'm going to allow you one more question and to let everybody know that we now
have two roving mikes, so if you attract Calum or Michael you can ask questions from the mike. Please come
back but just one question for the time being and let somebody else join in.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Okay. I was going to ask, but anyway, this is more
important. Is there any way of the Federation getting a seat on the Board once we sign the MOU?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): On the mutualisation issue the Federation was successful in 2010 in
getting the government to put in the Postal Services Bill, the original Postal Services Bill under Mandelson said
that Post Office Ltd had to be owned by the government. We got that changed and it either has to be owned by
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the government or it can be a mutual company. Unfortunately for us, to make the finances of Post Office Ltd
work the government really had to deliver the Front Office of Government strategy and they've failed to do it. So
our position is, yes we still believe in mutualisation and tied up with our mutualisation Ravi in our opinion was
seats on the Board for subpostmasters. The mutualisation journey, will it ever happen now given that Post
Office Ltd are a financial basket case without the government money, let's be absolutely brutal here, without the
government money this company is bankrupt. It's still an ambition but I think most of the people who are here at
the moment, if we do get a seat on the top table, most of us will be retired by then.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Thank you for your patience.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Could I add something to that then just before, go or not Ravi
that's not the point, the question was 'Is there any plans to put anybody on the Board as a result of the MOU?"
Absolutely not, there is nothing in the MOU which indicates that we would get any places on the Post Office
Board and, as Paula has indicated to you, this is not up for renegotiation, the package is the package, we take it
or leave it as it is and we cannot go back to them in a week or two's time and say ‘Actually on the basis of what
we heard at conference we'd like a place on the Board.’ That's not an option and as it is right now, which was.
the question, no there are no places on the Board for anyone from the Federation.
GED MCGRATH (Cumbria Branch, North West Regional Council): The Future of the NFSP, the choice is yours.
I joined the post office 16 September 2006 as a member of this organisation. I'll serve my last customer on the
28" of next month still a member of this organisation. What a ride it's been through that nine years. Have I
enjoyed it? Absolutely. Why have I enjoyed it? I've been part of this Federation all the way through and I've
enjoyed the fights along the way. I just wonder looking at that, how different could that journey have been if I'd
been part of the CWU during that time? Would I have seen 7,000 leave this organisation with some money in
their pocket? Or would I have seen a load of people leave this organisation as declared bankrupts because we
were fighting just to keep all these offices open. So before we focus on the nitty-gritty of what's actually in this
Memorandum of Understanding, do you think we should focus on whether this first of all is the right choice for
us? So George, my question is for you, how do you think my nine years would have been had I been part of a
different organisation?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): The first thing to say is, look, the CWU do for their members, they
do a very good job, they fight damn hard for their members, they keep some of the Crown offices. In 1986 there
was actually 1,900 Crown offices, there are 300 left they haven't particularly been that successful, but Billy
Hayes was a good guy and Dave Ward is a good guy and if the conference decides to join the CWU that's the
democratic decision of this organisation.
But I think Ged is absolutely correct, there would be a great danger that they would have, even at the moment,
they still don't think we should be, if you like, letting people go, they don't support Network Transformation
although their section jumps up and down about it. I think there's a very good chance, as Ged said, that over
the last nine years if we'd been in the CWU they would have fought every closure, that it was a bad thing.
None of us like the fact that the post office network isn't as busy as it used to be, but we're all pragmatic small
business people and we think ‘Well are we better getting 26 months?’ I was speaking to someone who is selling
their office as a Main and the multiplier they're going to get is just 1x salary. 26 months is a pretty good deal.
So I make no apologies as I said earlier on, and answering Ged's point, I think to get 26 months for people to
leave and I know there are some people stuck in the network, 26 months for your franchise at the moment if
you're deciding to leave is pretty good.
CHRISTINE DONNELLY (Bicester & Oxford Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): My point
may be something that should come up tomorrow but it does have a major impact on my ability to vote today so
I need to ask it today. I used to work for a major department store and we had a buyers and managers council
which was a lot like we will operate as under the Memorandum of Understanding and for many decades it
worked brilliantly. There were regular meetings with senior management, they consulted with us on a lot of
things before they happened, they gave us a lot of information before it happened, they could trust us to keep
things quiet, we could trust them. We also had an input on pay negotiations and terms and conditions of
employment and, as I say, it worked extremely well. Then we got a new owner. He didn't see the point of the
buyers' council and so meetings trickled away to almost nothing and eventually it folded.
I have concerns about the Memorandum of Understanding from that point of view. I understand, I accept Paula
and her team are strongly behind it, I understand and accept that this team are strongly behind it, that's today.
My worries are further down the road. I liked what I heard from Paul about fighting fund but I'd like a lot more
detail on that. I would like to know, for example, that it isn't just about saving enough money to fight one battle,
that it will be enough money to run the organisation for a minimum period if we had to suddenly go it alone, that
we have plans ready for a pared down organisation. That it would have strict restrictions on its usage it would
not just be enough to cover our liabilities on closure. And I would like to know that that will be actually in writing
somewhere. Thank you. (applause)
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PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Christine it's an absolutely fine point. George in his
introduction turned around and said the current assets of the Federation are roughly £2million and we have a
building in Shoreham which we believe if push came to shove we could sell for around about £1million, so
there's £3milliion. Just because we're getting £1.5million in from the Post Office certainly does not mean that
the prudent management of this company will disappear and we'll be making damn sure that we spend every
single penny, and one of the great aspects that we do envisage going forward is that we'll not just exist on
£1.5million for general purposes and £1million for specific grant funding, we will absolutely grow our commercial
side.
lan, when he was talking about the NFRN said ‘Well actually they've got probably a better commercial offering
than we have' and that commercial offering effectively underpins the NFRN. So build through this and project
five years forward, I think not only will we have an income under the MOU we will also have built and put in
place a commercial department that is turning, I would hope, a profit of almost the same as we're getting in from
the Post Office. So 3,4,5 years, 6,7,8 years the fighting fund could be absolutely massive Christine and if we do
need to break it then we would have to go back out and try and get people to sign back up and start paying
subscriptions again, but by then we could probably be in a situation where that could be done over some time
and we would survive for much longer than, probably right now we've got about a year and a half left in us and
I'm sure the Financial Director Philip, up the back, would agree with me, that if things continue as they are our
projections are that that's all we've got, probably until about the end of the next year, the end of 2016. But if you
project forward and we're bold enough and successful enough then I think we could have a fighting fund that
would certainly let us exist for 3,4,5, years, built in that if we have to go and bust it and go to war with the Post
Office then we will be in a position to be able to spend that time going back around the country and recruiting
members. I hope that gives you some assurances Christine.
MICK PATEL (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Good morning conference.
Now the £2.5million that was mentioned by Ravi, now will that have impact on any future negotiations with
reference to pay or is there any restrictions which have been included in there I would like to know. Thank you.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): No restrictions. The MOU gives us the opportunity to negotiate,
it gives us the opportunity to challenge them in the way that we challenge them now. Paul referred to ‘Will we
have independence?’ Yes, that's been one of the most difficult things to negotiate with them on the MOU, the
right that we will still have to represent members, to challenge them on what they do. There are certain
restrictions in terms of absolutely the limit of where we can go to and we're not allowed to damage the Post
Office but we don't damage the Post Office now, at least we don't think we damage the Post Office. They may
think it's damaging that they can't just walk all over us and do exactly what they want, but they can't now and
they won't be able to in the future, they will still have to argue the case with us. What we can't do is if we learn
something in some sort of negotiations about what the future might be and what they think they will pay us, to
then go out and release that commercial information to stop them doing it, because that would be seen as
commercially damaging. So yes we get some commercially sensitive information from time-to-time, we're not
allowed to release that, we're not allowed to go and kick off in a public fashion damaging the Post Office but we
absolutely can go and say 'We don't think you're doing this right.' We can go to the papers and say 'We think
this is the wrong policy.’ What we can't do is damage them commercially, but that's pretty much the only
restriction to be fair.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): My first question is on the
Memorandum of Understanding Clause 10. It says ‘Principles will be formed on the basis of the framework
agreement developed jointly in consulting with BIS. The intention is the legally binding framework agreement
will be negotiated, published, in place by a date.' I believe we've been told in meetings we're not going to have
sight of this agreement until it's been signed and sealed by the government and the Post Office. Isn't it that
members, or the conference, should have some insight into what the framework agreement is when we are
signing a document which is going to be for years to come for the members of the Federation.
And the other question is, perhaps you can clarify one situation, legally do we have to have a limited Company
to get this grant funding from the Post Office? Because I have a lot of concerns about that legal agreement, I
have seen the Articles of Associations. Can we not remain as the organisation we are in our current rules and
still get grants from the Post Office? Perhaps we can instead have a changing of our aims and that in our rules,
but do we have to have a limited company operate? (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): On Mindi's points. The Post Office and BIS have absolutely no
intention of publishing the framework, that bit is factually incorrect, they have no intention and they see it as a
legal agreement with the Federation. The Executive Council have obviously seen it and the team that have
been working on it have got a lot of knowledge of it, so that's the case.
On the limited company, we lost our trade union status about a year and a half ago and we had no chance of
winning that because, I think lan touched on it earlier on, to be a trade union in the first place the majority of
your members have to be classified as workers and the Certification Officer said to me 'George if this had been
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challenged in the mid-seventies you'd have lost your trade union status.’ You have to have the majority of your
members as workers. So if we join the CWU that's fine because they've obviously 200,000 and probably
196,000 of them are classified as workers and they've got some van drivers that are self-employed. But our
specialists have told us from day one to give the Federation protection, and the Post Office have been very
unhappy signing some deals because when you're a trade union you've got lots of cover, your liability is only up
to £50,000 you really, you have the protection of a limited company when you're a trade union, and what Philip
Bloor our Financial Director has had to do is put £8,000 of insurances in place that when I sign things and when
the Negotiating Chairman signs things and the National President, that actually we have insurance indemnities
that we won't be ruined as individuals.
We do have to change Mindi because originally what was going to happen, once conference agreed, if they
were going to have the MOU, myself and Paula were going to sign it and what's been agreed in the interim is
once it's agreed then it's going to have to be signed by myself, Paula is going to sign it and lan Park, Paul
Haines, Mervyn Jones, big Jim Nott, and that's because we are not a limited company. Mervyn said 'Well why
do I have to sign it?’ I said 'Because if I'm losing my house, you're losing your house.' But the thing is, what
they're going to do is, once we become incorporated then it will be resigned with myself and Paula. They're
saying quite clearly, if you do not agree tomorrow to incorporation then there is no deal, we are not prepared to
put £2.5million at least into a company that has unlimited liability and the legal entity side is a bit iffy as well. So
we do have to become a limited company for this deal to go ahead. In fairness, even if we were staying as we
were, and Christine touched on the point, if we had decided 'Well let's try and push on' our advisors would have
said quite strongly 'Even if you're staying as you are, you can't afford to do it and you'll go under, but straight
away make yourselves a limited company, you've got unlimited liability at that moment, that's stupid. Even if
there's 5,000 of you make yourself a limited company." So it's the right thing to do Mindi.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Just one question Mr President. It
says in the MOU, it says 'the framework agreement will be negotiated, and published and in place by a certain
date’. Is that not correct then?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Factually it is actually correct because it has been
published, it's been published in a very limited manner and it has gone around this Executive Council and they
count that as part of that.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Right, not in the public domain but
published.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): They have no intention, as George just said, of putting
in the public domain.
HARRY GORAYA (London South East Branch, London Regional Council): Morning colleagues, Mr President.
Apologies first of all, I'm one of those late delegates and if I've missed something that George might have said
and I'm repeating. I've come here today with the intention of making sure, like Ravi, that I ask all the questions
whether I think I know the answers or not, because my members have asked me the questions and I feel a
responsibility to make sure that my colleagues here, give you if you haven't already within your branches had
the questions asked, every single doubt that might be in your mind comes out.
So here's the first one. A lot of the members said that when you were looking out for the options that you
wanted and you had two options from the CWU and the NFRN which were both 5-year deals, you've I'm sure
stated, and today I think it was mentioned even less, but that this organisation has a lifespan of about a year,
maybe two years on its current finances. If those guys say that you could be a standalone organisation within
their organisations for five years but we ourselves as a standalone organisation can only last for a year or two
years, how would we have survived the other three within those organisations?
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Thanks Harry, I don't know whether you did miss this bit but I'll
repeat it. As far as the NFRN deal is concerned they said we had to stand on our own two feet. There are
some central costs that might be savings but they are very small. We can't stand on our own two feet so
realistically the NFRN deal is a non-goer in my personal view, because it won't do it.
The CWU have got much bigger assets, they have got much bigger reserves and they are prepared to say that
they will cover us financially for five years. So if we got into a deal with them as a membership they will allow
the existing network to stay up. We will still have to have subscriptions but they won't cover all the costs but
they will give us financial backing so that we're able to continue. But over the years the expectation is that we
will join with them, that we would become a part of them and after five years I would expect that they would be
saying to us, ‘it's time to close down your operation in Shoreham, it's time that we took on the Secretariat in the
central form at the CWU' and from then on we will not be the same sort of separate organisation, although we
will still have a separate section it won't be run as it is right now.
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PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Harry can I just add to that because there's another
point. Under both the NFRN deal and the CWU deal part of the deal is the fact that we maintain the right to set
our own subscription levels. Now I absolutely know the membership of the NFRN costs £360 a year, it's £30 a
month when you include the VAT. I know the CWU subscription is less than ours in their subpostmasters
section, I don't know the exact figure off the top of my head but it's somewhere around the, I think £10-odd a
month, I might be wrong there. But we do have under both those deals the right to set our own subscription
levels so in my mind, from lan's perspective, at the minute we're saying we've got a year and a half maybe in
us, but if we moved our subscription level up from £217 a year to £360 that would probably give us another
year-ish, just about, down that road. It's not a great fix but we need to make the point that it's there in both
these deals that we have the right to set our own subscription rates and if we were in the CWU they might not
like it, but we might have to say we're going to have to put our subs up to that same £360-odd just to get us
through to anywhere near the five years. So it's a very good point Harry and well made.
PAUL MADAN (Kent Branch, South East Regional Council): Our concern is that NFSP has always struggled to
negotiate a fair deal with POL and now, if POL is going to pay our subscriptions then we will lose the power to
negotiate even further with them.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): I think it's an excellent point Paul. The last pay deal we got was the
£2,000 lump sum which finished on 31 March this year and we are talking to the Post Office, but there's no
doubt that getting anything out of the Post Office for subpostmasters is incredibly hard. Part of why it's so hard
is that more and more the Post Office sign contracts with Scottish Power, British Gas, that have no inflation rate
element in them at all, so if we're getting say 10p for a transaction on year one and that one's five or seven
years, their view is 'Look you're in the same marketplace as convenience retailers, they've got PayPoints, the
same marketplace as newsagents who have got Payzones or PayPoints and that's what you're going to have to
do. So getting the pay deals that we used to get, and they've never been fantastic, but our wage bill is still in
the region of £470million, so the pay is not dropping. It is dropping for some individuals but I've been speaking
to other people who are actually growing their pay. Most people's core tier payment, the vast majority stayed
the same this year, very few declined, most stayed the same. So it's not a massively bad news story however it
is getting harder and harder to get pay deals. Now that will happen if we stay as we are, even though we'll end
up declining, it will happen if we join the CWU and it will happen if we join the NFRN.
And just to finish on that point Paul, there's some real tensions between the CWU and Post Office management
at the moment and the reason was that the Post Office management thought that the Crown office would
breakeven in the last financial year. But the Financial Director was quite clear and quite firm, no they didn't
breakeven, £5million loss and a lot of the wage deal for the staff at the Crown offices was based on them
breaking even so Neil Hayward, the HR Director and the CWU, there's big, big problems because the CWU are
saying ‘Wait a minute, you promised this to our members, you're renegading on a pay deal, you are a bunch of
so-and-so's' and the Post Office are saying 'Wait a minute, that was tied to Crown offices breaking even.’ So it's
very difficult for the CWU as well and, as I said, 660 of their Crown office staff have taken the Queen's shilling
and they've left. Whatever we do there isn't going to be an easy answer to getting a lot of money out of the Post
Office anytime soon.
JIM NOTT: Colleagues, with that I'm call lunch. Thank you for standing down Peter you'll be the first speaker
when we come back at twenty-five-to-two please.
(LUNCH BREAK)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you colleagues for getting back so promptly. Just before we get Peter on I've
been asked to make an announcement and being National President I never thought I'd have to do this, but can
I say, would the owner of the red Porsche please move it, you're blocking someone in. (laughter and applause)
Secondly, can I ask Calum and Michael just to stand up, they have the roving mikes, if you wish to speak from
the floor please contact them and get the mike off them. Thank you Peter.
PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): Conference, as you can tell I
didn't go out to move the Porsche, mine's just a red escort. (laughter) Yes, poor subpostmaster. Two
questions. We have three proposals, two of them are for five years and one for fifteen years. What happens
after the five years in the other first two proposals? Secondly, the transition. If we go down the MOU what is
the transition period? Will we just carry on as normal or will there be any tangible changes directly after going
on to MOU?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): To address the first part Peter, the five years on the
CWU and the NFRN presentations are a minimum period that we get guarantees around. Now, as I said in the
presentation, they will look at it because they are business organisations that have to carry on for their members
and their great membership, so there'll be a revision period. They're not designed to stop after five years, they
will go on after five years, but it might be under different terms. So, for example with the NFRN, it might be that
after five years, I'm going to move because I'm getting feedback off your mike Peter, but after five years they
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might decide that actually the economics means that they can't carry on with us operating out of Shoreham is
separate premises and the economies of scale would be to move to their headquarters and things like that. It's
almost exactly the same with the CWU, they would want to carry on with us for longer than that but the only
assurance we've got is the fact that they'd give us, we'd be five years while we're ring-fenced and operating
under our current stuff and then we, whichever of those routes, if we took either of those two routes there would
a renegotiation, it probably would start in about year three and a half to four so that when we got to that period
we could let members know exactly what was happening, whether we were transferring into the CWU
headquarters, which is in Wimbledon, or whether we were transferring under the NFRN to their headquarters
which I believe are in London _ So that's the answer to that bit. I don't know if one of the other guys wants to
take the second question.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Can I just say that if the NFRN or the CWU is the chosen option there is an
opportunity tomorrow to discuss those points.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): And colleagues can I just add, on Peter's point on the MOU, we
have our legal specialist who is here just now, Julian is at the back of the room and he'll be here tomorrow
working through what the changes would be but essentially it would be a seamless change for the Federation, if
the MOU is accepted it would be a seamless change, the Articles of Association are as close as we can get to
the present rules including the retention of all the structures, including Standing Orders, they're almost exactly
the same, but again Julian will walk you through the stage and everybody who is a member of the Fed already
will automatically become a member of the new company and the new Fed, plus the new members. So in
terms of everybody in this room, you'll notice no difference whatsoever, you'll have the same rights as you have
at the moment, but Julian tomorrow, if that is the chosen option, will walk you through it for 35, 40 minutes and
take quite specific questions on how that would work. At the moment it's maybe a little bit premature because if
we vote for the CWU or the NFRN then the MOU falls anyway.
PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): Right. Just a short statement
because obviously I've heard very little from the floor about what people talked about at their branch meetings.
Our branch meeting wholeheartedly, albeit for about two votes, went down the MOU route. I've been a
Federation member for 34 years now and I'm passionate about the Federation. Over the years it's fought tooth
and nail and I think MOU is the only route to go, we need to stick together, we need to bind together, we need to
fight together. George and the team over the years and previous people that have run and been General
Secretaries, have fought tooth and nail to keep us together and to fight everybody that's tried to take our work
away from us. Yes we've lost along the way but we've also gained something and the gain is what's here today.
Thank you. (applause)
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Good afternoon. I'd just like to
ask the Executive Committee if this is such a frightfully important day for our organisation why we haven't been
allowed to question the CWU and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents today. (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): I think that's a good question Robert asks and he asked it in
Scotland and we've had it in a few areas as well. The position of the Executive Council, the Executive Council
are the ruling body of the organisation and obviously they listen to the membership and they are elected from
the membership. It was felt quite strongly that the best option by a proverbial mile was the MOU and that if we
were to join another organisation, particularly a trade union, we would leave the whole playing field empty and
someone like the NFRN would come along to the Post Office and say ‘They're joined the CWU, they're a union,
why don't you deal with us as a trade association?’ And the reason that we felt quite strongly that we would not
get someone along from the National Federation of Retail Newsagents or the CWU, is that the best option and
the preferred option for this organisation is the MOU and the Conservative party wouldn't have, you know, Ed
Balls comes along to their conference, maybe now they would right enough, but we decided as the leadership
organisation on your behalf that the MOU is the best, you have the vote on it, but to bring the CWU along or the
NFRN, then we do not think that was the wise thing to do. We felt that we've made the decision to make the
MOU, this conference can say 'Go away guys, you've got it wrong’ and you can say 'We're voting for the CWU
or we're voting for the NFRN' and we'll accept that, but our judgement call is that not to go for the MOU would
be a dramatically bad mistake for this organisation and that is why we have not invited anyone else along.
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): George, that's all very well and
good to say that the Executive Committee support the MOU, that may well be the best option, but everybody
here runs their own post office and they know what is best for them, and with all due respect to listen to you
guys presenting for the CWU and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, it's second hand, you want the
MOU and you're presenting their options as second hand options. With all due respect, we as subpostmasters
should have been allowed to listen and have an argument and a debate and it wouldn't have taken that much
and if you were so confident, and I think you'll still get the MOU but we should be allowed to have questioned
their executives so that we could have made up our own mind. I think you've had a dereliction of your duty in
not allowing us to have that say. (applause)
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IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Not to contradict anything that George said and I understand
your questions, I do notice though you didn't ask why there was nobody from the Post Office here representing
what their offer was. They put an offer to us and we have presented their offer to you in exactly the same way
as we've presented the CWU and the NFRN. Yes, it's the Post Office, we've gone out and we negotiated with
the CWU and the NFRN and we got the best possible deal that we could get from those two organisations, we
did exactly the same with the Post Office and there's no-one here from the Post Office representing their side
either, we're putting that.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): Mr President, Executive Council. Over
lunch I spoke to quite a few delegates and there seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the room and it
was around the order of events for today. So I'm just stood up here really to ask for a bit of clarity. If, first of all,
could you explain to me what a resolution is and how we approach a resolution at this special conference?
Because I see at the end of day one we have the following resolution: ‘That this Special Conference will
provisionally accept the preferred option and the preferred option shall be explained and explored in detail on
the second day of the special conference.' So my first question is, what is the process for that? What happens?
Do we debate? What is a resolution? How does that work please?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): After the vote takes place if it's the MOU, or any option, the
Executive Council, two of the presenters, almost certainly Paul and lan as Executive Officers, one will move and
one will second the motion that you've got on your sheet of paper.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): Sorry George, it says Resolution, is it a
Resolution or is it a Motion?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Resolution yes, Resolution.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): So it's not a Motion? Because we've got
Motions on Day 2. I just, this is where we've got the confusion.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): In effect it is a Motion/Resolution, the Resolution was a word that
came from the advisors, the lawyers on it. So basically it will be moved in the form of a Motion by Paul and lan
and then there'll be a vote taken on it. So they'll be a vote on what the preferred option is to get someone over
50% and that will be CWU, NFRN or the MOU and once that is established and one of them gets over 50% that
will then become the preferred option. The preferred option will then be put to conference by the Executive
Council, moved and seconded as a motion to the team today, to the conference today and then that preferred
option, whatever it is, will be the one that will be debated tomorrow morning.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): So just to continue to get the clarity, so
if that Resolution for our preferred option gets accepted we will then continue with the process into Day 2. If it
was rejected what would happen then?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Well it's a good point. If the CWU or the NFRN was the preferred
one and it was rejected it probably wouldn't make sense. The only way, when we get the 50% it's inconceivable
on the motion on Day 1, it's inconceivable that that won't get more than 50% okay? That's when John it gets
interesting. If the MOU is the one that goes to Day 2 and we have the debate it has to be passed because it is
such a significant change to the Federation's future and structure, that has to be passed with two-thirds. So the
problem would be, not what happens to today's motion, what would happen tomorrow if the MOU was the
option that went forward from today with 50% but tomorrow it was not endorsed by two-thirds to become a
limited company and the MOU. If that happened then it's basically back to the drawing board because the Post
Office have said quite clearly 'If you do not get the two-thirds to become an incorporated organisation and
accept the MOU the deal falls.’ So on the MOU there is two barriers, there's the 50% barrier today and it has to
have a two-thirds endorsement tomorrow and that's the reality.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): So from the two outcomes, when we get
into Day 2 and, again, just looking to get the clarity, if it was one of the less preferred options of the NFRN or the
CWU, then we have a Resolution which is ‘That the NFSP works at speed to amalgamate the organisation." \f
that was accepted then basically we'd all just go home after that, if it wasn't then we're at the same stage that
you've just described.
Then the final bit is, we've actually got at the end of, having gone through all the actual work on the MOU
tomorrow in terms of Step 1 to Step 4 and having input and feedback and everything, then we would get to what
you described as the proper Motion which is that we'd require two-thirds majority. Just on that two-thirds
majority, would that be two-thirds of the hands going up? How would people abstain, how would that be
monitored?
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GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Well on John's very good point our advisors actually said that in
reality on the second day, on the motion that John's alluded that he believes 50% would do it, but we're saying
‘No, this is such a big, big change for the Federation that you need two-thirds, we believe we need two-thirds."
So if we don't get two-thirds tomorrow then it will have fallen. But in terms of the vote tomorrow, abstentions, it's
two-thirds of the people that vote and if there's 90 people abstain and there's 10 people vote for it, that's it,
abstentions, you know, it's like a General Election, if you decide that you're not going to go the polling station or
you spoil your ballot paper, that's your choice. It will be two-thirds of the people that vote tomorrow, that's
democracy. If you decide that you're going to abstain, that's an abstention. If you don't think something's good
you vote against it.
And can I just finish on this point, and John quite rightly makes some good points there. At the end of the day
the Executive Council cannot do any better than bring a choice to a conference and we will be proud that we've
achieved the MOU. If the conference and the membership say ‘Look guys it's not for us' that's democracy and
we'll accept that. We do our best as a leadership team and we've brought a MOU to the table and if it falls, it
falls and if it doesn't get two-thirds tomorrow it falls and that's life. But it does fall, and Paul touched on this
earlier on, Neil Hayward did that point last night 'We've had a Board meeting George, it has been passed, but
we'll be quite clear. If you think you can change parts of the MOU and come back to us it isn't going to happen,
we will not be taking this back to the Board. The final offer is the final offer, this has been two years in the
making.’ So it's up to you guys what you want to do.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): And the final point just for the
clarification is, are the Articles of the Association tied completely to the MOU? Because it may be that we vote
the MOU but there may be, certainly a lot of feedback that's coming in terms of the Articles of Association that
people aren't happy that they immediately go into place and those are our rules. Is that connected to the Post
Office? Because it's our internal rules surely and maybe we can get more of actually what we want as a
Federation.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Just, we are tripping into tomorrow's debate here on the
assumption you're making that we're going to vote for the MOU in here so. But just to summarise, George said
earlier on, we have to make the NFSP a limited company, so the Articles of Association that are presented,
should the MOU go forward, are as close to our current rule book as we can possibly make them taking into
account the requirements for company law. We cannot change the law of this land and start picking and mixing,
we absolutely can't do that, so tomorrow should that be the option, we've tried to be as near to the current rule
book as we possibly can but we must going forward, if that is the option, live by company law because we will
become a limited company John.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): And can I just pick up the other point that John touched on? The
Articles of Association, and we have to be honest here, this is the biggest meeting we've had for a long time, the
Articles of Association are our articles and, as Paul said, we've kept them as close as we can to the rule book.
But I'm not going to stand here and tell a lie, the Post Office, although it's nothing to do with them, they have
seen them and they have commented and they're not very happy about them and I've said 'Well they're nothing
to do with you.' The reason they're not very happy is they're putting in £2.5million a year and they're saying
‘Look we're not sure how serious your organisation, the Federation, is about this journey from a former trade
union to a trade association and actually looking at what you are doing there's hardly any change at all on what
you're doing.’ So be quite clear, the Articles of Association are the very minimum that we can do to show we're
serious about our journey. We've taken all the rules and regulations of the Fed we've got at the moment, it's
almost a carbon copy of the rule book and we're on a journey and if people feel that they can rip apart the
Articles of Association and make them even more like a trade union and expect that journey will go on with the
Post Office funding us with £37.5million, that's the reality.
I just want to say one other thing. We have always worked with the Post Office, they've given us over the last,
we talk about the future, over the last four years we've had £750,000 extra from the Post Office towards our cost
of running meetings to do with Network Transformation. We have never tried to hide it, two months after we got
the money off them we had the industrial action over mail segregation. The Post Office want to work with us.
The Articles of Association, if they're significantly changed in any way then the deal will fall, it's not a pick and
mix. As a team and as a conference it's make our mind up time what we want to do as an organisation and we
either join someone else or we go ahead and, think about it colleagues, we're going to have an AGM next year,
the new members don't join until October and if you look at what we put out there we're asking for your views on
do the rules need changes, do the articles need to be changed for next year's meeting. So we're doing
everything we can to make sure that the members have an input into the rule book going forward.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): Thank you George for clarifying the
process.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Colleagues, can I just remind you please, I've allowed questions on the Articles of
Association and I've allowed replies but we're here today on the order of events to just do the business of day
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one, which is to discuss the three options that are available and to vote on that. There will be plenty of time
tomorrow for any other matters that arise from whichever option we choose.
STEVE PILE (South West Regional Council): I think the last speaker brought something to the meeting,
obviously the debate on what is a resolution, what is a motion. I think basically it's take them both, as far as we
are concerned, take them both the same, however there may well be a legal difference. I don't know what that
legal difference is but we do have our lawyer at the back who perhaps could tell us?
But it's also raised one other issue, what if there is no decision today on any of the three choices we have?
Perhaps as has been mentioned to me in passing since the main conference, perhaps we are missing a fourth
option today. It has been put to me that should we have full abstention on the three choices that we would
automatically dissolve this Federation, that has been put to me from the top table. However that probably isn't
an option that anyone else would want to take, it's just a point that we perhaps are missing a fourth option today
and maybe the meeting here would like to follow that up.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Very quickly, I have been asked in Scotland as well what would
happen if no-one voted today and everybody abstained? I can't see that happening, to be honest with you, I'd
be very surprised if that happened, it would just be so strange, but we shall see, we shall see.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): Good afternoon conference. I've got
three small questions to raise, one of them is an extension of what Christine was asking earlier. What happens
if Paula Vennells is replaced and you get an incoming CEO who is not very supportive or friendly towards the
MOU? How are you going to deal with it for the next 15 years or whatever the time the next person is in the
office for? Secondly, in view of the pending 30% sale of Royal Mail which is going to be totally privatised, how
would that affect the Post Office and subsequently us in the future?
And a very last point, very quickly, is that under the MOU you mentioned that the NFSP would help members
run their post offices profitably and their retail businesses. Bearing in mind that 25% and growing part of the
new Federation will be multiples and they have already got their own retail sorted out, how are they going to buy
into that and how are we going to make that profitable?
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): So what happens if Paula Vennells moves? We wouldn't know
who is coming in but your suggestion was it would be somebody who would not support the Federation. I don't
think that's likely to happen but ultimately we would have a contract, it runs for 15 years, it's been signed, and
when somebody moves on then, or sell a business, somebody talked about if a new owner came along earlier
on, the same thing, you take on the contracts and the liabilities of the existing. So it would not change things.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): Yes, but if they're not supportive and
they're not wishing to deal with you, or whatever the case might be, or your relationship is strained, that's the
point I'm trying to make.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Our relations get strained from time-to-time now but we work
our way through those things, we have to. If we don't and they stop paying us ultimately I suppose you'd take
them to court.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add to what lan said there? I spoke to Julian at
lunchtime, this is an absolutely watertight legal contract okay? It wasn't put out to tender, it's a grant award, it's
watertight, we would have an absolute case against the Post Office if they tried to stop it. So it's as watertight
as any other type of contract and they know that, that's why they wanted to make it five years rather than 15,
they know they're on the hook for 15 years.
Turning to the Royal Mail issue, now obviously at the General Election if it had been the Lib Dems who were in
coalition with anyone, I think they would have made sure the 30% wasn't sold off for some time. If it had been
Labour and the SNP it might have been the same, but the Conservatives have got a majority and quite rightly
they've decided to sell off the 30% in their eyes, it's up to them, they're the government and they've sold 15%
already at £5 a share, £750million. The good thing is that this Federation and I know people quite rightly can be
critical when they want, there was only going to be a five-year inter-business agreement between the
companies and it was this team here that persuaded Moya Greene to move from Adam Crozier's original stand
that ‘There's not a hope on God's earth George you're getting more than five years.' Moya Greene 'It's a 10
year deal.’ Now there's seven years to go and we still get from Royal Mail £370million every year as part of that
contract. This Federation has made sure that we're not here today petrified that this contract was about to run
out in two years' time, we know that that contract has got seven years to run and that was this National
Federation of SubPostmasters.
And the last point Satish, I'm actually glad that the Co-op and the McColl's and the rest are going to join us,
because we are going to get better at retail and I think them joining us will actually help us put a better offer to
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our members with their specialisation. So I don't see them as a threat, I actually think their expertise on how
you run post offices, how you run convenience stores will help us get better at what we do. So we'll make sure
that we utilise all the best advice we can get from anywhere to make this Federation give our members the very
best service we can.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): Right, so the £1million extra that you
were talking about at our presentation is going to be targeted to certain projects you were telling us yes? Can
you give us an example of what kind of things that you visualise?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Well Satish, as I said this morning in the presentation,
my pet one is to get some field team out there. Now we'll have to look very carefully at the resource we can put
into that but I would certainly hope that in 12 months' time we've got at least one employee of the NFSP out
there in the field and that will come out of a specific grant project that we're going to put to the Post Office. In
certain areas geographically we might need two, but they might do it three days a week, they might do it five
days a week in certain areas where the actual logistics of getting around all the offices. But I would think there
would be a problem in Scotland getting around anywhere if you've got to go from Inverness one day and you've
got an appointment in Glasgow the next day. So we might need to split some of those up into two separate jobs
but we'll have to work on it and go forward. So there's one example grant specific. How much we're going to
budget for that we need to go and cost out, but something along those lines, absolutely fine. I think George has
touched on it before, we hope to, if this all goes through, relaunch The Subpostmaster as a much bigger
magazine. It will maintain its focus on the Post Office, I think there's 14 pages in there now and there forever
will be, but the actual magazine will probably double in size to give you more retail input and we'll be able, with a
critical mass of 11,000 readers, be able to get the likes of the Bookers of this world to come in and want to
sponsor pages and tell you what their special offers are this month etc. etc. So there's just two ideas Satish and
if anybody can come up with any more as we go on, bring them on and we'll see what we can do.
PAUL MCBAIN (Aberdeen Branch, Scotland Regional Council): I bring my coffee this time because last time I
spoke on the podium at conference I shouted and got a row from our ex-President somewhere in the crowd
there. Firstly, can I, with your acceptance Mr President, apologise to my colleague Robert for what I said to him
as I was standing up there, I do apologise, we're all entitled to our opinion and I accept your opinion. Sorry
Robert.
Conference, we Scots are canny folk, we look after the pennies and it has been said that we are shorter in the
arms so that we don't go into our pockets too often. We will look after our pennies and the MOU is the direction
that we should be taking. Today so far we've heard 'Can we?’ ‘What if?’ '£2.5million' 'Framework agreement.’
‘MOU this.’ 'MOU that’ but nobody, at the moment, has spoken with regards to the two other options. I strongly
and vehemently spoke in the last two conferences on the MOU and my reasons for that, I'll give you a couple of
instances: Decline of membership as you've been told today it's now 5,100. If the MOU isn't accepted today or
tomorrow and membership goes to either CWU or the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, that 5,100
members will not all go. Let's give an example of say 2,500 of them goes, so the NFRN have got 2,500
members and if you go into the CWU I truly believe 25% may go, so they have 1,500 members. What is the
critical mass of us as subpostmasters just now, it's supposed to be 11,500, so if I'm doing my maths right 6,500
would be the critical mass. If we accept any other option other than the MOU the critical mass will not be met
from either the CWU or the Federation of Newsagents. If that occurs I believe the Post Office will not recognise
the CWU or the Newsagents they will therefore decide themselves what they want to do. Conference, we must,
‘we must vote the MOU, we have to be strong, we need our 11,500 members, if we don't vote this through we
will not have a Federation. Thank you colleagues. (applause)
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Many of us here today
have at some time during our lives been children, unless of course you were created in your current form.
(laughter) And I recall as a child regularly playing with a number of other children, but there was always one or
two people that wanted to dominate proceedings. They would say things like 'Well if you're not going to play the
way we want to play we're going to take our ball and go home. So there, that will learn you.’ And that's a little
bit like what we've got here today with the MOU isn't it? We've all come to special conference to play the game
but there's one or two people saying "You know, if you vote for this it will be lost forever, it's the end of the world,
dissolution of the organisation will surely follow, there's no turning back, we'll be on a rollercoaster to oblivion
hanging on to the handrail of ultimate disillusionment.’ I don't believe that, not for one moment.
On the roadshows we heard George speak with pride about the MOU, for this idea for the last three years. Post
Office Ltd rejected it at first but it was only due to his persuasion and single-minded determination that had
brought us back to where we are. He said a number of Post Office senior management were, and perhaps still
are, opposed to the MOU and the fact that Post Office Ltd is now committing itself to probably £40million over
the next 15 years is a success because it's money that they can perhaps ill afford. So what we've got is, we've
got Paula that has put her neck on the line and brought Post Office Ltd, in his words, 'kicking and screaming’ to
the negotiating table. I do not think for one moment that a £600,000 a year CEO is going to risk her reputation
with Post Office Ltd, the government, her career progression and overlook the huge amount of management
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time that's been spent over the last two or three years, for this project only to be rejected by a bunch of ill-
informed postmasters. It is far more important than that. I believe that this is probably more important to the
Post Office than it is to the Federation.
Now with the MOU it's clearly a document where the Post Office holds dominion, they are the dominant party,
there's no question about that, and the Federation is subservient and we've heard that this morning, the Post
Office have more-or-less told George he's got to be a limited company because of this, this and this, they're
dictating the whereabouts and the contents of the framework agreement. So Paula would not have negotiated
this deal if it was a bad deal for Post Office Ltd, it is clearly a fantastic deal for the Post Office.
Now then, here is the core question. What is so fantastic about the deal for the Post Office? Now in the last
year we've heard no reason as to what the answer to that is and I suspect it's somewhere within the framework
agreement and I'm going to say this to you, I don't have any proof of this, but it's a strong suspicion of mine, and
I've got no proof, but I suspect if we saw the framework agreement there may be something in there. £40million
over the next 15 years that the Post Office are going to give the Federation. If the option for that was for Post
Office Ltd to pay say £100million to their staff or whatever it be, for training, sales, audits and all the rest of
those peripheral services that they provide to the network, what happens if that cost to the Post Office over 15
years was £100million but suddenly it was transferred to the Federation for us to undertake that work on their
behalf, they would save an inordinate amount of staff cost on the one hand and it would pass to the Federation
and it would embrace the Federation within the Post Office organisation. It would be a fantastic win, a fantastic
coup d'etat for Paula Vennells and in the same process she is saving the face of the Federation, what a great
deal that is for George Thomson, what a great deal that is for Post Office Ltd, what a great deal that is for Paula
Vennells. That is what is so fantastic about this and that is why a no vote is the right decision for this
conference, because what it does, it allows the transformation team to go back to the Post Office, to clear up
some of these sticking points and it then allows George Thomson to walk into the negotiating room and
conclude a better, balanced deal for the Federation within a prescribed timetable. It doesn't need to be today, it
doesn't need to be next week. It doesn't need to be soon, I embrace everything that's been said this morning
but there's more to it than the end of the world today or tomorrow. I ask you just to consider those things for the
time being. Thank you very much. (applause)
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Right, quite a lot there Toby. I'm not sure I understood all of it
but I will try and pick out the bits that I thought I could understand and you'll correct me if I've got it wrong. I
didn't get the bit about domination. ‘Don't vote and we will dissolve.’ I think there is an implication, it's not a
question that if we don't vote something we will automatically dissolve, if we don't vote anything we'll carry on as
we are but the effective result from that will be that sometime not so very far away, 18 months we think around
about, we will get to the point where we have no other option but to dissolve because we will not be financially
soluble any longer, we will have no reserves and we are living off the reserves now, the subscriptions don't
cover it. Even if we make cost savings, even if we increase subs, we do not think that we can go on beyond 18
months because we know there are further reductions in our membership coming along because of NT. So not
voting doesn't actually achieve anything, we're not going forward at all, we're just sticking where we are, but
you've heard our opinion, you take it rightly or wrongly but it's our opinion and it's the work of The Treasurer and
it's the work of the Finance Director who've said we cannot last much longer than 18 months. So the effect is
dissolution, it's not a choice it's the effect.
You said that George had been going along taking credit, I absolutely dispute that, George never says he's
made this decision, he never says it was his choice, never says it was his idea, he always refers to it as being
the team, the Executive Council. But I'll tell you absolutely, it was not the Executive Council, it was George's
bright idea to go along to the Post Office and say ‘Actually we are important to you, we bring something to the
party and it would be a good idea if you financed us because we're getting in a bit of a sticky mess at the
moment.’ I don't think any of the rest of us around this table would have actually had the gumption to go along
and say ‘Actually we can't manage, we're struggling financially, will you pay for everything in future, we'll all be
members and we'll all come and talk to you and we'll do the same sticky, difficult job with you that we've always
done but actually it's a great plan for you."
And, yes, the Post Office get something from this, I said it earlier on, the Post Office get the ability that this
Federation brings to them to put pressure onto customer, not our over the counter customers, customers like
British Gas, British Telecom, we can talk to those people in a way that the Post Office can't talk to. We can
absolutely talk to government and to the Minister in a way that Post Office Ltd cannot talk to them. We can put
pressure in terms of public campaigns and getting the public on our side, we still do talk to a hell of a lot of
customers every week and if we've got something that we want to pressurise through those customers we can
do it, we can change public opinion, in a way that Post Office Ltd cannot do. So we do bring something to the
party, they do want us to have some role in it and that's why it is. But it's not that we have got total power and
it's not that they have got total power, there is something that we can do together.
Toby would like to see the framework, I've seen the framework. Post Office Ltd are quite clear in their intention,
they believe it is a commercial contract that they are not prepared at this stage to divulge. It is not their intention
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to divulge it but I have seen it and I can assure you that there is nothing in there which is underhand or hidden,
it is there simply as a framework to support the Memorandum of Understanding. The Memorandum of
Understanding is the plan, the framework is what makes that plan work but it's not a different plan all together.
And the last little bit, I really didn't understand, the idea that somehow the Post Office are paying £100million for
staff to do things and marketing and somehow we're going to take over, that's not what's the plan at all. We do
believe that there are some things that actually we may be able to take on on behalf of the Post Office and
maybe do better, maybe do cheaper and those will be the specific projects, but we will have to tender for those
projects and if we can't do them cheaper and we can't do them better we won't win the tenders. So that's as far
as I can go at this stage. I don't know if Paul has got something to add to that.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Yes, because I was one of those people that Toby
talked about and I was once a child and I can remember getting a school report from Loughborough Grammar
School when I was seven and I took it home and went 'Dad what does this mean?’ and the school report said
‘Paul is a very inquisitive child.’ The one thing I will say Toby is it didn't lead me to have a suspicious nature.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Good afternoon conference. I hope
you all enjoyed your lunch and got your brain thinking what we want to do. Mr President you did say that some
of these questions are being raised and are a matter for tomorrow but I think as a conference we've got to have
some clarity in what we're voting for. I shall give you my concerns and what is not perhaps a procedural right
but maybe you can, because we, as an organisation, looking at the three options, to me MOU is the best option
available. Toby is right, there are some faults in it but it's been negotiated and can't be negotiated any further.
My concern is, because I raised this point about 'Do we have to be a limited company?’ but George says for
liabilities and purposes the lawyer says we have to be a limited company. Perhaps if I didn’t bring my Porsche
and I sold it I'd convert the money to challenge them in court, but I haven't got the Porsche so I haven't sold it
and I haven't got the money. I'm not a lawyer but I'm a simple Punjabi boy who thinks straightforward thinking
and company law is company law Paul, Articles of Associations of a company is what the company makes, but
in terms of what the law will allow it to do, so how we word it, it's our choice, it's our rules and our regulations. I
think if the vote is taken that out of the three options we go for the MOU and tomorrow we go through this
document, as my limited education, of not going to a Grammar School or a university or getting a fancy degree,
simple reading, I spent a couple of hours going through this, marked it with a few pencil marks which I think
could have explanations. It is not a carbon copy of our rules, it's not far away, but at the end of the back page
then you've pasted and copy the whole rules of the whole conference which doesn't mention about the Articles
of Associations, how the conference is going to run and proxy votes. We have got concerns, membership have
got concerns. I know there are members out there who do not come to branch meetings like we hope, we do,
us hundred or so here, so we have some input into it. I'd like to see some assurances or some guidance from
the Executive Council and from the lawyers that if we accept the MOU and the Articles of Association tomorrow
are discussed and the lawyer perhaps can answer, but more than 45 minutes it will take, then as a conference
we accept them in principle that we come back with amendments for these Articles of Associations before it
becomes live. Because once it becomes live and it comes to Annual General Meetings, and how many turn up
at the Annual General Meetings of organisations? It is some rules in here could be open for abuse in the future
which people can buy and collect proxy votes, there's certain things need explaining and we need to sort it out
now because I think before we agree in principle --
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Mindi, can I give you my word as president that if, and it is a big if, the MOU is
accepted as the preferred option this afternoon when we sit here tomorrow the solicitor will be somewhere along
the front here from the moment we start until the moment we finish.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Yes but there'll be no amendments to
the Articles tomorrow and that means, can we have assurances, perhaps the Executive can have a meeting
tonight or talk to the lawyer, can we have another conference in a month's time and people get a chance to put
an amendment of something, because if you accept this, it's going to be open for abuse and there's 118 years
of history which we'll be saying, 2015, this special conference decided on this motion where the foundations
were laid for the future. I don't think we should leave it so openly for abuse in the future, it should be tidied up
now and you won't be able to do it in the Annual General Meetings. (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Mindi thanks for your comments. We have given you the safety
mechanism and that is if you vote for the MOU today and it gets over 50%, Julian will be at the top table
tomorrow, if the conference is not happy with the answers that Julian gives you and you've maybe got, a lot of
this is trust but I think when you listen to Julian tomorrow it's not just trust it will be common sense, but if actually
you're not persuaded then you have that safety mechanism and that means we will not get the two-thirds
majority. You have the safety mechanism. So if you vote 50% today and tomorrow you're not happy with the
answers you get, and what does that mean? Let's say, for example, the MOU goes forward and it fails the two-
thirds tomorrow because you're unhappy with the answers. I don't think that will happen. It could happen, it
might not be the one that goes forward either. But what in effect would happen is, the MOU is dead if that
happens, right, but what's not dead is, we would then have to, we'd have said no to the NFRN, we'd have said
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no to the CWU, we'd have said no the MOU as an independent company, we would then probably as a
conference have to revisit the decision we took today. It would then mean to dissolve 18 months down the line
as lan said, not because you wanted to or not because on the ground that would happen, or actually if you're so
unhappy with what's been explained about the coming, that new company, representing everybody, you would
have to say 'Right, if that's not an option for us let's relook at what the CWU or NFRN are offering.’ If you say no
tomorrow to the two-thirds, the MOU goes through tonight but not tomorrow, the MOU is finished. That's not a
threat, it's not a threat because the Post Office, there are some senior managers thinking ‘Why is Paula doing
this?’ Paula thinks it's the best thing for the company, it isn't signed yet, it will be signed if we agree it. It will not
come back. But that's life, we make a democratic decision and if tomorrow you say 'Well actually the answers
that Julian gave you, we're still not convinced’ and we don't get the two-thirds that's it dead, but that's life. Our
team cannot do any better, you've got to trust us and if we put it there and you say no to us that's fine, that's life,
but what it does mean is that the Federation will not exist as an independent body, that's life.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): With your permission Mr President, I
accept the fact that if, that's why I'm trying to get the point, if these Articles of Association aren't accepted in the
present form then the MOU falls. Why? We're the organisation, we make the rules of our organisation, why
should the MOU fall if we can't have the Articles of Association the way we want them? We're not asking for
radical changes but there should be an opportunity to put proposals for us? This is tying our hands up 'Do you
want that?’ Well I'm happy with the MOU but I'm not happy with the Articles of Association, what you're going to
run in the future as an organisation. If you're not happy with that how can you vote for something? That's all I'm
asking for clarity if you can.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Mindi, can we please draw your attention to the order of events that was left on
everybody's table, thank you Madhu, step four explains about the Articles of Association. Hopefully that is the
last time I mention that today. Please can we read step four, it says there is over the next eight to nine months
the opportunity to change anything that we don't like, you don't like, members don't like within that.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): So just to finish off on that point because we're straying
badly onto tomorrow's business. Somebody's written on here ‘Clarify this.' Well absolutely, that's what we need
to do. I can stand here and say it's as near to the rule book today and tomorrow for what it will become after
tomorrow. Is it perfect? Probably not but we have to take that step. No matter what we do Mindi we have to
become a limited company for the insurance reasons that George spoke about this morning. So we've then got
a period from when we leave this conference tomorrow, should all of that have got through, we don't get the
new operators on board until 1 October, we will be having an Annual General Meeting next May, so we have
that period for the rest of this year and early into next year. If there are things that members don't like
absolutely so we want you to come forward in floods and tell us? Yes we do, because it's no easy job, because
those Articles of Association, and I'll pay absolute tribute to Philip Bloor and to Julian Blake who is sitting at the
back, our consultant, are nearly absolutely impossible to write because they don't become a live document until
after a vote is taken tomorrow. So that's the whole point of the process, they will not be perfect as they stand
right now Mindi, we know that, we want to know which ones your guys are most concerned about and then we
will deal with them and that will be done after that consultation at the first AGM of NFSP Ltd and you absolutely
have my assurance as well on that Mindi.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Thank you, oh I can believe that, you're
right, we'll have the Articles of Association amendment at the Annual General Meeting but you won't have the
critical mass there to support it and speak for it, you've have half a dozen people there.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): There is an issue that Mindi is raising. The Annual General
Meeting next year will effectively be our conference, we have to use different terminology if we're going to be a
company, but the Annual General Meeting is going to be the conference, the delegates that go to it will be on
pretty much the same sort of basis as the delegates that are here right now.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Yes, but if it's going to be one vote for
one member --
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): But that's what you've got right now, you're one member, you've
got one vote today, it's not different and if you turn at the AGM which is the conference that's what you will have,
one person, one vote, not block voting, one person, one vote when you go to the meetings. If it gets down to a
poll then there is a difference in the way that it's done but we will know well in advance. But it is for tomorrow
that, we've not decided, but I do have some sympathy that says 'How will you decide if you don't know how it's
going to work?’ But effectively the AGM will be the conference, so it should be pretty much as it is now, you will
be able to make changes, the changes will be on the same basis that we make them now but in terms of voting
we've got to use different terminology and we've got to use voting under company law. Julian will explain that in
more detail tomorrow if that's the route that we go down, but it will be as close as we can get it to what it is now.
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GRAEME IRVINE (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Before I begin I would just like to say
that I am not a member of the CWU however I do rise to support the CWU option. I joined the NFSP as I
wanted to be a member of a trade union. I don't see trade unions as a dirty word, I don't see why self-employed
business people can't seek the help and support that a trade union offers. This isn't 1979 delegates, we don't
have to strike at the drop of a hat. As far as I'm aware the postmasters section in the CWU would be a separate
entity, we would receive the support and experience and knowledge of the CWU on top of that. Joining the
CWU at the present moment is pointless as they have no bargaining power. Also as a mailwork subpostmaster
I have to admit I look very enviously at the deals that the CWU have negotiated for Royal Mail staff. For the last
year or so since the Select Committee met to speak about Horizon issues I've looked at what the CWU have
spoken about and the majority of the time I have supported what they've said.
I feel I must take the opportunity to state that I find it disappointing how the EC of the NFSP have dealt with this
issue. Why, in a digital, technological age, can we not hear from or speak to reps from POL, CWU and the
NFRN about this? I feel like we're being treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark. My branch canvassed our
membership on this issue, over 50% came back with the reply 'Don't know, not enough information to make a
decision’ yet 100-odd of us are here today for a hand count to decide this organisation's future.
Many in our branch still feel slightly duped over NT2, how it was dealt with and how many of our branch are still
part of the 500 Club, that's those that wish to leave the network yet there is no other nearby retailer who wants
to take on a post office. Over the last year especially I have seen many postmasters who I count as friends and
who I have high regard for either hand the keys back or leave the network with no compensation or leave the
NFSP due to being so disillusioned by the EC's chosen direction of travel. They have fallen on their sword, I
feel as I must do the same as their Branch Secretary and I feel I have let them down.
The MOU option, although favoured by many and very likely to succeed today, I feel it will leave the NFSP as
little more than a talking shop. The CWU option I believe gives us clout to challenge POL fairly and squarely.
Please support the CWU option. (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just say I'd like to congratulate Graeme for the courage of his
convictions to say what he feels and I'm not here for a minute to show disrespect to the CWU. They do a good
job in very difficult circumstances and I think Billy and Dave after him do a very good job. We just feel Graeme
that we would struggle to take much more than 2,000 or 3,000 to the CWU and that there's a very good chance
that a body like the NFRN will try and say to the Post Office 'We already have 3,000 members, we've got more
than the CWU, why don't you negotiate with us, a trade association, rather than the CWU?' So I'm not here for
a minute to talk down the CWU and I've got the utmost respect for Dave Ward.
There is an issue in places like rural Scotland and the issue is a lot of our guys and girls are trapped in
community offices where they're desperate to leave and at the moment if you're the last shop in the village with
the post office you cannot leave. We've got many, many hundreds who see their work disappearing, their
customers dying off and as it stands they're stuck in community offices, and I know there are others who should
be able to get out but no-one else wants to take them on when you've got options of convenience stores. So
we've got the community offices stuck, all of them, you've got some of the bigger offices that no-one else can be
persuaded to take the Post Office on who are stuck in limbo waiting for their 26 months. So we realise that
that's an issue. What we're trying to do, and we have had no luck with the coalition, we're meeting the
Baroness in a few weeks' time again and that is, we're going to say 'Look, can you not use core and outreach,
can we not have more outreach solutions that let our guys and girls leave with their investment and dignity
intact.' Now so far they seem not to be listening but we will try it again. So I fully understand the kind of
frustrations we have for many of our rural subpostmasters who have given fantastic service over the last, 10,
15, 20 years and we are still trying Graeme to do something to help them out. So I fully understand and I
respect your point of view.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): First of all, thank you Mr President for allowing me to come
back with some more questions and some of the delegates as well who encouraged me to come up. On the
whole I think I do support the MOU but there are a few things that I want to try and clarify so that when we make
the decision that we make it with as much information as we can and I don't think that I'll be interfering with our
debate tomorrow with these questions. I talked to Paul about this outside but I think it would be a good idea if
the rest of the conference hears it as well. You mentioned that from October 2015 any new members will
automatically become members, so what I want clarification on is that we've got 5,000 members now, there are
11,000 post offices, so what happens to the balance of the membership and their contributions in the
meantime?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Absolutely Ravi and it's a good point, it's a concern that
hadn't struck me but, I hope I get this bit right but, the statement is; from 1 October any post office operator,
subpostmaster, whatever you want to call them, who has signed a Mains or a Locals contract will automatically
be enrolled. Our current membership on day one that we take this off, should it be through the MOU, will
transfer over the new organisation and that change will be seamless and those members, if they're on an old,
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Traditional contract and they haven't converted to a Mains or a Locals will cease to pay subscriptions on 31
March next year, that will be the last payment ever made. So it does leave you with a gap however, what about
the people who aren't our members who are on an old Traditional contract? And my understanding, and I'm
going to check with George and he'll tell you yes or no, my understanding is that those people who are still
sitting on a Traditional contract but are not our members will become enrolled on the same day that you guys
sitting in this room cease to pay your subscriptions, will be in March 2016. Thank God I got that one right. Ravi,
thank you. Okay and the next question, I'm going back to this £2.5million that we are apparently going to get.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): £1.5million, not £2.5million.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Yes okay. One thing I was taught very, very early in life is
there is no free lunch and like Toby I've also heard certain murmurings. What I would like to know from the
Executive is what is the Federation expected to do for that £2.5million? Are we going to take some of the work
that the Post Office currently do off them? What's the deal there?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Ravi, if I can just reiterate some of the things that Paul said as well,
the deal is the Federation continues almost as it is, we still represent subpostmasters, we still have the same
meetings that we have with the Post Office, nothing fundamentally changes. At our normal conference, Vera,
who is one of the delegates from North Thames & East Anglia, she said 'George, I do think I support the MOU’
she said, ‘but it's the old saying, whoever pays the piper calls the tune.’ I suppose it really comes down to trust.
If you think that the Executive have got it wrong and this is not the direction of travel, and for me it's about do we
continue having a specialist standalone postmasters organisation in the UK? The MOU is the only way we do.
that, there is no other way. lan quite rightly said that in 18 months this organisation will probably hit the buffers,
and he's right because we've done a lot of work on that. If we go to the NFRN that specialist organisation
disappears, the CWU is exactly the same. So the choice really, facing the conference, is we either decide that
we think Britain and the UK should have a specialist postmasters organisation to represent them or we don't. I
think the Executive Council believe that what we've got achieves that and there's enough checks and balances.
We will not be in their pocket, and I made the point earlier on, within in about two months of getting it was either
a quarter of a million pound payment or the £500,000 payment, we were telling everybody to break their
contract and Paula phoned me up and she said 'I've been advised by lawyers that with you telling people to stop
segregating mail that you're inciting them to break their contracts’ and I said 'Well yes, we probably are.’ That
was it. They didn't take us to court and it was just after we got a lot of money. We will not allow the Post Office
to destroy the franchise worth of our members’ investment, you could argue they've already done a half good
job of it already, so part of it is trust. This team around this table and at the roadshows I've never, the only time
I've ever taken any credit was at conference when I was painted as being some kind of useless guy who never
gets anything right, and I apologise, I shouldn't have personalised it and said I took the credit. At the roadshows
I've taken none of the credit, it has been a team effort. About the MOU at conference I probably shouldn't have
said what I did, but actually I felt at that time that, I sort of defended myself and I apologise for that. It's a team
effort and I can assure everybody I have not been going around the country, and anybody who has been at the
five or six that I've done, will assure you that I was not blowing my own trumpet about the MOU. So you've got
to have trust in this team and if you don't trust this team, that they've delivered something that's doable for the
network, there's only one thing you can do and that is you cannot vote for the MOU. It's up to you in this room.
We have done our best and we think we've got a good deal. If you don't trust us that the Articles are okay and
you think this is the wrong road, you have to vote it down. That's life. Our team will be disappointed but in life
you don't get everything and we've done our best. We won't be going back because the Post Office have said
this deal is off the table. It's up to you guys and girls, you're the bosses of the organisation, you will tell us what
to do and we will do what we're told and if you tell us we will get rid of it.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): George, sorry, I think you misunderstood my question
because I'm really not here to question your integrity or I'm not here to say ‘Are we going to be in the pocket of
the Post Office and all those sorts of things.' What I'm asking is that, if we are going to be in partnership with
the Post Office, because this will be a much closer partnership with the MOU, maybe we'll gather some
statistics or, are we likely to any, those sorts of work for them, that's what I'm trying to get at, not your integrity.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Well let's take an example and this has just struck me
to answer this question. The Post Office, being the Post Office, tend to pay people they employ fairly top dollar,
we've all come across that, people in their offices probably pay their staff somewhere in the realms of £7 or £8
an hour, I think you'll all know that the Post Office paying their Crown office staff pay somewhat more than that.
So let's just take something like mystery shopping. Now they probably pump that out to a tender if they want
something like mystery shopping done and we will be able to tender for that, because I tell you what, on the
prices they pay and one certain contractor within the Post Office, know they're dealing with the Post Office and
they inflate the prices because they know the Post Office will pay it. Well we know the Post Office a bit better
than that, so a contract that's maybe fifty million quid, or whatever, two million quid, to do mystery shopping, we
may well be able to deliver for one and a half million.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Why can't we do that now?
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VOICE FROM FLOOR: We are doing it right now.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): But on from there, that's the kind of thing. So some of
the stuff that they do now, it's not a transfer of ownership but the more we get involved with this absolutely we
may well take on some of their tasks just because we'll be able to deliver them better and at a cheaper rate,
because that's what we do.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): So any work like that that will do, will be on top of that?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Yes and they'll come out of the grant funding scheme,
the million, and it is a minimum of a million, let me make that quite clear. If we find projects that are worthy and
they get passed by the Post Office then that million could be two million, three million, per year, every year
going on for the next 15 years.
SAMUEL HOUSTON (Northern Ireland Regional Council): I've been to conference a month ago, I've had the
documents out to read and I've come here with my mind made up and, to be honest, there's nothing here said
this morning that would change my mind. The National Federation of Retail Newsagents is in decline like the
Federation but joining them there will be an increase in membership but the decline will still continue and it's just
really putting off the evil day for a few years. For many post offices there's nothing in common with the
Federation of Retail Newsagents, I certainly have nothing in common with them so why would I vote for them?
So in my books they're out.
As for the CWU, I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Of course they know the industry well, they've had
many years of experience and perhaps that's their problem, they're still living in the past and they still have that
‘Go on strike’ mentality. Dave Ward is only after one thing and that's building his own ego. A couple of years
ago Royal Mail was floated and I, as a subpostmaster, bought shares in the business, so I'm on the side of
Royal Mail, in promoting and building it as a strong business and I don't want the likes of the CWU to hinder that
by calling strike action, so I have a conflict of interest there, I'm on the side of Royal Mail, I don't want to be on
the side of the CWU.
So last year, I'm sure you've heard of him, an MP, a very famous Northern Ireland MP, died by the name of lan
Paisley, a very outspoken MP, I'm sure you've heard of him. So in his words 'I will never, never, never join the
CWU.' So consider my position. Could I ask the members of the EC, do they know how many subpostmasters
are in a similar position to myself as a Royal Mail shareholder? Because I'm sure they would be of the same
opinion as me in not voting for the CWU, so there is a potential fall in membership if that option is taken
As for the MOU, you've probably gathered, it's my favourite option. We're all subpostmasters owning a post
office, surely we should be working with the Post Office and not against them. We know what the business is
about, these people up here know what the business is about, they know what they're negotiating. Conference,
please support the MOU, yes there are points that need to be ironed out but those can be done tomorrow.
Thank you. (applause)
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I'd be absolutely speculating knowing how many
subpostmasters own shares in Royal Mail. I congratulate you on being able to afford to buy some two years
ago. (laughter) But it's a very good point, thank you.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Could I just add a couple of things to that? And it brings me
back to a couple of things that Graeme said. The last speaker suggested that actually it would put things off if
we joined the NFRN for a few years, I don't think we'd put things off more than a few weeks quite frankly, we still
would have to stand on our own two feet financially, the savings that we would get by merging with them, the
central savings, very, very few. So I think, just to correct that one, it would be for longer.
The bit with the Royal Mail I would also like to go back to something that Graeme suggested and it was along
the lines that the CWU have got good deals out of Royal Mail. I think there's a fundamental difference in terms
of their dealing with the CWU and our dealings with Post Office Ltd; they're dealing with a company that's
profitable, we're dealing with company that's technically insolvent and wouldn't last another 18 months itself if it
weren't for government subsidy, which is definitely going to be cut, that's as clear as it can be made by the
government, they are not prepared to continue paying current levels of subsidy, so technically POL is insolvent,
so not getting the same deals is not so good. In terms of when CWU were negotiating on behalf of their Crown.
staff, they got what they thought was a good deal but, as George pointed out to you this morning, they're now
falling out with POL big time because it was based on getting them back to profitability or at least breakeven
point. They didn't achieve that and so what appeared to be a good deal 18 months ago when they got it is not
looking nearly so good now. So, well there is my comment on those.
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NATIONAL PRESIDENT: My apologies Paul, I'm going to call tea now. Can you please be back at twenty-past-
three and you're the first speaker.
(REFRESHMENT BREAK)
PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): Good afternoon conference. This is a point of clarification, I
could have asked Paul privately but I thought I'd come up here and actually ask the question because there
might be other people wondering the same thing. It's about the membership fees. I'm still a Traditional office
therefore from what has been said and what's written here I will pay the fees until 1 April and I think I heard
something about a fighting fund earlier. What I want to know is why do Traditional offices still have to pay this
amount of money from October to April whereas all the other offices don't? What is this fighting fund? I know I
heard the words, but I still want clarification as to why we have to pay and the offices which have already
transferred to Mains and Locals don't have to pay?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Paul it's a very good question. The deal is 1 October for the
newbies and everybody else pays, so I understand totally your question. The reality is that's the position we
agreed with the Post Office but in fairness it was also a position that suited us. It wasn't just because, as Paul
said, it gives us a fighting fund and some independence until then, we don't think that any challenge to the deal
from an outside body will be successful, neither do the Post Office. But in life nothing's 100% guaranteed and it
will become quite apparent in that six, seven month window that if a challenge was to be successful we would
still be a membership organisation collecting individual subscriptions until 31 March, just in case. So I
understand that quite rightly someone who has been paying their membership for years, who bought a
franchise, quite rightly might think 'Wait a minute, the Co-op over the road, they got that Main last year for
nothing and they're not paying a membership.’ So we understand but altogether we felt it was better to
safeguard the membership being paid for another six, seven, eight months to give us options for the future. So
it isn't just a fighting fund it's the ability, just in case, that a challenge is successful. We don't expect it and
neither do the Post Office but just in case.
PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): Okay. Allied to that George is, I also think I heard that if you're
a Traditional office and you're not a member of the NFSP you'll get automatically enrolled from the start of
October? No, is that wrong?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): That was from March Paul next year when everybody
on a Traditional contract now ceases paying their current subscriptions.
PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): Okay, right. Leading into all this, it's something George has
mentioned, we've heard about the MOU which is obviously a document agreed with the Post Office and I
presume it is the final document and it won't be amended before George, Paula, et al sign it? We've heard
about the framework agreement which we can't obviously actually see because POL won't let us see it. We've
also heard something about a grant funding arrangement, whatever all that might be. We were told at
conference in May that, by a POL person, that we can't see the framework agreement as it is a financial
contract. Well we've heard today it's been called a contract, well that's fair enough, and also it could face a
legal challenge, which George has talked about just then of course. Under EU procurement rules, it is possible
that there will be a challenge because it is a contract and should have gone out to tender. Again, could we have
some clarification of that point which, as I say, is allied to the previous point George made.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): It is not going out to competitive tender because it is not a
competitive contract, it is a grant award, it is a financial contract but it is not going out to competitive tendering.
People can challenge it but the challenge would have to come through the High Court and it would have to be a
significant piece of documentation to a judge that wasn't just gobbledygook but actually had reasons why it
should be challenged and it would cost, well if you start going to the High Court, which you would have to do,
you start costing £50,000 or £100,000. So in reality the only organisations that would be in a place to challenge
this award and the award's been done properly, the Post Office lawyers have been over it for years, our lawyers.
have been over it for years, we're absolutely confident together that it is watertight. However it can still be
challenged, just because you think it's watertight and your lawyers, you get two lawyers in the room, you've got
two points of view, you know that. They're convinced it's watertight. In reality the only people that could really
challenge it and spend the kind of money you would need to spend, £50,000, £100,000 to go to High Court
would be the NFRN or the CWU and if they want us to merge with them I'm not sure that actually trying to
undermine and go to High Court for a contract agreement that we have got with the Post Office is the way to do
it. But again colleagues, we don't expect it to be challenged but it could, that's the reality. Anything in life can
be challenged, you can go to any lawyer, it will cost a lot of money and probably waste a lot of money, and all I
can say Paul is to reiterate what I said this morning, the Post Office intend to make a public announcement in
the very near future and they intend to sign it in the next three, four weeks. That is their intention, that's what
they expect to do and we're convinced, as they are, that all this is legally watertight.
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PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): And George can you just confirm that the MOU won't change
between now what we've seen and you and Post Office signing it?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): If you look at the MOU colleagues, remember at last year's
conference we gave it out, it hasn't changed significantly, just very little, no I won't change. The MOU is as is
agreed.
PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): Something that did change of course was actually paying the
membership fees, that wasn't in there last time, but I'll leave it at that George, it's okay, it was just a comment.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): Marvellous things tea breaks, they
spread confusion and whispers around and I've got another question really for clarification around the MOU and
the membership. Could you just tell me, operators, managers, postmasters, when it comes to the big
companies such as the Co-op and things, their members, it will be one per shop, is that correct? And how will
they be selected? Is that down to the Co-op themselves or these companies?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): That is absolutely correct, it's one member per office
that they hold. Don't forget John, we've got various people around the country who maybe have five, six maybe
up to ten offices.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): Yes. So they will select, the Area
Manager will select who it is and they will have someone who can attend if they so wish.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): If they wish to attend, yes.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): And then the next point on that would
be, we've heard about these Mini Post Offices, will they automatically be enrolled, those people who just have a
terminal, they'll be enrolled as members?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Very good points. Two things. We want the Co-op and the multiples
to get involved, we've historically been unable to get them involved and the good thing is the Co-op and the
others look like they want to get active to a degree in the Federation. They've all got their own problems and
competition is quite difficult so the management time is very precious in these organisations. I think they'll get
involved with the Fed but not to a massive extent and I'm happy because historically we've not had any
multiples in for a long time. At one time we had 800 or 900, years ago before One Stop changed ownership, so
that's good news.
When it comes to the, any kind of extension, not the 8,000 that the Post Office wanted because I suppose it
would be quite good to get 8,000 new members but every other member we already had would have gone
bankrupt, so if there is a small extension of the network do we expect these people would be auto enrolled?
Yes we do. Again, on auto enrolment you do not have to join. So Mrs Smith in her office, the Post Office say
‘You're a non-member at the moment Mrs Smith, we're going to auto enrol you into the Federation’ they don't
like that phrase but that's what it is, very much like the Co-op they can say ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ The only
difference is that we still get the equivalent, in that £1.5million we still get their membership money. So Mrs
Smith can say no to membership but it does not affect the income that we get.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): So with our increasing membership,
now that we've got all these Co-ops and all these One Stops, all these ones that are on trial of the extension,
they will all become members. In terms of other managers will the Crown office managers become members
automatically?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): No, sorry John, the Crown offices are specifically excluded from the
deal. The Crown offices are not in it, their members are members of the CWU and they're not in the deal.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): So they're not. Okay, thank you very
much.
NEIL WOLTON (Essex Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Afternoon conference, Mr
President. Finance is what I want to talk about. We've heard about £1.5million we're guaranteed, plus the
£1million on top of that for projects, and that's over 15 years. I think Toby said that's £40million. Do you
balance very well Toby, that's £37.5million actually. (laughter)
But George mentioned earlier about, before our network reinvention, transformations etc. back in 2002, 13
years ago, the money that we received in remuneration should have gone up by 45%. 45% on top of
£37 5million, is just under £54million. Are we going to get extra money in respect of inflation because our costs
are going to go up? We're going to have increased membership, 11,000, 11,500 members so work that we do
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as Branch Secretaries etc. with RTUs, that's bound to increase. So is that going to come out of this £2.5million
or is it going to come out of the government subsidy that the Post Office currently get which, as we've all heard,
is going down? They want to bring it down just about enough to cover the cost of running the rural network, my
concern is that any extra monies may come out of that money, as indeed I believe it has out of the £1.34billion
plus the extra we've now had on top of that, I believe that's where the Crown office redundancy money has
come from. So, number one, can you confirm that is correct? And number two, are we going to get increases
index-linked for this £2.5million?
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): The last bit first, index linking, no, it's not index-linked. How are
we actually going to survive going forward? We do anticipate that we will have to grow our commercial arm, we
do anticipate that we will have to grow the level of business that we do for Post Office Ltd. It's a minimum that
they will pay us on projects, the general grant we see in practical terms of subscriptions, but it's not based on
the number of offices, it's a flat rate sum, it's however many offices we need to cover. Some may decline the
offer and we've got less, they may all take it up and we've got the full 11,500 to deal with and if another 500
come along we'll have to deal with them as well. But how do we improve our income? Minimum of £1million for
project-specific grants, we would expect to do more than that, we would expect to be successful working on
some of these contracts on behalf of the Post Office and if we are successful and we tender for more why would
they not give us the work? So that's one way that we would grow it. The other way that we grow it is we would
expect to extend our commercial arm, the more members we've got the bigger the Federation SubPostmasters
Journal, the advertising you'd expect to get. The advertisers would be the bigger companies, we would expect
in our exhibition to be able to expect some of these guys to come along because they're talking to people who
are now big retailers as opposed to small post offices with next to no retail they'd be more likely to come along,
they'll pay fees to come along, so we do expect to grow the commercial arm. You talked about subsidy. The
Federation has never got any other money from the subsidy --
NEIL WOLTON (Essex Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): No, the Post Office get a
subsidy from the government.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Yes, Post Office get a subsidy and what they do with their
budget is the same as, you know, we don’t get money from the gas contract, Post Office get money from the
gas contract and if you would like to proportion it out maybe we get an odd pence or two from it as the
Federation, with money that they pay to us. But they've got their accounts, they've got their budget, this is
money that will come out for their ‘out’ side, their debit side, the money that goes into the credit side is their
business. We've got nothing to do with that but we've never had anything out of the subsidy, we just have
money from Post Office Ltd, they get the subsidy not us.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Could I answer the other part as well Neil and the compensation
and does it cover staff redundancies. Yes it does. If the Crown office staff, 660 have left, that's all been paid
out of NT money and they're part of the network, I've not got a problem with that, some of them have been 30 or
40 years, they got two years’ redundancy. That's looking after people, I accept that. Cash in Transit is exactly
the same. So the company, when they restructure their admin, their Crown offices, their Cash in Transit,
absolutely that money is coming from Network Transformation. It is about the whole network and it is about the
whole company so it is definitely coming from NT.
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Good afternoon everyone. I've
taken advice from my peers, one; I've got to stand up here and make a speech and the other thing is I've got to
say my name and where I come from. Correct Graeme, Kevin? Good. I've one quick question before I start.
We've heard a lot about all the business that is going to come our way with the MOU and dealing with Post
Office, have we prepared an outlying business case that shows us how we're going to deal with expenditure and
revenue for all these different parts and can we see it?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Thanks Robert. Robert asked the question in Scotland as well.
The one thing the Post Office do have is they have got an annual plan --
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): It's not the Post Office plan
George, it's yours.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): And the Post Office have that on behalf of the Federation. What
they don't have yet is any project-specific plans. They know that we want, as Paul said, that we want to double
the circulation and pages of The Subpostmaster, they know we want to take on a retail specialist. They know,
as Paul said, we want to take on a team. But it would be premature, if you quite rightly or wrongly say 'No guys,
we don't want to go down that road.’ We're not wasting time and effort on something that might never happen.
Can I just say, the £1.5million isn't as much as what you think, because we already get £175,000 a year from
them as facilities, which used to be union facilities and we get £80,000 for supporting Bank of Ireland business
insurance, so we already get a quarter of a million. So the answer is no to that Robert.
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ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): So there's no outline business
plan to say how the new National Federation of SubPostmasters will fund itself moving forward.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): No, that's not what I said. When it comes to project-specific
applications there are no project-specific applications that have gone into the Post Office yet because if you say
no today it would be a complete waste of time and effort. They know and David McConnell who is our new
Communications Director, David McConnell, as soon as we say no to this, if we say yes David will be working
on project-specific work.
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): So is there a business plan for
the commercial activities to be able to fund the National Federation of SubPostmasters?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): At this moment in time the £1.5million covers the running cost of the
Federation. If we decide to change and go for this bright new future representing all new agents plus our
existing agents, then we will make that business plan. At the moment we have enough money to keep going, we
have a deal with the Post Office that covers our running costs, we will, as soon as we get the okay from this
conference, we will be setting up a new National Federation of SubPostmasters probably in the next two or
three weeks and Julian is going to say something about that tomorrow and everything will flow into place.
ROBERT COCKBURN (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Thank you George. This is only
my second National Federation of SubPostmasters meeting, I wasn't sure of the process, I prepared a speech
and then when it started to do questions I ripped up my speech. But I could make a speech, so I've started
again. It just shows that there's no certainties in life and you can never say never because things change. No
matter what option we choose today the National Federation of SubPostmasters will change irrevocably, it will
never, ever be the same again and that will be for every subpostmaster. It might not be that much different for
our Execs, especially if it goes the MOU way. So, how will we get on? 10,000 disparate members in a MOU, no
skin in the game for any of these people, ranging from WHSmith, the Co-op down to my little post office. How
are we going to manage to offer retail offerings for all these people that will make us money? We've tried it
before, we didn't get it right, are we really going to make it right this time?
So what are the options? Well, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, they're already in the lifeboat, I'm
sad to say. I'm a member of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents and they have got a good
commercial offering but I know they're struggling and with us I don't think it would make a lot of difference.
The CWU, they're a nasty, strike-orientated organisation. Really? Are they really a nasty strike-orientated
organisation or are we looking at that past? I want my leadership to be strong with government, POL and
highlight our plight to the public. I recently applied for a postie job, now you may ask why I did that. Well, it's
because they get paid more and they've got less responsibility than I have. Our region has seen very little
benefit from NT2, the only ones that have benefited are the people that have exited. That's not a transformation
process that's a cost-cutting exercise and cost-cutting exercises only take you so far. So on shiny post offices
and the Community offices are struggling to get the grant aid because POL makes them jump through so many
hoops to get it. You can't alter the building, that might increase the value of the building, you're reduced to
buying new tables which will make no difference to your business whatsoever.
So, what have I had in the last two years? I have had my Execs peddling NT2 as being a rip roaring success.
Well it has been a rip roaring success for certain individuals that have managed to escape, but clearly not for
us. It hurts me deeply that some National Federation subpostmasters now have been members for years have
given up and left. They've left, not the post office, but they've left the National Federation of SubPostmasters
because they're fed up listening to the wireless that constantly transmits and never really listens.
Now, the CWU option, what is that going to do for us? The CWU is quite strong, I'm not a trade unionist by-the-
way, I've never even wanted to be a trade unionist, but they have got the power to influence POL, the
government and the public. We would still be independent within the CWU for at least five years, there may be
changes but I think the changes would be better. I would rather have POL recognising however many
cardholding members there are than have a staff association with 10,000 people in it that are totally disparate
and have got no skin in the game.
Frankly, we should be rejecting all the offers that are on the table today because I don't think none of them do
us justice. However, as we can't vote for that I honestly believe that the only thing we can do is vote for the
CWU. They're the best chance of delivering than us on our own with such a disparate membership. My last
thing is, correct me if I'm wrong, but even the great lan Paisley changes his mind. Thank you. (applause)
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): I'll try and cover those. Thank you Robert, and I'm sure that my
colleagues will jump in. Some of the things that you talked about, the NFSP will change, well it will change, it will
have to change, we've acknowledged from the very beginning we have to change. So, yes, it will change.
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I didn't understand the piece about the people who are in the NFSP or the other people who are in the post
office network have got no skin in the game. I've got quite a lot of skin in the game and not because I'm here on
this it's because I own the building and I work and effectively Post Office Ltd pay me commission on
transactions that I do which keep my building able to be maintained. So I've got more skin in the game
collectively, all of us people, the network have got more skin in the game than Post Office Ltd.
What offers can we make? I can't tell you precisely what they're going to be, there's going to have to be some
research on that but what I can tell you is that the people we're making offers to at the moment, right now, tend
to be small, independent post offices with little or no retail, they're the Traditional standalone post office and
obviously we cannot make a big deal out of selling our commercial offerings to those people, the people who we
deal with, people like Canon, it was a fantastic offer but how many people have they actually been able to sign
up from the Federation of SubPostmasters? Very, very few because a lot of them A; can't afford it, or B; have
no use for it because they've not got that type of trade, they've not got that type of post office and we could go
on with all sorts of things like that.
There will be better opportunities when the people that we are representing and that the people that we will deal
with are advertising too much more commercial offerings and that will definitely have to be the case. We're all
recognising that the new post office when it comes along, when Network Transformation has finished, on
average the post offices will be relatively small and the retail businesses will be relatively larger. That's going to
be the case and if that's the case then the commercial arm will have a better chance of being able to sell itself
and sell us as individuals.
We recognise that some of the areas, especially, and I come from one in the South West, more rural areas with
small post offices, standalone, are having difficulties with NT2. They've got the right to get compensation if
they're able to leave but they can't leave because they can't find someone else to take on the post office. It's
not that the individual can fail to find somebody to take on the post office, it's not the Post Office's fault, very
often they're just is nowhere else available to go. But that's not the policy of the Post Office, it's not the policy of
the Federation and I've been to countless meetings with Ministers and BIS trying to get them to change the
policy, but the government policy that put, whatever it was, £1.64billion eventual into NT2 was that there would
be no loss of post offices, that compensation would only be paid if an alternative was found. We are still trying
to convince them that actually some of these offices that they are insisting be replaced, the economic sense is
absolutely they should be closed, they should be replaced with a van every couple of weeks or every couple of
afternoons a week, whatever it might happen to be depending on the services. But if you've got a small post
office that's serving 50 people a week and it's costing £20,000 a year to keep it open, that's not economic
sense, it is absolutely stupidity economically, but politically it's a requirement. We don't actually set the political
agenda, we try and influence it and that's all we've ever been able to do, try and influence it, we've not
succeeded yet but we've surely not given up. What I can say is that if we're dealing with 11,500 members when
we go along to government I expect they'll listen to us a little bit better. I hope they'll listen to us a little bit
better.
The CWU is strong. I wouldn't take issue with that, the CWU are strong but they are in a different sector at the
moment and even if we join with them, and you said that they're not militant, they may or they may not be but
their threat is they will take their workers out. That's ultimately always going to be the threat for the CWU, we
will withhold our services. But that won't happen with subpostmasters, we have already recognised that we had
the right to be able to say to subpostmasters ‘If you want to get this pay deal that you think you should be
entitled to or if you want to change the Post Office policy, would you like to stop work next Monday and leave
your place shut for a week?’ How many of us would actually do that? We've always calculated that the
numbers would be miniscule and for those that did it all that would happen, they would lose their business to
their next nearest neighbours. That is not the way to influence the Post Office.
The other issue with the CWU is, I am absolutely convinced that we would not take all of our existing
membership to the CWU. We are already below 50% representation right now, but they've always recognised
the Federation and they will continue to recognise the Federation, the Post Office have been scared to death of
the idea that they would actually be dealing with the CWU if we all went and joined with them, that's part of the
reason why we got the deal that we were able to negotiate and that's part of the reason why if we decide
anything today, whatever it is, we change the negotiating stance. If they are not afraid that we might join the
CWU and we went along to renegotiate tomorrow or next week the negotiating stance from the Post Office
would be different because they've no longer got the fear that we're going to go to the CWU. But if we did go,
even with every single one of our members right now we would have in the CWU less than 50% representation
of post offices. The Post Office are likely, indeed I'm absolutely certain, that they would say 'You haven't got
principle negotiating rights, we don't have to talk with you in the same way, you'd have secondary rights.’ But
we wouldn't carry them all and what we would do, I am quite convinced, is that we would leave an open playing
field. If we don't decide the MOU next week some will go to the CWU, some will go to the NFRN, some will do
nothing at all, but you will not get 50% in either organisation and the chances are the gap in the middle will
actually be more than 50% and someone will come along and step into that gap, I'm convinced of it and I'm
convinced that the Post Office would support that.
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So are the CWU strong? They may be in their sector, I don't think they would be nearly as strong on our behalf.
So I understand, I take every point that you've made, you said you're not a trade unionist, actually all the time I
was employed I was a trade unionist, I've always been a member of a trade union, when I first joined the
Federation it was a union. I support that idea but I don't think it's the right thing going forward.
PARIMAL BHATT (London North, London Regional Council): Good afternoon President, good afternoon friends.
This is my second conference and now I need to build or how to give a speech or something to be asked to the
members. My question is just simple, it's that all the committee members are saying that the MOU is the best
choice I also believe we want those things as well, we have to think about our futures and we have to be
progressive, new systems come in, compromises are happening. But my concern is at the moment government
are not ready to give any money to us, that is fact, government don't want to give any business to Post Office
Ltd, don't want to give support to the postmasters, they say 'We give enough money to you we are not
interested in giving you any more money.’ Now Post Office Ltd give us money to run our Federation as well,
they say ‘Okay if you go to MOU route we'll give you money.’ and we are well covered that way, so we get
money from Post Office Ltd. Now the time is coming like I think the multiples, I used to work for WHSmith as a
manager and a couple of negotiating meetings I go to Post Office Ltd, that time they decided their contract,
whatever they want. Like in a Co-operative, if you are doing any insurance products, Co-operative do their own
insurance and they're saying 'Okay we're doing Co-operative insurance we're not going to be doing the Post
Office insurance we promote our own insurance’ and Post Office agreed that contract. Why is that when as
small postmasters when we go for our contract 'You have a choice, either take it or leave it.' So now we are just
becoming a part of all the plans, everything coming from Post Office Ltd what will our status be? They're saying
‘We're not going to increase your payment.' We're asking all the time 'Can you give for these things extra
money?’ They're not happy to give us any extra money and now they are paying us for our Federation so what
will be our status in the future? Can we go to any private companies or something to get our business?
Because if we don't get business from the retail businesses they're saying 'Okay we'll plan your drawings, give
support when you're going for Mains or Locals, they're support managers coming in and Field Change Advisors
say 'Redesign your branch, how it looks like and we decide everything.’ Now when the time is coming when we
ask for the business 'Oh government don't give us money so we don't give any money’. All is computerised,
systems are computerised, we'll reduce your payment so there is no money for us. When we say ‘Okay then
can we go to another, like DHL or someone, UPS or something?’ 'No you can't because you have a contract
with Royal Mail, that's your contract status you can't go anywhere else.’ So what is the Federation's future
policy afterwards? What do the committee members think about that? How we can survive in the Mains and
Locals market when there is no business left for the new members?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Thanks, some very good points there. The last point you touched
on, it could be deemed to be restrictions. The reality is at the moment we still get £270milion a year from Royal
Mail and Royal Mail are the biggest company in the parcels market in the UK. We do £1.5billion a year turnover
for them and we get £370million. So at the moment, and as long as the IBA is there, the national distribution
agreement, we are better sticking with Royal Mail. That may change in the future and the restrictions policy
may change in the future as well.
But on your first point about subsidy it isn't correct that we don't get a lot of government money. As we speak
we're still getting £130million subsidy a year from the government, the government have put £5billion into this
network over the last 13, 14 years. The figure from Network Transformation was £1.34billlion plus another
£600million after our West Bromwich meeting Jo Swinson got up in parliament and announced another
£600million. So actually Network Transformation is costing the government £1.94billion and what none of the
parties are saying is that the Post Office won't get anything, they're saying that ‘Look, in the future we will
support the rural community branches and we will pay fifty, sixty, seventy million.’ What they're saying is 'We
will not pay £130million a year’ and that a £130million is too much so they're going to reduce it. One of the
issues about Network Transformation is eventually everybody that can change will change because there is not
the money there for fixed pay.
And the last point that you've raised, at the end of the day whatever we do as an organisation, nothing will get
tid of the fact that for you as subpostmasters you're going to have to sweat your retail and sweat your post office
more than you've ever done before. There's no guarantees on the high street, there's no guarantees. When
you took over a post office and when I took over a post office, just because you've become self-employed and
just because you've got a post office, no-one ever gave you the God-given right to be a success and no-one
ever gave you the God-given right that you had the ability to get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
millions of government money to leave the industry and I think sometimes we can forget that. When you're self-
employed there's no guarantees and what the Federation's done over the last 10 years is to try and help people
as best they can.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): Good afternoon conference, Mr
President. I came here with my mind made up, I'll be quite honest, MOU all the way. I've sat and I've listened
and listened and nothing has changed my mind. I congratulate the two guys who have gone up onto this
podium and said they support the CWU, because they have the courage of their convictions, well done to you,
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but as for presentations we've had all this info and we've had time to read it, this is what everybody wanted,
they wanted it in good time, we've had that. Still nothing has changed my mind.
The CWU, no way on this God's earth would I join the CWU. They are going to take some of our members, not
everybody. National Federation of Newsagents, I don't sell newspapers, no way. We're going to finish up, if we
don't go down the MOU route, we're going to finish up with our members having a divided representation with
POL, if they will speak to them.
The other thing is, and this is a very sad thing I think to say but I'm going to say it anyway because that's how I
do things. The bottom line is our members really, really don't care who represents us, the main thing they are
interested in is their bottom line, how much they are making. So any help they can get on their retail they will
take it. They don't care that we are here but I think the fact that we are here shows that we do care and I think
whilst we're here when we make a vote and make a decision on which way we're going to go it is not a personal
decision and I think a lot of people have to remember that. This is what is good for the Federation, for our
members who can't be bothered to attend meetings, too busy to attend meetings, this is not a personal choice,
this is for the members, for the future of this Federation, and those of you who want to abstain, that's fine,
because I am going to vote so I will win. (laughter) If you abstain you are letting down your members and not
having their say and their right to vote. You are wrong. You have to vote, you have to stand by the courage of
your convictions and say what you mean. One minute.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): That's good Sue.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): I do have a question, so I'm sorry for
all that.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Good.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): My question is, and it's quite simple
really, if we fail at the MOU or we succeed at the MOU or go down the CWU route or the NFRN, what happens.
to our Benevolent Fund? Where do we stand with that?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Okay. Thank you Sue for that. I'll make this very clear
right now. The Benevolent Fund is an entirely separate organisation, it is a charity. It is linked to the NFSP but
it is a completely separate organisation. So it would depend Sue is the actual answer. If we dissolve the
Federation at any stage because nothing happened and down the line we ran out of money, the Benevolent
Fund would be transferred to the charity nearest to its aims and its purpose and its purpose is to support
subpostmasters past and present who find themselves in times of difficulty, and I hope I've remembered that bit
right. So, if we didn't exist, yes, we would have to do something with the Benevolent Fund and the likelihood
would be that we'd probably have to approach something like the Rowland Hill Fund because it's part of the
industry and we would amalgamate it into that.
If we went down any of the other three options the Benevolent Fund cannot be touched by any other
organisation, so if we joined the CWU the Benevolent Fund would remain as a separate entity and even in five
or ten years' time, if it had become a complete merger and/or takeover and likewise with the NFRN. So the Ben
Fund can't be touched and what we're talking about here today bears absolutely on relevance to that fund
whatsoever.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): That's fine.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Sue, could I just add on abstentions, about 10 days ago Bala
Jaspal put on a fantastic meeting in the Midlands on a Sunday along with Bharat and there was 113
subpostmasters there, about a fifth of the membership. We talked them through all the options, no-one
supported the NFRN, six people supported the CWU and over 80 subpostmasters supported the MOU. Now
the point I'm getting at, no-one for a minute from the hall says about abstentions. You're here to represent your
members, there have been lots of meetings throughout the country and I think that, of course people can
abstain but I'm not sure that at any meeting that there was members who were actually saying to their delegates
"You should abstain.’ You've got to listen to the argument but you're here on behalf of your regions and
certainly at none of the meetings I was at was there any desire from delegates from the floor to be saying to
their delegates to conference that they should be abstaining. I never heard that and I have done five or six, not
once did I hear that.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): Support the MOU, that's all I'm
saying. (applause)
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DESMOND WRENN (North Staffs & South Cheshire Branch, Midland Regional Council): Just akin to what Sue
was saying, coincidentally I was sitting down there waiting. What will happen to the NFSP assets whichever
option we go down? That's my question.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Des, the current assets will seamlessly transfer into the New
Federation, every single penny that we have will transfer along with the liability, every single penny will transfer
into the new Federation.
DESMOND WRENN (North Staffs & South Cheshire Branch, Midland Regional Council): So what after five
years?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): No but basically in the next, we'll be setting up a new company
probably within the next three weeks if we get the okay and it will be as quickly as Philip Bloor, the Finance
Director, a man of many talents, and Julian Blake at BWB, it's as fast as we can do it. It will probably be within
the two or three months if it will be set up?
DESMOND WRENN (North Staffs & South Cheshire Branch, Midland Regional Council): And what if CWU and
NFRN?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): If it's the CWU or the NFRN we will work at speed to migrate the
organisation, what they've both agreed is that they will lift and lay our organisation into their organisations, so
everything will go in exactly as it is, our funds will be separate for a period, at least up to five years in the CWU
and lan, is quite right, the CWU have the resources to help us. The NFRN have said ‘Basically you'll have to
use your own money and if that runs out, well we don't know.’ So the NFRN, as lan said, we probably would
have a financial crisis within about a year and a half in the NFRN if we're being quite honest.
MICHAEL MCARDLE (Northern Ireland Regional Council): National President, conference. We had a Regional
Council meeting on 1 June, an excellent presentation, everybody in the room, that was the subpostmasters,
voted in favour of the MOU. I haven't heard anything today to make me change my mind, in fact quite the
opposite, I'm even more convinced it's the way to go. In 15 years' time there will still be an NFSP, with the
NFRN or the CWU within five years I don't think it would even exist. We're all subpostmasters, everyone up
here are subpostmasters, we're members of the National Federation of SubPostmasters. We have to work with
POL and the best place to do that is within the MOU and I would vote in favour of the MOU. So I'll be voting as
well Sue so that will be two of us anyway. (applause)
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): I am in support of the MOU purely
and simply because I believe that the people at the top table have got their hearts in the right place and I think
they're working for the Federation so that goes without saying. The question I have George is, why is the Post
Office before you have even signed a contract with them or an MOU contract with them, are dictating the terms
to you already saying that if you don't make up your mind by tonight or tomorrow they're going to take the
contract away? What is making them do that?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I'll take that one Satish, because it came to a point
where we had to have as many choices as we could come up with on the table and we came up with three, but
what they have said is if it does not go past this special conference, and it's written into it, and we fully accepted
that, because if our members don't vote for it then we wouldn't want to go there and it would be written. So it
was just part of the negotiation that that was that. We cannot go back on it, we've said it time and again, we
cannot change a word of what's in there, but if this conference turns it down it will disappear into the dustbin of
history if you like. So they're not dictating to us it's just the nature of the contract, it's like we kind of put
ourselves out to tender out there and a decision is going to be made and if it's the wrong one, or one that's not
the MOU the Post Office easily are going to turn around and say ‘Well sorry guys you had your chance, but our
part of the tender has been pulled.’ So it's just part of the negotiation Satish.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): The second quick question is with
regards to the money part of it, because that's what interests us most. The £1million that you're talking about
which is geared towards projects, special projects and so forth and so on, lan mentioned that Post Office
haven't got a clue what the projects are at the moment.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Not yet.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): And knowing Post Office they ain't
going to have a clue for a long time. (laughter) So my point is that you ain't going to generate the income that
you're thinking about pure and simply because the Post Office aren't going to give you any work. However,
suppose, for argument's sake, you tender for, to take your example, to go and do mystery shopping, for
argument's sake, would you then give us the opportunity to take part in that and earn some money out of being
able to do any of that work that you're going to tender for?
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PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): The answer to that is, absolutely, yes I would. If some
of you wish to do that we'd subcontract to people in various areas and, (laughter) don't all rush at once we
haven't done it yet.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: I haven't got a list long enough.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): But Satish, absolutely of course we would, we'd be out
there to recruit people and there's no better people to go out and mystery shop post offices than
subpostmasters actually in my book.
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): And that is going to be counted as
your pay rise for that. (laughter)
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): No. Well may be. (laughter)
SATISH KARIA (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Region): One very quick final one. If you are
aware that the Post Office have also got a retail side of their business which they're promoting quite vigorously,
people come and see you in conjunction with an FCA they come and look at your retail side, so they have got a
very strong retail division within the Post Office. Now is that, if you sign the MOU will you then merge with them
and will you bring that expertise forward or will you join them? How is it all going to happen?
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: No, we won't merge.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add, everything will be looked at. We have to put
commercial contracts, so we're guaranteed the £1.5million and our membership fees are falling now to about
£850,000 so straightaway it gives us a little bit of peace of mind to start with because the numbers are drifting
quite dramatically as NT kicks in. But these contracts, these project-specific grants, Paul's quite right, it could
end up being three, four, five million a year quite easily, but it has to be done properly, it has to be submitted, it
has to make sense and it has to be something that's good for both postmasters and the Post Office and it will
start off with the subpostmaster and our communications will be massively enhanced. There will be a major
push into retail including recruiting someone quite senior. We do want to have a field team, that might be the
second year. We are looking at could we do, as Paul said, mystery shopping better than the Post Office? But it
has to make sense and it has to save them money. One of the pushbacks we've had already is 'Look we're
cutting all our staff, out in the field, everywhere’ and you can't just get contracts for the sake of it, it has to be a
really tight contract that makes sense for the Fed and for the Post Office and we will make sure we do that.
Now Robert asked the point earlier has all this been done yet? It's not. As soon as we know we can get the go-
ahead we're going to work very closely with the Post Office. It will start off at £1million in the first year, that's the
year we're in, but I think we can do a lot of things cheaper than the Post Office, even on the pensions side, all
the Federation pays if you're under 50 for a pension is 5% towards your contribution, if you're over 50 I think it's
10%. The Post Office pay far, far more than that so straightaway just on pension costs we're really in front of the
game with the Post Office there. So there are a lot of things we can do but it will be done properly and it will not
be ‘jobs for the boys' or anything like that, it will be done properly to win these contracts and we will get the best
people to do the jobs and to deliver the service on behalf of the Post Office and the Federation.
YASHWANT PATEL (London South East Branch, London Regional Council): Good afternoon Mr President and
colleagues. Ever since there was talks about the Federation needs to change I have always felt the way we
are, the way we run our own affairs are the best way and we are the best governors for our own Federation than
sort of having NFRN or the CWU. That is my personal view. As a London Region we've had five branch
meetings since the conference and I can tell you categorically that our branches have all said that the MOU is.
the best way forward, with a little bit of tweaking here and there, but we feel that it gives a better control of what
we do and we are our own bosses and I'm sure the Executives will fight POL tooth and nail to get what we want.
So please support the MOU. (applause)
HARRY GORAYA (London South East Branch, London Regional Council): Afternoon colleagues, National
President, Execs. I came earlier and I said I'd got, I personally hadn't decided because, as my previous
colleague has just said we had quite a few meetings where we allowed all the delegates from all the branches
to attend each others, so you could go to five meetings within London and find out everything you want to and if
you had a question at one you could go to the other and so on and we had so many questions that I deliberately
left my idea to last and, as Sue quite rightly pointed out, we're here to support our members and if they're
unsure we shouldn't be decided when we get here and query our guys and so on. But it's quite simple in one
respect, listening to what I've, I was hoping there was going to be some more questions from you guys really to
challenge our guys up here but you feel quite comfortable from what, but if I simplify it for you, first of all, let me
just tell you, that without sounding a bit big-headed in the London region we're a bit more forward-thinking
maybe than some other regions. (laughter)
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But just to let you know, no it's quite a relevant point the reason I say that, is from about four meetings ago we
were contacted by an Area Manager for the Co-op, he represents 28 branches in the South East and he asked
if he would be allowed to attend our Branch meetings with a view to possibly joining the Federation because
he's authorised to do that. So after a committee discussion we said we'd let him in as an observer just to see
what he thought of it and also we got feedback from him afterwards. And I was returning from another meeting
on Tuesday night just gone and he phoned me to say that he'd been to another branch meeting because he
couldn't attend ours and as far as he was concerned and the members he represented he felt the MOU was the
only option. So as a Co-operative representative he also feels that the MOU is the best way forward for the
organisation.
But I was going to go back to a simpler way of looking at it. We're rather unique in the way that what we do is,
as our masters POL get the contracts and we own the super structure of the buildings and so therefore we rely
on them to produce the goods that we can sell and make the money with. When you're looking at the three
options that are in front of you just from a purely financial point of view and I support, I have great respect
should I say, for the NFRN and the CWU because they're good organisations in their own rights, but when it
comes to what we're discussing here today just looking forward on the financial side of things, they honestly, the
other two organisations, and again respectfully, they actually don't know what to do with us after that five year
term. They don't know, they would still look back at these guys and say ‘Well what do you want to do next?’ So
if they're thinking that these are the guys that are going to show us what to do, what do we need to go there?
We've already got a financial plan in place for 15 years which guarantees us X amount of money which should
be enough to help us develop our organisation.
Because we need to fundamentally change, you'll find, and it's quite right George has mentioned and we've got
a lot of members within our area who are new to the post office business are thriving, some have actually 20%,
30% increased their salaries under the new contracts, only because they haven't restricted the way they think
and how they fight for their business and how they run their businesses. So we need to be a little bit more
open-minded, we need to ask all the right points, you need to be sure that when you give these guys the
instructions today it's going to be the best for everybody, not a few of you, for the majority of the members. So
please, think hard, make the right decision, but please vote. Thank you. (applause)
SHAHIN NAZ (Glasgow Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Just a couple of points. I always thought that if you
paid for something you would value it more rather than having something for free. So if POL was paying for our
subscription fees, even if there were 11,000, it will not hold the same value as 5,000 people who are paying
fees to be members. That's my view. Why would Post Office pay for us to join our Federation and then have
them pulling at their leg to say 'We want this and we want that?’ They could turn around and say ‘Well we're
paying your fees, you can't have it.’ I think that's a bit of Toby's point there.
I'm glad Harry was here before me, he raised the question of the Co-ops. If they wanted to join, if there was
fees payable, if they had to pay fees, would that not have more value to the Federation than being free
members? I know the Federation had a drive a few years back to try and recruit more members, but can we not
do that again and maybe have 11,000 or 8,000 or 9,000 members that are paying a fee and then we'll have a
stronger Federation rather than relying on Post Office to pay our fees? Have you looked at that option?
They've given us very little time from the last conference, they've only given us a couple of months to make up
our minds, either take it or leave it, since the last, I was at the last conference as well. Since then, this is the
final draft or final, they've not given us any time or chance to think about this but you said there's no going back
on it, it will be dead if we don't vote yes. But to me it's a very short time. That's all. Thank you. (applause)
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): I'm going to turn that on its head. I do accept that actually if
you've paid for something you value it and Post Office Ltd are about to pay £1.5million a year to pay for the
Federation, so they're going to value it, it's worth it. So I'm going to turn that one completely on its head.
Could we grow our own membership? By God, has that guy on the end been trying for the last 18 months and
he's had Andrew Gilhooly trying to help him. He's been travelling the country trying to grow the membership,
but the truth is the new guys who are coming in under NT are owning businesses that may be doing £20,000,
£30,000 a week turnover. They're buying in to a post office, well they're not buying in, they're being given a
post office and you might wonder whether they value that as well because they got it for nothing. They're
coming in with a relatively small post office, a relatively large business, they are not going to buy in under
subscriptions to an organisation that they see has little relevance to their business. So the answer, have we
looked into it? Yes we've looked into it. Are we able to grow our own membership? Absolutely not at the
moment. Of course we looked into it, we looked whether we could survive and we go back to Page 2, 3 of the
presentation 'Can we stay the same as we are?’ No we can't stay the same as we are and we have been
unable to grow ourselves out of the situation we're in. So we do need to do it and whether you've had time to
think or not, you asked for six weeks, we gave you six weeks.
Has it been a rush? No it's not been a rush, it's been two and a half years in the building, so you may not have
known about it for two and a half years, we've known about it for two and a half years we've been working on it
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for two and a half years and the last time we presented this to you, and actually the MOU you got 18 months
ago, the first version of it, so you knew what we were thinking about, you knew where we were coming from and
where we were hoping to go to. So at the last minute you say, I disagree.
ASHOK MAJEVADIA (London West Branch, London Regional Council): I really didn't want to come up and
speak this afternoon because everything was repetition but when my colleagues from Scotland over there came
up I felt I just had to come up. He said 'Why are Post Office Ltd paying for it?’ This was a question that was
asked at our meetings by members who have not attended a single meeting of the branch or region. The
answer it gave to them is ‘Look, Post Office are doing it because the Federation can do work which they
themselves can't do.' The prime example, and George touched on it earlier, is the POCA account was lost to us
five years ago, it was given to PayPoint. Post Office Ltd employees, Paula included, could not go to the
government and say 'Please give it back to us.' No. It was the Fed who went to the government and demanded
it back and got it back. So that's why, that's just one example, as to why Post Office Ltd are paying for the subs.
and they want us on board.
The other, I don't know whether my fellow scholar is a Branch Secretary, I am. I've tried recruiting, gone
around, now I admit that London is very populated congested area so the post offices are nearby, it's easier for
us to get around to our members and see them, for Scotland it might not be. But to recruit one member you had
to go around to about 50 or 60 offices, spend half a day with them and say ‘Please join us, these are the
benefits, etc while they're serving on the counter.’ It is very, very difficult to recruit, so I would suggest the MOU
is our best way forward and the reason the Post Office are paying is because they want something from us
which is to talk to the government and to get more work, to do their bidding for them. Thank you. Please
support the MOU. (applause)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Could I just answer what Ash said, there I agree with everything
you've said. The reason I believe the Post Office are paying for it is firstly, as you've said, we can open up a
second front in a campaign that they cannot do or they'd be sacked. Secondly, I do believe that they actually
realise if the Federation was not here that the network and the sector, post office sector in the UK would be
diminished, I really do think that. They want us to have an independent, standalone voice that is not in the
CWU or the NFRN and I believe it will be fantastic value for money, both for us and for them.
On your last point about membership, I've been around branch meetings and regional meetings and you're quite
right, people have said to me ‘Well we can stay as we are all we need is to recruit the Locals and we'll do that’
and I've explained and I've bitten my tongue, I've explained why I don't think it has been working. But I would
say and I'll say it now because Ash has made it very pertinent, any Branch Secretary who wanted to do that,
there's nothing been stopping you for the last two years to go out. If you think that we can survive as an
independent organisation and the secret is getting the locals into membership, nothing stopped you doing it.
But there's no Branch Secretary that's come to me in the last 12 months and said 'Look George, I've actually
around 30 people who are Locals and I've got 25 in membership.’ So remember that, the opportunity has
always been there, we are struggling to recruit the Locals and that's just a fact.
GED MCGRATH (Cumbria Branch, North West Regional Council): Ged McGrath, Cumbria Branch, that's North
of Watford Gap for the people that aren't so forward thinking Harry. (laughter) I also will be voting today so I'm
three, so we're up to three, so we're getting there slowly. I've just had a little bit of an idea, anybody that objects
to getting membership for free, I'm sure Paul will be very grateful to have your subscriptions transferred into the
Ben Fund as for end of March next year. Thank you. (applause)
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Thank you Ged. I was going to come to that tomorrow
Ged but thank you. (laughter)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Colleagues, as we don't seem to have any more speakers let's put it to a vote then.
When we vote can I ask you to put your hands up and leave them up until we've counted them and then ask you
to put them down again. We'll do them in the order that they are on the paper. Okay colleagues, those that wish
to vote for the NFRN? This isn't Eurovision. (laughter)
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): That's the British points. (laughter)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Okay, we take that as being zero unfortunately. CWU. Just leave your hands up
please. The MOU?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I think that's 50% National President.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Could we ask for the tellers.
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GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Get the exact vote, yes. If Michael does that side and Calum does
that side, yes? If they keep their hands up. Keep your hands up colleagues please just to help the tellers. 48
this side, and 43. 91.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Right okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's 91 for the MOU. Thank you
very much. Can I thank everyone for the way that they've conducted themselves today. Mr Park.
IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Thank you for that colleagues. Needless-to-say I'm not going to
rehearse all the argument again on this one, this is just by way of being, because of our rules we have to pass a
motion, whether you call it a motion or resolution in the lead up to it the words are what they are. Yes, there's a
very good reason why we never used motion the first time around but some people wanted it.
So ‘That Special Conference shall provisionally accept the MOU option and that the MOU option shall be
explained and explored in detail on the second day of Special Conference.’ I so move.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I formally second.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Colleagues, can I see how many are for the motion please? Can you show? Thank
you, if you put your hands down. Thank you. Those against please? None against.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): It's carried.
VOICE FROM FLOOR: Don't we get to speak on it?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): They've got the right to speak on it, it's a motion.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Oh right, yes.
JOHN SHEPHERD (Hull & York Branch, North East Regional Council): We first heard of the MOU at
conference before last when there was the leaked document and since then our leadership team have worked
to make this their preferred option. I could harp on about that but we are where we are. As a membership
organisation when were you or your colleagues consulted on what you want for our future? I cannot think of
any time when we have been given the opportunity to feedback on the MOU and up until now the Articles of
Association either. We have a voice and today we can shout out loud. We know the POL culture of 'We know
best, now do as we say’ and these are the behaviours I now see from our top table 'We know best’ but we know
our members have a voice and we want them to be heard and listened to. I know we've had all the meetings
and there's some great stuff in the MOU and in my opinion it's a no-brainer that we voted on this as the best
option. So why am I and so many members uneasy with this option? As David Milner says 'The devil is in the
detail’ and our Articles of Association contains lots of devilment. My request is that you reject the MOU unless
we have the opportunity to influence the Articles of Association now. Toby is right, we need to put the brakes
on.
It's a bit like déja vu from me when we had the last Special Conference, you know, this is Plan A, there is no
Plan B' and I believe that Mindi is also right. We should accept the MOU but the issue is with the Articles of
Association, our rules and these should be resolved now by the current Federation, we should not be amending
it under the new company and voting at an AGM. We need to sort out our rules now and not accept the Articles
of Association in their current form whilst we will be stuck with them until our first AGM is held. I urge you to
reject the MOU now until we have shaped the Articles of Association, taking this on board and getting feedback
from our members. Thank you. (applause)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Do we have any other speakers?
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): I just want a bit of clarification here. I
thought we'd just accepted the MOU?
VOICES FROM FLOOR: Yes, yes.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): So we can't reject it after we've
accepted it.
VOICES FROM FLOOR: That's provisional.
SUE EDGAR (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): Yes, it's provisionally accepted.
Right, that's fine. Thank you.
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IAN PARK (Chairman, Negotiating Committee): Now what we took a vote for, what you all voted, 91-5 for, was
that that would be the preferred option and then I told you that formally we had to have a vote on a motion that
would actually have a vote. Now Jim kind of got it wrong, I don't blame him because it did seem pretty
convincing, but yes, there's a right to speak and John did indeed speak, but actually I think he was speaking to
tomorrow's motion. We are formally approving the preferred option and it was provisionally to accept it today so
that tomorrow you can explore it in more detail. I'm absolutely sure that John will come up tomorrow and
encourage you to reject it again then and I'll be encouraging you not to, but nonetheless what we need to do
now, and it's got nothing to do with Articles, you'll hear about the Articles tomorrow, you'll decide whether they're
good enough, whether they need changing, whether you reject them, that's for tomorrow. What we're asking
you to do now is really affirm formally what you decided 10 minutes ago 91-5 to approve.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Right, can I ask all those that would like to vote in favour of the resolution to show
their hands please?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Or the motion.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: For the motion, resolution. Thank you very much. And those against? That's carried.
Thank you.
CALUM GREENHOW (South of Scotland Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Sorry, we don't know what we're
voting on yet, can you just explain (laughter) I thought we had voted and tomorrow we're going to vote.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): There's another one tomorrow Calum.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Calum, it was my fault, due to me rushing it I didn't let any speakers speak so we had
to revote.
CALUM GREENHOW (South of Scotland Branch, Scotland Regional Council): That's fine.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: I'm sorry if that --
VOICE FROM FLOOR: He's Scottish. (laughter)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: This is a good start isn't it?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Is it because he's Scottish? (laughter)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Can I just remind you please, dinner is at seven o'clock tonight next door in Lancaster
1. Any of my colleagues that are fasting some arrangements have been made. If you haven't spoken to Sharon
already could you please speak to her after the meeting and she will tell you what those arrangements are. Can
I pass you over to Paul.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Sorry National President. Just for delegates who
arrived during the course of today and I don't know, some of you may not already have checked in, but there is
a discount on the bar prices that you're paying but only if you book them to your room because they can't take it
off on the tills if you're paying in cash, but when you come to settle your bill at reception the 20% for any drinks
will come off your bill. So just bear that in mind and you can pay in cash at reception. So just for anybody who
hasn't been told because they haven't checked in yet, I just need to pass that on to you.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): And if you put it on Paul's bill it's even cheaper. (laughter)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Can we meet again at nine o'clock tomorrow morning please.
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FRIDAY 19 JUNE 2015
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Good morning colleagues. Welcome to the second day of our special conference.
Teas will be served at ten-thirty, lunch is twelve-thirty and if needed a coffee break will be available at three
o'clock this afternoon. I remember yesterday we were told there's going to be a fire alarm practice at twelve
o'clock so if it goes off we don't need to vacate the building. Can I pass over to the General Secretary to give us
an outline of the day please.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Colleagues, I think firstly the Executive Council would like to
congratulate the conference for the fantastic way they conducted themselves yesterday, I think it was a really
healthy debate and everybody was listened to with respect and I think that shows the best side of the
Federation.
Now this morning, as you heard yesterday, Julian Blake is going to walk you through the three or four steps on
both the incorporation and the MOU and then open up to questions, contributions, considerations from the floor
and the panel will take any questions as well. On the panel today is obviously Paul Haines who is NT
Chairman, myself as General Secretary, Philip Bloor, the Finance Director, and Julian Blake on my far right, a
partner with BWB So with that, let's conduct ourselves the way we did yesterday and let's look forward to a
second day. Julian, if you want to talk us through it.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Thank you George. Good morning everyone. I listened
throughout the day yesterday and I obviously heard some comments and remarks about the legal process, the
Articles of Association, the framework agreement. I'm very happy to answer those questions if they're repeated
today and to answer any others that anyone might have.
First I'm going to run through the stages, the steps that would follow on the assumption that the preferred option
is formally approved as a result of this session and, actually, that might pre-empt some of the questions you
have. It may not, I'm told it may not, so I'll answer those questions once I've got to the end of that run through.
The first step that would follow logically from adopting the preferred resolution would be the incorporation of a
new company intended to be the successor company to the association, the idea is that it will be a corporate
version of the association. If the association were to be set up today that's the legal format in which we would
certainly advise that it would be established. It's a company limited by guarantee, and for those who you not
familiar with a company limited by guarantee as opposed to a company limited by shares, it's a company in
which there is no financial interest of the members but the constitutional role of the members, in this case one
person, one member, one vote, is replicated in the same corporate structure as you would understand the
arrangement between a company and its shareholder. So it's, in constitutional terms, it's exactly the same as
you would have if every shareholder of a share company had one vote. I think it's really important to think of it
in terms of it being a corporate version of the association and not something different, because I heard a few
comments along those lines yesterday.
In addition to that, what is does, a pretty important thing, it restores the limited liability protection for the Board,
the Executive Council, and for you the members, which was previously in place because of the trade union
legislation and was lost because the association ceased to comply with the definition of a trade union. So what
this is really doing is reproducing the limited liability status that you previously had but in a different form. It will
be established with the same name, that will have a consequential effect for the residual association, we'll
change that name to something slightly different so you don't have two organisations with the same name.
It will be adopted with the Articles of Association as presented to the meeting. There was some comment about
that yesterday. The thinking behind the drafting of the Articles of Association has two elements to it, one; that it
replicates as far as it possibly can the existing arrangements of your rules, second; that those rules now need to
be fitted into the structure of a corporate organisation. So that necessitates quite a lot of format change, or
appearance of change. It involved some provisions not being expressed in quite the same way but the overall
intent is that the substance of the rules are replicated in the Articles of Association. I suppose the point here is,
the starting point is maximum replication, if as a membership you were to look at those Articles and say 'Well we
actually would like changes to that' in principle that's really a move away from the basic starting point, the basic
start point being, as people were saying yesterday, the wish that the association rules are continuous and
replicated as far as they possibly can be.
The best and most significant example of that continuity is that the company constitutionally provides for every
member of the unincorporated association to be automatically admitted as a member of the successor
corporate association, so maximising continuity. Obviously if somebody was unhappy and did not want to
continue their membership in effect, or to become a member of the new association in legal effect, all they need
to do is say so and they would cease to be a member.
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Obviously a lot of discussion yesterday also about the prospect of new members and it constitutionally provides
for new Core/Host office members to be admitted on the same terms as current members. As for the timing of
the adoption of the Articles of Association, actually once the resolution is passed and the Articles of Association
approved, the company could be established within 24 hours. So it will be established within an appropriate
timescale reflecting the requirements of the other stages of the process which take more time.
The second step, this will take more time, and that is the technical necessity to transfer everything that is
currently in the unincorporated association into the new company and replicate everything that's in the current
unincorporated association into the company. What we're doing there is overcoming a legal discontinuity
because we have established a new organisation, a new company, and we need to transfer everything out of
the existing organisation into the new one, so there's a legal discontinuity in that sense. In all other respects,
that transfer, the effect of that transfer is the mechanism by which we replicate everything that's in the
association and transfer everything that's in the association. So what it's really doing is maximising continuity
while overcoming a legal discontinuity.
The transfer of undertaking, the transfer of the associations operations and business will need to take place on
a specific date. That specific date will need to be identified as a convenient date, typically they happen at the
end of financial years or the half-year or the calendar year or something like that. It could be any date but you
just need to choose the convenient one. The point there is you've got the unincorporated association operating
until the point of transfer or the date of transfer and then stopping its operations, and you've got the new
company, the new corporate version of the association starting operations as from the same date. So you can
see why it would make, it was otherwise convenient, for the unincorporated association to work up to the end of
the financial year and for the company to take takeover operations at the beginning of a new financial year.
The legal bit of this transfer is that it's a transfer of an undertaking, a transfer of a business as a going concern,
it's just like any other transfer of a business, except of course it doesn't have a commercial dimension and there
are no financial interests involved. What that means is, a transfer of a business as a going concern, or a
transfer of an organisation as a going concern, is that the transfer I'm describing in legal terms is a transfer of all
the assets. So all the assets that are currently held by the association will be transferred to the new company
and some assets require technical ways of transferring them, for example property you need to execute a
particular document, for example some contracts need consent to transfer. So you've got to just go through
what the assets are and identify what technically needs to happen to be able to transfer them in the intended
manner.
All the liabilities of the existing association will, in colloquial terms, also transfer. So we've got all the assets
transferring, all the liabilities transferring. At the end of the transfer, therefore at the point of transfer, you will be
left with an unincorporated association with no assets or liabilities and a company with all the assets and
liabilities that were previously in the association.
For those concerned about the technical matters, actually liabilities can't transfer literally in that sense, so what
actually happens is the transfer document records a transfer of all the assets and an indemnity given by the
company to the unincorporated association in respect of all the liabilities and in that way, in effect all liabilities
are transferred. Of course the important point there is that the Executive Council and the members who are
responsible for all those liabilities are receiving their protection against those liabilities now that they've
transferred all the assets away that would otherwise enable them to meet those liabilities, and incidentally
there's the point about limited liability, those liabilities technically are liabilities of the individuals, you, if there are
insufficient assets to meet those liabilities because you're currently constituted as an unincorporated
association.
As well as that technical transfer of assets and the technical effective transfer of liabilities there will need to be
an administrative exercise of replicating all the administrative and operational arrangements currently within the
association so they carry on seamlessly within the new company limited by guarantee.
As this is a transfer of a business as a going concern it's a transfer of undertaken for the purposes of a piece of
legislation which is protective of employee rights, that's the ‘Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of
Employment) Regulations.’ The effect of those regulations is helpful in a context like this because it
emphasises the continuity I've been describing, because what it does is, says as a matter of law all the
employees of the association automatically transfer to the new company because the business is transferring.
They automatically transfer with the business on their existing terms and conditions, that can't be changed
because it's employment protection, and with their continuity of employment preserved. So there's another
example of continuity, the employee's start dates are still the start dates when they started their employment
with the association.
This transfer that I'm describing will be set out in a formal transfer document which will contain the formal asset
transfer and contain the formal indemnity for liabilities, record the fact of the TUPE transfer of employees and
anything else that's helpfully relevant in terms of the record of the transfer. In a case like this where what is
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really happening is an organisation is being reconstituted it is technically a legal agreement between the
association and the company, but of course in all other respects it's just an internal organisational transaction.
So having reached that point, we've incorporated the new company limited by guarantee, we have got the
transfer of undertaking document ready for its completion date. We then have the completion date, the date at
which everything transfers into the new company and it starts operating as the successor organisation to the
association and I don't know whether this is what's going to happen but of course it would be a very obvious
thing to complete the framework agreement with the POL at exactly the same time, so the company would start
its new life with the benefit of the framework agreement in place. I understand there's the prospect, because of
the timing issues here of that agreement being signed earlier on an interim basis with the association.
I also heard yesterday some comments about the framework agreement and I thought it might be just helpful for
me to comment on that a little bit. I was involved in some aspects of the negotiations of that, involved in some
of the negotiation meetings, contributed some suggestions as to how the agreement might be amended. I can
say at the least that as long as the document is in the form that I saw it it will be a legally binding document. It
will be a grant and a grant is made legally binding, the obligations of the grantor to provide the grant to the
grantee is made legally binding by its mode of execution. So a contract is legally binding because it's a deal, it's
each party giving the other party something, a grant is a subsidy and it becomes legally binding if it's given as a
legally binding promise by the Post Office and as long as it's executed as a deed that's a legally binding promise
of the Post Office, subject of course to the specific conditions of that document.
I can also say at an early stage that the two elements of the grant, the core grant and the specific project grant
which were quite muddled up in the original drafting, got separated out and clearly defined and logically carried
through, or at least they were discussed on that basis. I can also say that there was attention paid to
reasonable protection and in particular the issue about the interplay between the supportive relationship the
grant represents and the other relationship you have with the Post Office which at times can get a little bit
difficult, and broadly speaking that was in the context of reasonable protection being negotiated on your behalf
in relation to that agreement.
I can also say that I certainly contributed some proposed amendments in terms of emphasising the nature of the
document as a grant and not a contract and that was certainly the context of the way that dialogue went. I can
also say that, as is inevitable in these circumstances, there's a certain difficulty in the negotiation, there's a
certain rigidity there, there's a certain holding to positions so you haven't got the ideal document I'm sure but
that's because you're negotiating with another party that won't give you exactly what you want.
Going back to the Articles, I think quite an important structural thing, element to them which might be causing a
bit of concern when you read them, is the way the company membership is defined and it's defined in a way that
in the way company constitutions work enables us to replicate the one core office member one vote
arrangements that you currently have, and because some core offices are constituted as multiples that means it
isn't literally one organisation one vote, it's one office one vote. Then of course you're all constituted in different
ways, so that's a bit difficult in terms of defining membership. So we've resolved all of that by putting in effect
the mechanism, the membership is represented, each member of whatever nature, of whatever size, is
represented by an organisational representative. So each member, each member office, has the right to
appoint an organisational representative who will exercise the membership rights on behalf of the organisational
member, whether that's a legally separately constituted Core/Host office or whether that's a Core office that's
one Core/Host office of a multiple provider.
I think it's also important to say the obvious, that the relationship between the membership and the Executive
Council is replicated as far as it can, the same voting arrangements, the same composition of the Board and
therefore there's maximisation of continuity there. Depending on the timing there may be a need to ensure that
there are transitional arrangements in place, because obviously, again, we've got the legal discontinuity to deal
with the terms in office, not literally carrying over across the two organisations, so we might need to do
something in the new organisation to make sure that that continuity is effected, and that's a constitutional matter
rather than a matter for the transfer document itself.
Finally, todays resolution, technically it could be passed as a majority resolution under your rules, because it
isn't technically a constitutional amendment and it isn't technically a winding-up, but it is very, very close to both
of those things, hence George's comment yesterday that it's thought appropriate to treat this as a constitutional
resolution and requiring a two-third majority as those constitutional resolutions do.
Then of course, a final point, the actual winding up of this association happens consequentially, it will be left
asset-less, liability-less with its last accounts to produce and once it has done that it will be able to wind up in an
orderly fashion.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Thank you.
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NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you Julian. Do we have the roving mikes today? Can I ask anyone that would
like to place any questions, yesterday I allowed questions, comments and contributions but today could we have
questions please and no repeats. Thank you.
JANET EVANS (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): At the moment we have a tax and VAT inspection insurance,
is that still going to be there?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): The simple answer is yes, that will transfer as well into
the new company along the lines that Julian's just described. So, yes, everything we've got now and every
member benefit we've got is also transferring across at exactly the same point.
JANET EVANS (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): That's worth £200 a year at least anyway.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Absolutely and we absolutely will not be looking to
change that. The premium might go up a bit if we get another 5,000 members but we'll deal with that one as
and when it happens.
MINDI SINGH (Central Yorkshire Branch, North East Regional Council): Morning conference, Mr President.
Julian if you could explain to us a bit more about proxy voting because I have concerns about that. Then two
things, it obviously says a proxy vote can be given to anybody and also you said a postmaster can represent
somebody else to be their delegate and things like to the meetings. Also that under these company rules, or
this document, if people do not practice their proxy vote, does that proxy vote automatically go to the Chair of
the meeting on the day of the AGM or whoever's got the proxy vote can vote?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay, so proxy voting. The only reason the proxy
voting provisions are in the constitution really is because it's a matter of company law that all members should
be given the right to appoint proxies, so the proxy voting provisions have to be there. But in your actual
practical context they're not very likely to have any meaningful effect, because if you think of how I described
the way the membership works, each member, i.e. each Core/Host office, appoints an organisational
representative.
Now if, with a bit of foresight your organisational representative can't attend a meeting to represent the
Core/Host office, you could simply, on a permanent or temporary basis, appoint, on due notification, that's the
appointment point, appoint a replacement, a substitute organisation or representative. So you can as a member
achieve your effective representation in a meeting, either by sending your organisational representative or by
sending a duly notified substitute. So if you followed those processes you'd never need to appoint a proxy.
Company law has the same effect really, it says in the orthodox company situation where it is the member and
on an organisation or representative that represents a member, the member has the right to similarly appoint
somebody else to vote in their place, that's what a proxy is. So, as I say, it seems to me, there's the legal right
for members to do that but all they would be doing would be fulfilling the same function as a substitute
organisational representative, what a proxy does is represent that member at a meeting and absolutely not the
proxy doesn't go to anyone by default. You appoint a proxy, you can direct that proxy as to how they can vote
even if you don't appoint a proxy then your vote is not represented.
PERVEZ NAKVI (Manchester Branch, North West Regional Council): Just clarify one thing for me Julian, 8.7 on
membership. Is the organisational representative representing more than one post office, will it be considered a
block vote, for example, a Co-op, somebody represents about 2,000 offices so he can stand up and represent
2,000 votes, but obviously it will not be democratic for a person to takeover.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay, well it's certainly not meant to represent a block
vote, no, it's meant to do the opposite, it's meant to represent a one member one vote on the premise that a
Core/Host office is a member. Now I understand what you're referring to, I've had discussions about this, you're
referring to the concept of a multiple who has lots of Core/Host offices and therefore rather than send a
representative of a Core/Host office as is the concept here, turns it into something like a block vote by sending
one person to vote en bloc on behalf of all those offices. Yes, it could have that effect, if that's, I mean it doesn't
seem to be within the spirit of the constitution, as I understand it that's not likely to happen for quite some time, if
it's going to happen at all, but the main thing I'd say is what the drafting is trying to achieve is the one office one
vote and the alternative to the one office one vote structure which could conceivably lead into that question that
you've asked, is that the one office that is part of a multiple is treated that way and the multiple is a member with
only one vote, so it kind of disenfranchises the Core/Host offices that happen to be part of a larger organisation.
I think that's all I can say on that, I think there are policy matters beyond it.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): If I could just supplement Julian's contribution to Pervez's question.
We have been asked this up and down the meetings and it is the Co-op that's used as the example because
although they've got 2,500 shops they've got 540 post offices. I think the first thing is if the Co-op was going to
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become a member, and they've indicated they would like to be, it wouldn't be until 1 October this year. Now our
AGM is going to be in May so any problems that were identified we would resolve straightaway but we had a
long talk with Julian yesterday, firstly I've had meetings with the Co-op on quite a regular basis in the last six
months, they are retrenching from major parts of what they've done historically. Now I don't mean the shops, I
don't mean the pharmacies that they've sold off, or the farms that they've sold off, a lot of the international co-
operative movements they've been involved in, a lot of the social things they've done, the top management,
Allan Leighton would say ‘Look this company is fighting for its life. We've not got time or money for you to keep
involved in something that is not core to the Co-op.’ Now the point I'm getting at is the Co-op will be involved
but it will not be a heavy involvement, Allan Leighton won't let them, their financial situation won't let them. But
more importantly, if for example, here's a perfect example, if the Co-op wanted to change the Federation's
policy on restrictions and we still support Section 17 restrictions, that means you can't sell what you want if
you've got a post office, PayStation being a perfect example, if you've got a post office you can't have a
PayPoint or it has to do specific PayPoint products. If the Co-op wanted to try and change that policy, firstly we
would be notified about four or five weeks in advance of what the resolution would be, that would be the Board
at Shoreham, the Executive Council, and we'd know that there was a move on, but more importantly, because
of the restrictions policy, if we changed our view, would actually be under the MOU and the framework, a
termination event, then the Board of this company would not implement that decision. So even if the Co-op
managed to outmanoeuvre us at a conference along the lines that Pervez said, the Board would be under no
obligation at all to actually invoke that change. What they would say is that actually it would be contrary to the
wellbeing of the organisation, contrary to the wellbeing of the individual members and also it would blow apart
the agreement with the Post Office.
Now Julian knows a lot more about it than me, so I think actually we shouldn't get ourselves too worked up
about the Co-op taking over when actually we've never been able to persuade them to join and I'd rather worry
about the problem once we get them on board. I think it will be a ttemendous step forward for the Federation to
get the Co-op involved, they have no desire to take us over, they have no desire to get too involved but I think
they will make us more professional, I think they'll help people run better shops, so I think it's a little bit of a red
herring but we will resolve it no problem.
JON FOLLENFANT (South West Regional Council): Just still on the subject of proxies, talking about proxies
you have done the Co-op multiples, how about proxies whereby in a region somebody collects a number of
proxies and then exercises that on either a regional basis at a regional meeting or at national conference? That
obviously is a situation which could arise whereby a member could collect a number of proxies by people who
he just wants to collect. Sorry, the point was, you're talking about proxies in terms of conferences but how
about proxies in terms of regional meetings?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Well the regional structure is provided for in these
Articles but not part of them, so the regional structure becomes part of the regulations. So to focus on your
specific point as you just clarified it at the end there, proxies have no place in the regional structure unless when
you produce your regulations applicable to the branch and regional structure, which I assume will be carried
over from the association, although that's not actually part of the constitution, you could draft in proxy rights or
you could not provide proxy rights, it would be quite unusual to provide proxy rights in that situation.
TIM LAKE (Cambridge Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Just a question, we heard from
George yesterday that all these things could be open to legal challenge. If there was a legal challenge would
that have any effect on what we do today and up to the point that this agreement is signed?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): I have not been part of any of these discussions about
legal challenge, although I've heard them referred to, I've been in a couple of meetings where it's been said that
the Post Office are worried that if they go ahead there might be a legal challenge. When I've heard that I've
heard 'On what basis?’ I don't really understand why there could be a legal challenge to this. Certainly it's not a
procurement challenge if this is a grant because procurement relates to contracts not grants. I suppose what
you might then say is 'Well what if it's clearly enough a grant and somebody interprets it as a contract’ but then
you've got the whole rigmarole of on what basis would there be a challenge, why would this be an anti-
competitive arrangement? It seems to me it's a very, very natural arrangement between an organisation and in
effect workforce, very practical, very appropriately in the public interest. So I can't see a legal basis for it and I
can't see an appropriate, practical basis for it either but, as I say, that's just listening to what's going on and not
really understanding why it's being said.
The only other thing I'd say is, the Post Office by my observation and organisations like the Post Office, quasi-
public sector, they have a very typical overcautious and risk averse approach to things and I think it's really that.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): I'm jumping on a bit here to the constitution of the
regional councils and I'm a little bit confused, and always have been by ex officio members. It says that
members of Council shall be ex officio members of their regional council with no voting power. Now what
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constitutes the ex officio members? Because the way that reads to me is that everyone who is on the regional
council will have no voting power, is that correct or not?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I'd have to say no it's not correct Peter. I'm an ex officio
member of the North East Region when it comes to regional council because I'm an Executive Officer, so
absolutely have no voting rights within that meeting. I can be there, comment and do everything else but when
it comes to putting your hand up yes or no absolutely you can't. So in effect that's only referring to the
Executive Officer of each region, does not get to vote in a regional meeting.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): It doesn't say that Paul it actually, if you read it, the
bit on Page 28 it tells you the regional council shall select a Standing Orders Committee Rep and all that and
the next line it says 'Members of the Council’, it doesn't say members of the Executive Council. The way you
read it it looks as though it's saying members of the regional council are all ex officio members and get no vote,
that's how it reads to me.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Sorry Peter, where are you on Page 28?
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): Page 28, fourth paragraph, it's a very small
paragraph.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Oh right, so it's members of the council, which is
effectively the Executive Council but under the Articles of Association --
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): Well it needs to be amended then Paul because it
reads there —-
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Peter, let me just say, those are the regulations and
they are like an add-on to the Articles of Association so the regulations are just merely the way we operate via
our branches and regions and those are all absolutely lifted straight out of the rule book.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): May be Paul, but what I'm saying is the way it reads
there, if you read it, we've discussed it here, that it reads as if it's members of the regional council. It needs to
be put members of the Executive Council, there's a word missing there.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Right, then that's absolutely fine and there's the first
one we can knock through and it doesn't query or queer the pitch.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): Okay, then that's fine I just when we read it it does
say that we wouldn't have a vote.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): It will absolutely get changed. No Peter, there's
absolutely going to be things like this because up until yesterday any of this was not a live document so we've
been having to kind of double guess the whole thing. Please, just send us an email through to
admin@nfsp.org.uk as it always is.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): So I need to do that Paul because I've just
mentioned it here, surely the --
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Well we've got that one Peter, fine, leave that one with
us. But I'm sure there's going to be other ones but my point is that we've got to start somewhere and thank you
for the first one Peter, I'm sure there'll be plenty more that we need to change.
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): All right, thanks Paul.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Can I just make it absolutely clear how that affects the
Articles, and it was mentioned in that exchange, but the Articles of Association have been drafted, they provide
for the regional structure to be adopted by the Executive Council of the new company, so one would assume
what the new, and this is all part of the replication, so the new company's Executive Council, one of things that
we'll need to do to replicate everything is adopt the regional regulations as regional regulations of the company
under the new Articles. They're only there in this document as an illustration really, they're not part of the new
Articles of Association and the way they become part of the new company structure is to be adopted in that way
by the new Executive Council. So they haven't been changed at all in reproducing them in that document,
they're the existing rules, regulations of the existing association.
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): I'm not at all sure if what
I'm going to say now is the right time to say it, whether it relates to the rules, articles, whatever it does, and I'm
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just précising this, what I'm going to say, because I don't know the format of the day, so I don't know whether
this is the right time or later on or whatever, but I'm going to say this stuff. It doesn't satisfy Jim's need for
questions because their needs to be a little bit of background to this so if you'll indulge with me on this, I'm going
to take you to the point of Articles and rules and all the rest of it.
I've been coming to conference now for about 15 years, I remember the Executive Officers when they were just
mere delegates and they were good people, good speakers, dedicated, focused on the members and they still
are and we love them for it. However the business is changing, as we know, and George on his roadshow,
certainly on my roadshow and it sounds like on the other roadshows referred to how technology and the internet
shopping had changed the nature of the business, shopping habits and we see it every day don't we? And most
of us here today, including the Executives, see all that and it's a threat to our business isn't it, reducing our
income and we are bereft of any cogent strategy to fight any of that.
But that's not the same for every postmaster, there are many postmasters out there, as we've already heard,
very successful, increasing the business, embracing the future, adept at marketing themselves through social
media, Facebook and Twitter. They don't even know what the Federation is, they don't even know who George
Thomson is and, more importantly, they don't even care. For them George Thomson and the Executive Council
represent the past, days of pension books and TV stamps. I bet if you totalled all the income that the Executive
Council have generated for themselves over the last month from their Facebook and Twitter activities, it would
probably be less than £100 and that is the problem with the MOU. We are looking to create an optimistic new
future with the baggage of the past and I include myself in that baggage. I grew up with these people, I come
from the same era, I hear them speak, I agree with their words, but I know they are out of touch with the types
of people, the types of customers that I now serve.
In 2003, July 2003 I sat in a restaurant with Mervyn Jones and a few other Executive Officers when we talked
about the need to restructure the Federation and make it more relevant. It's taken 12 years but in the meantime
we've all moved on and, to be brutally honest, we've all had our day.
Now whilst in principle I like the MOU concept I won't support it because what George is proposing here, and
this is coming now to the Julian bit, it's more of the same. It's the same people, the same constitutional issues,
the same processes. If George was saying ‘Well the Executive Council is going to have a transitional period
over the next 12 months where we're going to get new people in and then in 12 months' time was as an
Executive Council and General Secretary are going to resign en bloc and put ourselves up for re-election then
I'd be far more optimistic about the whole scene. But it's the same old, same old. George Thomson proudly
states that he's worked for the Post Office for 35 years that is a justification for him to leave the business not to
stay in the business. Is he the sort of person to be driving a new era, new vision for postmasters to a greater
future?
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Toby is there going to be a question?
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Yes there is Jim and this
is significantly and overwhelmingly important. David Milner, exactly the same, is he the right person to be
interacting with --
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: This doesn't sound like a question to be me Toby. We're asking for a question
please.
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): The question is, if we're
not happy with this new structure, with these new Executive Council, Board of Director what-have-you, what is
the mechanism for getting these people to move on? They're not time servers, we've got to deal with the future
here. This is so more important than just the personalities we're talking about?
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you Toby, we'll take that as your question I think Paul would like to answer it.
(applause)
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Okay, there's about three strands to the answer here.
The MOU, which I think was voted in 95 votes to 5 yesterday, has in its preamble a requirement for a certain
degree of continuity over the period where we're changing from a trade union, unincorporated association, to a
trade association in company limited by guarantee. So there's one reason why we can't all resign en bloc, as
Toby would seem to wish.
In the Articles of Association the democratic process remains exactly the same, there will still be elections held
three-yearly, although they will be staged so that there is more of a rolling effect so that you maintain, over the
course of the next 15 years a certain level of continuity. And I've got to say within the last six months we've
been joined on the Executive Council by my good friends Tim Boothman and Bharat Visani and I've got to say it
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was a great breath of fresh air in the Executive Council because these guys are coming in with a new look. So
those two guys will come at the end of any rolling stretch of the whole thing.
And Toby actually, to answer your question, what is the process you would have to go through to get rid of us
all, well you get enough support at the AGM and you put a vote of no confidence in the Board and if that is
carried the Board will walk. (applause)
STEVE PILE (South West Regional Council): I hope, I've got certain things written down here and I hope I've
got this right, it's about the grant. The grant is a subsidy, please correct me if I'm wrong. It's legally binding in
its mode of presentation as a promise. How, however, will a promise be fulfilled if the grantor fails or is
transferred or sold during the term of the grant? That's a question for our legal representative.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Well, as I say, I haven't been involved in the last stages
of the grant, I haven't looked at it for this purpose, but the answer is, grant agreements normally provide for that,
they provide for assignment to a successor. If the Post Office fail, which I think is your question, obviously the
arrangements that the Post Office had fail. So if an organisation gives a grant and that organisation fails and
doesn't have any more money to provide the grant fails.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Could I just add, I think if the Post Office fails I think the people in
this hall would be a lot more worried about their businesses than about this grant, if I'm being quite honest.
STEVE PILE (South West Regional Council): So the end product of that is no Federation.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): No Post Office, yes. No money for the wife.
PRITPAL SANDHU (Shropshire Branch, North West Regional Council): My question is, what's stopping the
multiples putting a vote in for no confidence against you lot up there and getting rid of you? As Paul just said, if
you're not happy voters, if you all vote against it what's stopping the Co-op coming in with their votes and saying
‘Well there's 100 of us here, there's 200 of them' and there's no point saying 'No they won't do it.’ if you look at
what's happened over our history we're changing.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): I don't know if Julian wants to comment but we had a meeting last
night with Julian just before the evening meal and we ran through some scenarios regarding the Co-op and
about the multiples and I think the key would be that, I think firstly they have no intention of doing that, but let's
say they did, that's your point, they would have to notify us some time in advance and what would happen
undoubtedly is that the normal organisation, when you have regional meetings and branch meetings, then
there's nothing to stop the normal Federation activists getting people, getting members to allow them to have
their proxy votes as well. So there is a mechanism, if we felt there was a move on to take over the Federation
or a change that was unwelcome, it could be for example if the Co-op wants to put in a vote of no confidence in
the whole team including the General Secretary or the Chief Executive and the Executive, and the Board, it
might be that they have a good reason and it might be that independents want to support them, but if actually it
was done to damage the organisation or maybe to change policy then we would have more than enough time to
mobilise to make sure that when delegates, because what happens at the Annual General Meeting, it will be a
hand vote at first. But if the one person from the Co-op, so it's a hand vote and let's say there were 110 people
there and 109 people said 'I'm supporting the Fed' and the Co-op was the one vote. That person from the Co-
op could then get up and say 'I want a poll’ and he might say 'I've got 540 votes' and if the rest in the room
hadn't got proxy votes from their regional meetings and their branch meetings the rest of you could be outvoted.
The point I'm getting at is we would have notice at headquarters of what the resolution would be, if it was in the
best interests of the Federation and then the structure of the Federation, we would work within the rules of the
organisation to make sure that, say Ged McGrath came along and Ged knew that he had 10 proxy votes, so if
the Co-op forced it to a poll, so at first it would be hand votes, one hand and it's almost like the old card vote
that we had at the union, but Ged would then say if it went to a poll, Ged would then have 10 votes because
he's actually got that from his branch. So there's way to make sure, and Julian obviously is the expert, I'm not
the expert, but listening to the debates we've had, there's ways to ensure that the independent membership of
this organisation will always be in control, and if there's a move on by any big multiples to do us down, if it's
unjustified, if it's time to get rid of the team and the Co-op have got support from independents then good luck to
them, but if it's unjustified and they're trying to take over then the structure is there to stop that happening.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): I think I'd, again, go back as I did when I answered a
similar question earlier, I appreciate it's a different question but it's a similar one, to refer to the technical and the
practical interplay here. Technically, yes, it probably could happen, but you've got to think practically what
actually needs to happen for such a scenario to arise and the most obvious practical issue is a pretty
fundamental one, the multiples as you describe them would need to get into a position where they were able to
exercise a majority or a sufficient majority to pass such a resolution. My understanding is they're nowhere near
that position currently and anyway, even if they were potentially in a position to do that, you'd still be in the
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course of a normal voting process so they would have to mobilise all their votes and all the opposing votes
would need to drop away.
I think another practical point is to take a slightly different view and does the implication of these questions
mean that what you're suggesting is that the Articles should be drafted in a way that does not respect the one
member one office vote principle, because that's a pretty fundamental change from your existing rules.
I think the most practical thing to say, and George has already said it, if there were to a be, let's say, a move on
the association of that sort, there's time to address it and actually there's also, if there were to be such a move,
a legal constitutional provision that would address it because if, assuming the Council would be able to see that
that is what was happening, that the multiples were moving in a way that sought to achieve a position where
they could start outvoting the non-multiple members, the Executive Council has some powers here A; to stop
members being admitted in the first place, and B; to not accept particular organisational representatives. So
there are constitutional provisions that would allow an Executive Committee to react to moves such as that
which could be observed not to be within the proper spirit of the constitution as drafted.
JON FOLLENFANT (South West Regional Council): Could we turn to the regional structures? I recognise that
the back of the paper here is without the Articles of Association, but we continue to talk in the draft that we
appear to have here about the funding of regions by the General Secretary and referring to per capita grants.
At the moment, of course, we're paying subscriptions so therefore it's quite obvious as to how many members.
there are. How, in fact, will regions be funded and what mechanisms will be in place for regions to carry out
regional activities?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Jon it's a very good question, thank you for that. You'll
note in those regulations actually the word ‘Regional Treasurer’ isn't mentioned at the moment and the
‘Regional Accounts’ and quite honestly that's because we want to go and talk to all the Regional Treasurers and
go 'Is there a better and more efficient way for us to do this?’ So the full intention is for regions to be funded to
a degree as you are now, because you need some money to hold meetings etc. etc. but what we would like to
do later on in the summer is talk to all the regions at your regional council meetings and then get all of the
Regional Treasurers together and we talk about potentially a Regional Treasurer being the holder of what's
called an impress account, it's an old term for it, but effectively what it would be, Peter Harrison I think is
Treasurer in the North West, Peter would have a card that maybe is preloaded with £5,000 or £10,000,
something like that, so that when Pervez called a meeting in Manchester Peter would pay the bill and when the
expenses were submitted back down to headquarters for what the region had spent, that account would get
topped back up to the £10,000 so you could continually keep to operate. That's one idea. The Regional
Treasurers may well have better ideas and that's why we actually haven't put that bit in the regulations because
we want to come and talk to you about it and is there a better way for you all to be funded.
So a very fine point Jon, you're quite right, if you actually applied that when it's per capita and there's no
subscriptions coming in then the implication would be that no region is getting funded. We will absolutely not
allow that to happen, you'll be able to operate as you normally do now, but we do want to come out and consult
as to whether there's a better way, a more efficient way for us to get the funds to you guys as quickly as it
possibly can be and that's where we'll go later on in the summer. So thanks for the question Jon.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Good morning conference, Mr President. I wasn't going to
speak today actually but Julian just said something which concerned me. If I understand you right you said that
the Board of Directors has the right to exclude people from AGMs, did I hear that right?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): No. (laughter) Shall I answer it?
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Yes, yes, sure.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): No, I didn't say that, I said that at the point of, oh well
what I was emphasising was that at the point of application for membership there's a power not to admit a
member that is reasonably considered not to be applying in the appropriate spirit of the organisation.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): Ah okay, because as I was sitting out there what came
across to me was that the reason people like Co-op and all that couldn't move against us was because the
Board of Directors had the power to exclude them or any member from attending a meeting, so thank you for
clarifying that.
PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): The grant from the Post Office
per annum is to pay our membership fees. What happens to Ben fees and contributions?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Peter if you're talking about checkoff which I presume
you are.
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PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): Yes.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Right. So checkoff will cease but anything else you pay
out, a donation to the Benevolent Fund, I know some people have an amount deducted for, the health,
Benenden, those will absolutely stay, they won't change. If you pay a fiver a month to the Ben Fund now out of
your salary Peter you still will do next April, that one will not disappear although your subscription one will go.
So it's only the subscription one that will disappear from your payslip, anything else you have in place we have
an absolute assurance from the Post Office that all of those will continue.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add that when next April the £17 a month doesn't come
out your account because you're obviously not paying it anymore, one of the things we're looking at really
strongly with the Post Office is how we encourage more people to sign up some of that to the Benevolent Fund,
so if you're saving £17. But we're also working, it might not be in place in time, can we set up a Credit Union for
subpostmasters where someone might let that £17 just stay there into the Credit Union contribution, so you're
used to it coming off, so you will not pay it for the Federation but we're looking at how we improve what we offer
the members and I think the Post Office are quite interested in a Credit Union as well. So we're looking at all
these things and if it's in place for next April you have the option to either save the £17 or maybe contribute it
toward the Benevolent Fund or some kind of savings in a Credit Union.
CALUM GREENHOW (South of Scotland Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Good morning conference. To
Julian, as far as Point 5: No profit distribution to members. I listened very intently yesterday to Paul in relation
to Point 9 of the Memorandum of Understanding and the huge potential that we may earn through further
grants. Where are these profits going to go? How are they going to be distributed? How are they going to be
handled? Profits usually go to members, obviously that's not going to be the case here. That's point one.
Point two, with respect to George, no offence George, but how do we appoint or remove a Chief Executive
Officer? Because that's not mentioned within the Articles of Association. And point three, there is no mention
as far as the auditing of the accounts, any explanation for that as well thank you.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay, non-profit distribution clause, a standard
provision for an organisation which does not intend to distribute its profit to members. You're a membership
association, the organisation is dedicated to the purpose of functioning as an association. So if there are
surpluses, they may be better described as surpluses, they're applied to the purposes of the organisation and
actually on distribution would be applied to a similar organisation, it's the distribution clause, if you want me to,
I'll have a look at that in a moment.
As to the Executive Officer, there's an issue about the current provisions being under trade union law, so trade
union law obviously doesn't carry over. The rest of it does carry over so the power for the Executive Council to
appoint on appropriate contractual terms and the power of the Executive Council to remove. Those are the
existing rules and that's obviously mainly a matter of employment law reflected in the rules. There's an
additional thing though under company law, which is all members -- oh no, that's about -- so the accountability
in relation to employment becomes an accountability from members, to Board, to employee, whoever is that
senior employee.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Calum, just to add one final thing to that. On behalf of
the members George is actually employed and contracted under the instruction of the Executive Council, so we
could sack George, it would cost a bit but we could, so that will still remain in place. Again, as was the answer if
somebody wished to gather that much that a vote of no confidence in the Chief Executive at an Annual General
Meeting, would probably put said Chief Executive in a position where he'd probably have little or no choice but
to leave and we'd have to seek a replacement Calum. So that is in the members' hands, so it's there.
CALUM GREENHOW (South of Scotland Branch, Scotland Regional Council): It would just be nice if that was
included in it, what we've always got in the current rules is checks and balances and it just doesn't appear there.
It's got nothing to do with George, we could be talking 5, 10, 15 years down the line or even longer, and the
whole aspect of actually having those checks and balances needs to be there and the fact that it's not is just a
little bit of a concern, that's all.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): The only thing I'd say about that is it is employment law
on how this works and you as members have the force of member authority when you're dealing with the
Executive Council who exercise responsibility on your behalf as employer. There's enough, that's why rarely do
you find provisions about senior employees written into constitutional documents. You have it in your existing
rules because there's a trade union aspect to it.
Just coming back to the other two points that I didn't quite answer. What happens on winding up, so what
happens to surpluses during the life of the organisation is they're applied to the purposes of the organisation
which to remind you are, so it will be applied ‘to regulate relations between subpostmasters and POL,
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negotiating rates' so normal purposes of the organisation. When it comes to an end, if and when the
association comes to an end the surpluses at the point where all liabilities have been met, so there's a surplus
at the end of the life of the association, those surpluses get applied in the following priority; to the objects of the
organisation, to any institutions or institutions which have similar public benefit purposes, charitable or
community benefit purposes, or actually distribution among members on a reasonable basis determined by the
Council. So you get down to the final point of the final surplus where there's no other application in accordance
with your purposes and then there would be a distribution. And sorry audit, audit is a matter of company law so
traditionally you're right, audit provisions are referenced in Articles but that's not necessary drafting practice,
Company law supervenes, general company law applies.
CHRISTINE DONNELLY (Bicester & Oxford Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Following
up on Calum's point, the removal of the Chief Executive Officer, an implication is that the CEO would have done
something horrendous for that to be necessary. I think what is more of a concern is, at the moment every five
years we re-elect the General Secretary and it may not be that the existing General Secretary has done
something horrendous, it may just be that there is another candidate who is viewed to be able to do a better job
for the next five years and I think that's something that I would be sorry to lose in the longer term. Is that
something that's simply not allowed once you're a limited company and in employee status as opposed to trade
union?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Well, as I said, before, it's a provision that comes under
the trade union arrangements so it's written in here as the General Secretary should be elected in accordance
with the requirements of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act. Those provisions don't apply to a trade
association so that's why that hasn't been carried over, it's just not possible to carry over the provisions in that
way. Then you have on top of that anyway employment law. What that does is it creates a fixed term contract
and if we go back to what I said before, fixed term contracts can still be put into place, existing fixed term
contracts of employees carry over into the new organisation on the basis of the TUPE provision which I
described. Remember that employee terms and conditions transfer on the same terms and conditions, so that's
the same term in office, if there's a specified fixed term in office, carries over into the new arrangements. So
what that means is, if we're talking about this current arrangement, the fixed term that's already been set is still
the fixed term and would be considered, yes by the Executive Council at the end of that fixed term and the
Executive Council would have an employer's responsibility to deal with that in the appropriate way and that's the
way the company arrangements normally work. For any successor the Executive Committee on behalf of the
association would be able to put in place a Chief Executive's contract on whatever appropriate terms they were,
including fixed terms if that's what's appropriate, but of course subject to employment law.
JON FOLLENFANT (South West Regional Council): The Post Office grant to the new company is £1.5million,
how was this amount arrived at? Was it arrived at by consideration to the actual running costs of the NFSP or
the actual income that we are currently deriving? And I'm making the assumption, I think it is actually stated
somewhere, that that £1.5million is good for each year of the 15 years with no allowance for inflation. I just
wonder how we got this £1.5million and how that actually relates to current running costs, because it would
appear that we're going to overlay in the new organisation some additional administrative costs in membership
roles, I know we have a membership arrangement at the moment where these things are published and so on,
but it does seem there's a lot of detailed work to be done which is going to incur some extra cost.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Jon if I can answer that pertinent point. Basically the £1.5million
figure came about it was roughly our running costs once you minus out the quarter of a million pounds we
already get from the Post Office. So it ends up being about £1.2million from them because at the moment we
get, as I said yesterday £175,000 facilities grant which used to be the union facilities and we get £80,000 from
the business insurance from the Post Office business insurance. So that £1.5million subsumes that, so it's
about £1.2million to cover our running costs.
Now on you second point is, we really just have to up our game on the commercial side and the retail side and
we have to, as Paul said yesterday, it's a minimum of £1million a year for the project-specific grants, so the
£1.5million is the running costs of the organisation, the £1million at least for the project-specifics, I'm not saying
the sky's the limit but I would be surprised in five years' time if this company is not turning over about £5million
all together. I got this from Neil Hayward this morning who is the HR Director at the Post Office:
‘Congratulations on the vote yesterday, I look forward to working with you under the new arrangements and I
have an idea to discuss re a project to benefit the business.' So they're not just talking willy-nilly about this
£1million, they are actually keen that we can bring something to the party and we can help them in certain areas
on a better service and probably cheaper as well. So I think the project specific grants, the success we get
there Jon will allow us not to worry too much about the inflationary impact on the £1.5milliion, putting them both
together we should actually have more money to do things better for the members than we've had in the past.
HOWARD GREENMAN (South West Regional Council): I want to pick up on this grant issue again, and I
apologise really for banging on the same drums, but I am anxious that we should be assured over the
robustness of the grant funding agreement and the arrangements over the next 15 years. I'm speaking as a
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County Councillor and with my County Council hat on, if we're approached for a grant it would be spectacularly
foolish to try and assure a grant for longer than the period of the budget and the budget typically is about a year.
I'm picking up on some of your remarks earlier Julian when you mentioned about the grant being in place
subject to normal terms and conditions, I'd like to know what those terms and conditions are. We've already
identified this morning that obviously if Post Office Ltd collapse we all collapse and their budget collapses and
the grant collapses with it, but what happens if at the end of the first year there just isn't a budgetary provision
put in for that, for whatever reason. What mechanism is there in place, what legal mechanism is there in place
to ensure that grant being in place in perpetuity over the next 15 years and are you content with the legal
mechanisms there? Thank you.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay, well as I said before, I haven't been involved in
the later stages of the conclusion of the grant agreement, but what the implication is of the Post Office entering
into a 15 year grant agreement, I take your point about budgetary arrangements on a normal budgetary cycle,
the implication is that their expectation is that they will have adequate funds to meet those commitments over
that 15 year period. That's a judgement the Post Office has made about its own capability of meeting that
funding obligation and on that basis it has assumed, or will have assumed, a funding obligation. It will have
signed a document which says it promises to pay the set amount each year for that 15 year period and I'm not
suggesting that conditions in there cut away from that, I'm suggesting that conditions in there describe the terms
and condition upon which that grant making is provided, as any grant agreement or contract would.
So to answer your question, if they didn't have the resources to meet the grant but were still surviving they
would not be fulfilling a legal obligation, an enforceable legal obligation. They've made a promise to make those
payments over that 15 year period and for as long as they still exist they're legally obliged to provide that
funding.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Do we have any more questions from the floor?
PETER MONTGOMERY (Wales/Cymru Regional Council): Good morning again. I'm just interested to know
from the Executive Council the fact that £1.5million will be paid, a grant from the Post Office each year and then
specific amounts for projects that they may require. Do you feel that this would make it more difficult for us to
obtain increases in transaction payments knowing that the Post Office will say 'Well look, we've already given
you £1.5million each year, plus we've paid you another £1 million for these specific grants. There's no money in
the budget now for us to sanction any increase in payments for us as postmasters.' Could I have an answer to
that please?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Thanks Peter. To be honest with you, and I touched on this
yesterday, I don't think it makes it any harder or any easier, because at the moment it's like trying to get blood
out of a stone trying to get money for subpostmasters. What I said yesterday, it really is about priorities for the
company and I would rather that they cut back some of their central costs to make sure they can afford that
£2.5million, so I don't think that £2.5million funding, for example, £1.5million plus at least a £1million, will have
any impact on our ability to get a wage deal or not. At the moment it's virtually because of what I said
yesterday, they're saying that their contracts are for a fixed amount, that they don't get an increase so if they win
a contract what they get on day one, Post Office Ltd, is what they get at the end of year seven or the end of
year five and that actually 'We cannot give you within that George Thomson, Mervyn Jones, lan Park, we
cannot give you an increase because we do not get an increase.’ So that's the difficulty. So I don't believe that
that £2.5million or £1.5million, however you want to describe it, will have any impact on what's available for
subpostmasters pay. It is absolutely difficult at the moment and it will have no difference whatsoever. We will
try to get increases but you know more and more it's about how you can grow your business, the years of
getting an annual increase, because we're not workers and we've done it for years and it's getting harder, we're
not workers, we're self-employed and the days of getting yearly increases are getting less and less possible
because of the competitive marketplace that the Post Office is in and more and more you have to just grow
either your retail or some of the guys and girls in this room are actually growing their Post Office salary, I've
been speaking to quite a few who are growing their Post Office salary. So the answer is, we will always try to
get annual increases, they're really difficult at the moment and they will be really difficult in future, with or without
a MOU and with or without this £2.5million being spent on the Fed.
HOWARD GREENMAN (South West Regional Council): This is a much wider-ranging sort of question really
and possibly something that hasn't been readily touched on so far over the last couple of days. I'm conscious,
as we're all very conscious, that over the last few years we've often said that it's very difficult to negotiate with
Post Office Ltd, we don't actually know what their finances are, we're given to believe they're destitute but we
don't actually know the figures and I myself, of course, have pressed Paula Vennells before now on the
accuracy of the figures they give us in terms of their direct costs etc, etc and they have been spectacularly
secretive in their dealings with the NFSP. We all know that and that's made things very, very difficult for the
Executive and for the Negotiating Committee. Within the spirit then of the Memorandum of Understanding there
does need to be transparency and openness, they expect that from us, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to
expect that from them, and how can we either support them or negotiate with them if we don't know what the
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figures are in terms of their direct costs, in terms of their operating costs, in terms of the dynamics of running
Post Office Ltd. I would like to see, somehow sewn into this Memorandum of Understanding within, as I say,
the spirit of openness and transparency, some kind of openness to their direct costs. I would like them to be as
open and transparent with us, Post Office Ltd with us, as we are expected to be with them. Can that somehow
be enshrined or encapsulated within some emerging Memorandum of Understanding. Thank you. (applause)
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Howard, wouldn't we just love that. We'll do our best,
whether they're going to play ball on that score, that is a very, very noble aspiration on behalf of
subpostmasters. I absolutely hope we can get to that place, although I fear we might not, but wouldn't it be
wonderful. If we know the Post Office were getting £1 for a particular transaction, and we've done it at
conferences before where it's like, you know, and we can absolutely demonstratively prove that they're getting
£1, we're getting paid 50p, that's fair, that's just, fantastic. I As Julian said earlier however, a sort of quasi
government body, they're so risk averse, will they just hide behind commercial confidentiality, I absolutely think
they probably will. But it's a fantastic aspiration Howard, I really do hope we can get there I just think probably it
might not happen, but it's a wonderful aspiration.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add, it won't be written into the MOU but we have the
same concerns you have Howard. I remember my predecessor Colin Baker, I was on the Executive Council,
and it always drove Colin to distraction that the Post Office would never give you the relevant facts and figures
of how their finances were doing and to some extent we were always operating blind. Nothing has changed and
my good friend Pat Patalia who is at the back of the room, it's something Pat has said to me in the past as well.
Pat has just left the network and has come along to listen to us for two days, that's how much he cares about
the Federation and the future. So it's always been something that's annoyed activists, it's always been
something that's annoyed General Secretaries and the Executive Council. lan Park, the Chairman of the
Negotiation Committee, it absolutely drives lan to distraction, they will not, Howard, give us the kind of
transparency that we want. Paul is quite right they're a secretive and bureaucratic quasi government
organisation and that's the reality and that's what we've had to work with.
Now the MOU to all intents and purposes and the framework, it keeps more things in place for the Federation
and it keeps a lot of things in place for the Post Office and my gut feeling is that they're being as secretive as
they've always been and unwilling to share the contracts, hiding behind commercial confidentiality will continue.
I wish it was not the case, we will push as Paul said, but I do not expect any change any time soon.
PERVEZ NAKVI (Manchester Branch, North West Regional Council): Right, automatic membership. They'll be
more members in the Federation in future, you guys are going to be bigger shots because you'll be monitoring
more, George will become a bigger man because he'll be having a lot more people to manage. What about the
Branch Secretaries, Regional Secretaries and Treasurers? Have you thought about them? They'll have much
more work to do.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): I have and I actually think your colleague to your left
Pervez and I had this conversation at conference and the answer is, that's why I want a field team out there to
come and help Branch Secretaries with members. Yes, we are right there, in theory the workload could double
but it probably won't, you will, on a piece of paper, represent twice as many people in a particular branch or
region but, let's face it, half of those people don't talk to us now and unless they've got a real problem then
they'll probably be likely ringing your phone every five minutes of the day. But we do take it into account and
personally that's what I keep banging the drum and keep chewing George's ear off about getting a field team
out there to come and do exactly what you're describing Pervez, which is to help Branch Secretaries, help the
members and down the line. So that's why I want that one and it's entirely on the point Pervez, thank you.
GED MCGRATH (Cumbria Branch, North West Regional Council): One of the reasons we're going through this
has been about membership declining and having dropped to 5,100 and this really goes back to Toby's point of
view about the organisation. Come October, by default, we'll be back up to 11,000 members but how do we
engage with these people, because there's some fantastic people out there that are now running our Locals,
they've got fantastic convenient stores and very successful business people, but they're not engaged with this
organisation at all and I'm interested to ask the top table how we're actually going to engage with the people so
that they don't just become members by default but actually become involved with this organisation for the
benefit of all in the future.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Ged, can I say that is a fantastic question. We're actually really
hard on this one and as well as doubling the size of The Subpostmaster and launching it from October, one of
the tasks that the Communication Director has got, David McConnell, who is at the back of the room, is a
massive overhaul of our communications. We're not just looking for money, project-specific money for the
Journal, we're looking for quite a big chunk to improve our communications and to beef up the resource and
we've had this debate on the Executive Council. One of the things that does worry us is everybody gets a
membership, including the Co-op and we have regional/branch meetings and we don't get them along, we have
to get them along. Some of the things we've talked about, firstly, to get in touch with them when they become
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members to operate either a Main or a Local one of the conditions that the Post Office stipulated, you had to be
on email. So at a stroke, because we will be the data controller for Data Protection legislation, we will have the
email addresses of every single Local and Main that are members so, again, contacting them will be easy. Our
own membership, we've only got 1,000 emails so there's about 4,000 that we don't have the emails of our
members.
When it comes to regional meetings we want to do some experiments and what we want to do and we'll pay for
this and it will up to the regions, we'll help the regions, headquarters won't take over, how do we make sure that
some of these new retailers who run post offices are prepared to come along on Sunday afternoon or a
Thursday evening and give two or three hours. What we're talking about there'd be the internal Federation
business, maybe someone there from the Post Office who is giving a talk on special deliveries, how to upsell, or
currency. Someone there from Bookers, for example, trying to encourage people maybe to join Premier or to
do a bit more retail and just little things like, and some people say ‘Well it's a bit of nonsense George’ but it's not.
If Bookers were selling cases of Diet Pepsi of course in my case, 49p price marked cans, not that I know about
that, at £4.69 we could say to Steve Fox 'Right, we'll give you £3 for every case if you write off £1.69 and every
person that comes along to the North West Region they'll get a voucher for a case of Diet Pepsi at no cost.’ So
we're looking, a retailer, when our members come along to the Fed we cannot have the old days, we all like a
bit of a moan, no-one more so than me, right? But we cannot have the old days where the new people come
along and all we do is moan our heads off because if we do that they won't come. So this Federation does not
have, if we do the MOU and we do not engage these new members then this deal won't run 15 years and this
Fed won't last because we need to get new blood coming in and we need to get people coming along to
conference who say ‘Well actually, things are tough but last year I done this and I done this and I done that and
you should try it.' So we need some people who are maybe on the upward trajectory rather than quite a lot of
people who are on a downward trajectory. We need to do all that and I think you're spot on, we have to engage,
we're going to make communications better, we're going to get our retail specialisation better and we're going to
work with the regions to try different things to make sure that we get engagement from these new members. I
just don't want Post Office money and not have new members, these new members have to be real members.
and they have to get involved and this Executive Council are going to work their socks off to make sure that
that's the case.
SHAHIN NAZ (Glasgow Branch, Scotland Regional Council): Just going back to the grant guarantee from Post
Office Ltd. You said as long as Post Office are operating we will get, they have a legal duty to give us the grant
and the constitution. Now we will be changing from our Federation hopefully today to the new model, if you
want, we'll be changing our name and so on. Now we know in the past how governments, all governments
have delivered on their promise to give us more work, that was a joke by-the-way. (laughter) The government
have not given us everything that they promised, they promised more work and so on and they've gone back on
their word before. So say two years down the line they want to withdraw the grant and in the same way as
we're going to change from our association they change from Post Office Ltd to Post Office UK Ltd. Will we still
have those guarantees in place that we will get the funding or will they be under no obligation as a new
company not to honour the agreements they have made with us.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just answer that? Firstly, we're not changing, the name is
staying exactly the same, we're the National Federation of SubPostmasters and we made sure we kept that
name because it's got a lot of history and I think it's a good brand name. So we're keeping the name the
National Federation of SubPostmasters.
Now it's not a government grant, the £2.5million or the £1.5million, it comes from the Post Office, their working
accounts, it is not from the government subsidy, so the government cannot take the £2.5million away. The
government could further down the line, they might say the £50million or £60million that they hoped to give to
the rural Community network, it's not inconceivable that if we hit a bad time in the future politically or a
recession, it's not inconceivable that a future government in seven, eight years’ time ‘Well actually we're not
prepared to give £60million or £70million’, but that's a different question and that's nothing to do with the future
of the Fed, that would be something we'd have to tackle regardless if we were in the CWU or the NFRN, we'd
have to tackle that. But that government grant, we will always battle to make sure there's going to be £60million
or £70million for the rural network. If the government grant goes away then what would happen is at a stroke
the fixed pay of the community branches would disappear, the Post Office would say to the government, if you
withdraw that we will not be able to pay the fixed pay of the community branches. There is no intention of any
government of any political persuasion to withdraw the kind of money you need to keep 3,500 in rural Britain,
but that's nothing to do with our grant.
SHAHIN NAZ (Glasgow Branch, Scotland Regional Council): No, but my point was the even now POL is funded
by the government or run by the government, so this £1.5million will be with the approval of the government will
it not?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): It comes back to what Julian was saying, it is a binding
promise and I'm not going to repeat the technical legal term because I don't know what the exact wording is. It's
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exactly on the point that Julian made earlier on and Julian if you just want to maybe reiterate that one, could
they withdraw it by, I think the inference is at the moment they're called Post Office Ltd, if they were called Post
Office Ltd 2017 in two years' time and they changed their company name, would this still stand and I believe
that's the question that we're addressing.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay, well change of name, no, a change of name
doesn't change anything. Reorganisation so that POL ceases to exist, I mean we've mentioned POL ceasing to
exist, that's one of the ways in which it might cease to exist I suppose, it loses its government funding, it is
replaced by something else. Yes, then the grant is in jeopardy as all your contracts will be because you'll be
needing to work out what relationship you now have with whatever successor organisation is involved. So your
point is a fair one, that if POL is somehow reorganised, the grant, it has implications for the grant, but as I say, it
really has implications for everything and for your whole relationship with POL and I guess that would be part of
the overall engagement you'd be having with whatever happens next.
ASHOK MAJEVADIA (London West Branch, London Regional Council): Julian, just to carry on from there,
should Post Office Ltd come into profit a few years down the line and the government decided to privatise it as
they've done with Royal Mail, would the same rules apply? Could they back out and say 'Hold on guys, we're
not going to pay this grant anymore?"
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Okay thanks. That's a much easier one, that's the
same category as company name, change of company ownership doesn't change the grant agreement at all.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Right okay, I'm going to call tea now.
(REFRESHMENT BREAK)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Thank you. Steve please.
STEVE PILE (South West Regional Council): Julian, just before tea we were talking once again about grants
and you stated there was a possibility that in certain circumstances the grant could be in jeopardy. So going
forward from here would you say that taking the grant retains independence for this organisation?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): That decision's been made yesterday. It's maybe not to Julian to
comment on that.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Well that's not really a legal question. An organisation
is independent if it's not dependent on another organisation for anything, obviously there's a level of
dependence here on the funding that comes from POL, that comprises independence in a practical way. It
doesn't really comprise it in terms of operations but, as with any organisation that is funded by another
organisation, to that extent, yes, there's a compromise.
STEVE PILE (South West Regional Council): Thank you. The dictionary definition of independence by-the-way
is control, influence, support, aid or the like of others, I ask you to make your own mind up.
PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): Point 8.3, an organisational
representative. Could you quantify that because it could be the cleaner, it could be a Saturday boy, Saturday
girl, could it be an ex officio of the Federation, an Honorary Member. What is the criteria for being that
representative?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): As drafted it's up to the member to decide who the
appropriate representative of that member is. I think it's possible for the Executive Council to judge that an
organisational representative is not an appropriate representative in the Articles but that's just to stop -- oh and
then the organisation would then have the power to send somebody else, that's the technical bit. What it's
reflecting is the assumption that a sole trader will be their own representative and the lead Executive of any
other type of office will be the representative, unless the office determines that there's some other individual
who is more appropriate and that they wish to appoint them as the organisational representative. So
essentially, going back to my first point, it's for the individual office to decide who the appropriate organisational
representative is.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just add, I think it's a fantastic opportunity for family
businesses to pick the person who is most interested. You might have a fantastic son or daughter who is really
switched on working in the business who wants to come along. So I think it really does help people pick the
best person within their family to come along who is really interested in the Fed. I think it's a ttemendous move
forward and you get some really switched on kids that are working for their parents as well who will make a
significant contribution to this organisation.
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PETER COLLINS (Central Lancashire Branch, North West Regional Council): Do they have to be a member of
that shop or organisation? Could it be an outsider, like an Honorary Member of the Federation?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): It doesn't specify that, it's a right the member has to
judge who the appropriate representative is and obviously in an extreme case where it was inappropriate the
Council would have an ability to stop that. Also, picking up on George's point, remember the existing provisions
in the rules about associate membership where another individual in the same office is entitled to come to the
meeting and contribute but not vote. That's also carried forward into the new provisions.
PAUL GLOVER (South West Regional Council): I just want to get clarification of the exact legal name of the
new organisation. It is to be National Federation of SubPostmasters Ltd? Is it to be NFSP Ltd? Because I note
there's already a company incorporated called the NFSP Ltd, so I just wanted to just clarify exactly what the
legal name will be. Thank you.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): It's intended to be, as I understand it, exactly the same
name as the association, so National Federation of SubPostmasters. With an organisation that's non-profit
distributing like this you can dispense with the legal obligation to have Ltd in your name if you wish to and we
could do that on incorporation. So that would leave the name exactly the same as the association name. As I
said before, to avoid two organisations with exactly the same name, we'd change the association's name for the
interim period that it continues to exist after the establishment of the company.
PAUL GLOVER (South West Branch, South West Regional Council): So as a follow-up, can I actually ask what
is the company which was incorporated in January 2014, what is this company, NFSP Ltd? What is that
company?
PHILIP BLOOR (Director of Finance and HR): I believe that is the one, when we lost our trade union status we
were mindful of someone acquiring a name that could purport to be our organisation, so I arranged for our
auditors to purchase a company, setting one up called NFSP Ltd. So I believe that's the one that we secured.
TERRY TURNER (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): I'd just like to address Paul
Haines. It's regarding the provision of the structure of the Executive Council. There is a facility on there to co-
op in five members. Obviously you've said you would like to attract the multiples on Board, can you just clarify
whether there's been any approach for Post Office Ltd to take a seat on the Board or if there's any of the
multiples which have indicated they would have a preference to join the Council?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Okay. The answer to that is we've certainly not
approached anyone yet because we only had a mandate, or will only possibly get a mandate later on today, but
the provision to use up to five more co-opted directors, as such, is to cover a couple of different things. Within
the Memorandum of Understanding we have undertaken to represent all types of members, now that being the
Locals, the Mains, the Community offices, Traditional offices and at the minute we're covered I think just about
all of them. So we might need one or two of those seats, for example, we're safe at the minute because my
good friend the National President runs a Local so we've got that base covered. So one or two of them, maybe
three of them, are going to have to be kept aside just in case we find a gap on the EC, but I would think the
likelinood is that as the biggest multiple out there, the first approach would be to the Co-op to get them on
Board, because we will have to represent the multiples as well, and we'll be having that negotiation I guess
when George gets back off holiday and this is all done, dusted and, if they become members on 1 October and
they accept it, then they're the likely home for it, but we don't know yet, they might refuse that and just say 'We
haven't got time to do that.’ So that's why the five is in there but we couldn't possibly make any approaches until
next week on that score. So I hope that answers your question.
TERRY TURNER (Durham Tees Valley Branch, North East Regional Council): There's no indication that Post
Office Ltd will attract a seat.
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Oh sorry, and there's absolutely no chance that they're
going to get one.
JAYSHREE PUNATAR (Guildford, Hampshire & Slough Branch, South East Regional Council): The Articles of
Association, Page 2, 3.14 ‘Make reasonable provision for the payment of pensions and other retirement benefits
to or on behalf of employees and their spouses and dependents.' Please, can we have some more explanation?
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Could you just repeat which section you're talking about please?
JAYSHREE PUNATAR (Guildford, Hampshire & Slough Branch, South East Regional Council): Yes, Page 2 of
Articles of Association, 3.14.
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JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Yes, it's a power the new company has to provide for
pensions for employees. It's just reflecting a power that every organisation has. So the way this is drafted, if
you look, it's conventionally drafted, non-profit distributing companies, public benefit companies, will have their
objects, what their dedicated to pursuing, that's Clause 2. Clause 3 then says these are the powers the
company has to enable it to pursue the purposes of the association. One of the powers it has is be able to
employ people and another of the powers it has is to be able provide appropriate pension arrangements for
those people. The concept of that clause, Clause 3, is that it's comprehensive, it's supposed to indicate all the
important powers that any company would need and it's got a rounding off catch-all at the end which is ‘Any
other powers that are appropriate for the pursuit of the objects.' So it's not that different to the equivalent in a
share company which says this company is dedicated to the promotion of business and it can use any legal
powers to pursue those commercial purposes, it's just extended more in a non-profit distributing company.
JAYSHREE PUNATAR (Guildford, Hampshire & Slough Branch, South East Regional Council): I just wanted to
know, that these powers you just explained, now the benefits, would they be passed on to the dependents or
would it be given at the same time?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): Well pension arrangements are usually written so that
they provide to the individual and when the individual is not able to provide to the dependent. So it's just
allowing the normal pension arrangements for employees.
PHILIP BLOOR (Director of Finance and HR): It's a generic clause provision in company structures, so it's not
specific to the Federation it just gives a general provision that's very, very normal in a company to cover those
things. So it's nothing specific that applies directly to the existing Federation.
KEVIN WADDINGTON (Scottish Northern Branch, Scotland Regional Council): I just wanted to query regarding
the terminology here. You've got AGM is going to be the Annual Conference, as it at the moment EGM Special
Conference. Can I ask, it's probably in the rules anyway but the delegation for these meetings, the AGM and
the EGM, will that be as is in the rules already that we go by delegates per region? In which case then do we
continue to get funding as we do to attend the meetings as now. My concern is that if it is going to be
representation for the whole of membership that anyone could come along to but you don't get expenses paid
for, how many are you actually going to get to a meeting and whether you're going to get full representation of
the whole membership.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Kevin, can I just answer that one, it's a very good question. It is our
intention to have an Annual Conference every year and as part of that Annual Conference there will be an AGM
and it's to precisely allay the fear that you have. So for the AGM anyone can come to the AGM, they'll have to
notify the headquarters so we can make arrangements, but in terms of conference delegates, they will be there
through the democratic structure we have at the moment. So let's say the conference was for three days, one
part of that would be separated out and it would be the AGM and because you were a conference delegate from
your region you would already be in that hotel, in Birmingham for example, you would have your travel paid as
you do now, you would have your hotel paid as you do now, you would have your substitution paid as you do
now. So there will still be about 120 delegates who will be there through the democratic structure. Anyone else
who wants to come, very much like visitors now but they'll be coming to the AGM as members, they can come
but they'll have to make their own way there. So if someone wants to come along and have it paid for them
they'll have to engage in the democratic structures of the Federation to do so.
Now I've got to be honest, we did talk to various people on how to run conference better in the future and does
everybody have to pay their own way and all these things. It was never a cost-saving exercise but we asked
and we were told by quite a few specialists that it's a fantastic opportunity for the Federation, if you've already
got 120 people there who are in that location at a conference and they're guaranteed they're going to come to
the AGM because they're there and you get other people coming it will give it a really good buzz. But if you
don't do that you might find that no-one turns up to your AGM. So business as usual, the structure, you will still
have three or four delegates per branch or 10, 11, 15 for the regions, you will come along, you will still be paid
for, there will be a democratic decision.
And I hope, just finishing on this point, I hope we get back to the days when I first joined the Federation and
there was almost, you had almost a seniority to, there was so many people wanted to come to conference that
you had to wait four or five years. I'm hoping that there can be some more competition at branches and regions
for delegates because sometimes now some of the regions have got 18 or 19 places and it's quite common now
that they might just bring 14 or 15, so there's quite a few vacancies come up. I think it will reinvigorate the
Federation and people will still get their travel paid, their hotel paid and your substitution as long as you are a
delegate to the conference and attend the AGM whilst you're at conference.
SHINDER SANDHU (Kent Branch, South East Regional Council): On Page 5, just point 9.3m ‘The Council may
in its reasonable discretion decline to accept any person as a member --'
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NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Sorry, which page?
SHINDER SANDHU (Kent Branch, South East Regional Council): Page 5, 9.3. ‘The Council may in its
reasonable discretion decline to accept any person as a member and need not to provide any reasons.' But I
thought this was an automatic membership for every Mains or Core post office or Local post office.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Can I just say before Julian comes in, anybody who is, any new
operator in October when they're asked to join they are under no obligation to join at all and any individual, so
we'll come on to the question in a minute, any individual, the Co-op or an independent could say ‘Thanks but no
thanks' so they will not be auto enrolled against their wishes.
Similarly, to balance it out, we don't have to offer membership to every single person, and we want virtually
every single person in Britain, I would love them to be in the Federation, there might be one or two exceptions
and I don't have to go further than that, there's probably only one exception if I'm being honest. (laughter) But
we have to have the ability to say 'No.' to someone, we have to, but that will hardly ever be used, we want
people into membership rather than excluding them. You do not have to be forced into the Federation
membership and the Federation does not have to be forced to accept you either.
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): And I'll add a couple of points to that. Firstly, this is a
reasonably standard provision for a company, as George says, any Board of Directors needs the ability to say
no in an appropriate case. As regards to the current members of the association, as I said previously, that won't
apply because the provision in 9.1 applies and reverses the assumption. It says ‘Ail existing members of the
association are entitled to be members.’ So this isn't relating to anyone in this room or any other current
member of the association, this is about future member applications and in the normal course future members
will be admitted. What this does is just give the Council the discretion to recognise an inappropriate application
for membership or, as we discussed earlier, to identify a badly motivated application for membership, for a
whole group of people who want to come and swamp, the sort of thing we were discussing earlier. There's the
thing I was referring to that does give the Executive Committee an ability to anticipate that and to act
appropriately and constitutionally to prevent it.
RAVI JHANGIANI (South West Regional Council): A question for George and Paul please. In the old days
when we had loads and loads of members each region were allowed a certain number of Executive Officers
depending on the membership etc. Now with 11,500 members all of a sudden, one presumes, will each, like for
our region we used to have two Executive Officers, now we only have one. Will we now be allowed two
Executive Officers? And if that is so then your Board will probably increase by more than an additional five
wouldn't it?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Right. Ravi the answer to that is no, the whole thing is
set up so that there will be one elected EO, if you like Director, per region. Going back to the co-option that I
was asked about by my colleague Toby down here this morning just earlier on, it might well be that in certain
areas people have got two but the whole design is it's one per region. We are going to change the way we do
things and I, again, find myself coming back to the field teams and I'm going to start boring you all with this very
soon, so can we get on with that a bit sharpish please George, but you know, it's likely there will be some extra
supports put in there so that the weight doesn't fall all on lan's shoulders down in the South West or all on
Andrew or Jim's shoulders in North Thames & East Anglia, if you see what I mean. But the whole design and
what we're taking on here under these Articles is there is one elected per region, we do have the right to extend
that by co-option but no you won't get an extra EO because you've got that many more members.
Going back to the point about representation at conference, I think your delegations might go up and we might
be able to get more people there. So if George is saying 120, I'd love to see it get back to 150 for a kick off, but
no, it will be just one EO per region who is elected and on from there.
UEL HOUSTON (Northern Ireland Regional Council): Just a wee point of clarification, maybe it's me being silly
here, I don't know. Page 27, regarding the regional councils. ‘A regional council shall consist of members within
the region, each region shall be entitled to one regional council delegate per fifty members of each branch.’
Page 28 then, the second paragraph ‘Each region shall be entitled to send delegates to conference on the basis
of one per forty members.' Is there something different there or am I missing the point?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): No, that's a lift straight out of the rule book as we said
earlier on. The general rule, probably when is started, was that if, for example when I started, well I became the
Branch Secretary of the Doncaster Branch which doesn't exist now it's been merged into the South Yorkshire
Branch along with Sheffield Amalgamated, and that was, one per fifty was the delegation number you were
allowed per branch to go to regional council. The one per forty is, if I'm getting this the right way around, was to
conference. So if you've suddenly got now, I think it sits at about 300-odd actual members as we stand today in
Northern Ireland, but if that goes back to 500 what we're saying here is that same figure would still apply and
your entitlement to conference will increase accordingly as you go up to 500. So I hope that clarifies it and my
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eyesight's not good enough to read it back to myself to make sure I've got that bit right but that's the general
thing. So I think the general effect will be that the ability will exist for more paid delegates or people who have
had their substitution, their travel and their hotel paid for by the Federation to come to conference, will increase,
the trick will be let's get them there so we can get up to 150 people back at conference which would be a grand
state to be in.
MADHU TRIVEDI (Norwich Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Morning colleagues. My
question is on Page 3, number 5 ‘Non-profit distribution to members.’ I remember a few years ago at
Scarborough David Mills was asked for some money, he sang one song, he was thumping the rostrum saying
‘There is no more money.’ Since then we have heard that song from the Post Office, from George over the
years, that it's like getting blood out of a stone. 'There is no money to be paid to the members’ we haven't had a
decent pay rise for years and every year we have been told by the Negotiating Committee that it's like banging
your head against the wall, we can't get any money out of it. As George said, with these project-specific grants
we are likely to get, even four, five, six million pounds in projects and so on, can you please explain why the
members can't financially benefit from those profits you're going to make? Why can't we have a little share
distributed to all the members? That is my question. Thank you very much.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Madhu, can I just say, not for a minute did I say we'll make massive
profits on a four or five or six million pound turnover. We will only get these project-specific grants if we actually
save the Post Office money. So we will maybe make something out of them, it won't be a fortune, if we get a
project that's costing half a million, it might be that we have to spend £450,000 to put that in place, and as Paul
said, that might be 10 field officers. So we might make £50,000 off that but we've already talked about inflation,
the £1.5million is not linked to inflation. So we need to make money from some of these project-specific grants
just to actually survive going forward.
Now for the Post Office, the Post Office is a financial basket case but if we get some of these grants, project-
specific grants, it will be because it saves them money. They will not give us a grant for something that we do
at more cost than they provide at the moment. So for them it should be a win/win, we should put something in
place that helps postmasters run better businesses, that saves them money at the same time. So this will not
cost them money, this in theory should save them money and the very fact that Neil Hayward this morning, the
HR Director is saying ‘I've got an idea which is going to be good for the business.’ Good for the business isn't
losing money, by God they're professional enough at losing money. This is about them saving money, so for us
it should be a win/win.
Let's take pensions. The Post Office still pay most of their staff career average pensions, which probably take a
30% contribution, maybe even 35% contribution. The Federation, if you're under 50 only puts 5%, so
straightaway if we're putting some staff in the field we've got a massive advantage over the Post Office
straightaway because we pay towards a pension far less than they do. So I don't see a conflict of interest.
I will finish on one point and lan Park touched on this yesterday. The reason that we can't get money for pay
deals is quite simple, Post Office Ltd is a financial basket case and if it wasn't for the fact that they're getting
£130million this year as a subsidy then the company would collapse, that's why it's difficult to get pay increases.
When we go to them for pay increases it's always ‘There is no more money’ and that is because literally they
are a bankrupt company without the government pumping £130million in, that's the reality.
MADHU TRIVEDI (Norwich Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): So I accept whatever you
said George but I fail to understand, on Page 2, 3.8 right? If you make any money and if we've got money
there's a provision to lend money and give credit to, so you're going to lend money to people when you've got
extra money, why can't you distribute that to members?
JULIAN BLAKE (Partner, Bates Wells Braithwaite LLP): This is about the non-profit distributing nature of a
members' association, this association is dedicated to the benefit of members as a whole not to, as an ordinary
share company is, the benefit of the shareholders through the distribution mechanism. So it's the usual non-
profit distributing provision, the standard non-profit distributing provision and is reflected by the existing rules of
the association which say 'the funds shall be used to further the objects of the association’ and then to include
some things, ‘and for no other purpose unless specifically authorised by the National Conference.’ So that's
what it says. So that's turned into conventional company formulation by including a perfectly standard non-profit
distributing clause. And the last bit, ‘unless specifically authorised by the National Conference’, is reflected by
the fact that a constitution is amendable by a special resolution. This isn't a charity, it's a members’ benefit
association, a collective member benefits association so in theory it's amendable in exactly the same way as the
provision that is in the existing rules. But I would have thought that everyone would agree, this is a non-profit
distributing association in the sense that it's not there to be providing direct financial payments from surpluses to
members.
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NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Do we have any more questions?
PAUL HAINES (Chairman, Transformation Committee): Thank you National President. Then thank you very
much for the questions this morning, it's been a really, really good debate and it falls to me to move the motion
that should round all of this off I hope:
‘That this Special Conference approves the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) option.’
And, as has been said before, we feel that this is a new journey for the Federation so, as Julian said earlier on,
we could have got away with a 51% majority, we're absolutely not looking for that we're looking for a two-thirds
majority. So, we've had a great debate over one and a half days, which is pretty good, so some of us can head
off home at lunchtime. So it gives me great pleasure on behalf of the Executive Council to move that motion.
Thank you very much.
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Formally seconded.
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: This time, any speakers to the motion? No? I'll call for a vote then please. You do
want to speak to the motion?
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): Can I speak to the
motion?
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Yes, you certainly can.
TOBY CLEGG (Northampton Branch, North Thames & East Anglia Regional Council): At conference 2014 I
stood almost alone in supporting the MOU, my view now, as it was then, is don't tie the optimistic hands of the
future with the negative baggage of the past. When I think about my own life, both personal and business,
there's not a single circumstance that I would make a decision based on lack of information and of course I'm
indirectly referring to the framework agreement along with some other things that have arisen this week.
Now I'm reasonable and decent enough to accept that even if we had the framework agreement in front of us it
would probably not answer all the questions that we have, but there is an underlying principle here. Members
democratically elect the Executive Officers, members democratically elect the General Secretary. The General
Secretary takes his instruction from a democratically elected Executive Council. So therefore you would think
that when George leaves his office to go and negotiate with the Post Office he would carry that mantle of
responsibility with him, to represent the members. Yet we now find that we're now three years down the track of
negotiating with the Post Office and we appear to have just simply rolled over and allowed the Post Office to
dictate this restriction of information upon us and it's now at the very end of the process that we're being asked
to make a decision on the basis of ‘Well if you don't vote yes, then that's it.’
Now I raised this issue at conference last month, so conference 2015, and in a lovely piece of Federational
drama George interjected and said to me along the lines of 'Toby the framework agreement is not available, if
you have a problem with that you'll have to vote no.' So that's it, I'm voting no. Presumably anybody else in this
room who is uncomfortable with the framework agreement situation and the other issues that we have is
probably also going to vote no because George said so.
Now there is a trend starting to happen here of overbearing characteristics of George Thomson. A few weeks
ago he tried to drive coach and horses through the due diligence and good work of the Standing Orders
Committee to force something through on the conference agenda. EOs, both past and present, will readily
acknowledge that sometimes he will dominate proceedings to the exclusion of anybody who chooses to oppose
him. Delegates tell me that they're frightened to speak against him when he raises his Annual Report. Now I
don't believe any of us wish to be members of the Dictatorship of Postmasters, but this whole issue just feels
like the last throw of the dice to salvage something from the debris of the last seven years of disappointment. I
personally love the MOU, I'm in favour, I've spoken about it, I love it, but this is just too scary for me and I'm
going to be voting no. Thank you very much. (applause)
NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Do we have any other speakers? Mr Haines, do you wish the right to reply?
GEORGE THOMSON (General Secretary): Just very briefly conference. This is a democratic organisation, vote
the way you feel, okay? I urge you to support the motion so that we can go on a journey that I think is going to
be a very exciting one for the next 15 years and secure the future of a much-loved NFSP. So please support.
Thank you.
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NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Okay. Could we have the tellers ready please? And can we do the same as
yesterday, can I ask you to raise your hands and leave them there until we ask you to put them down. Could
we please have a vote for those in favour of this motion? And can I have a show for those against please?
Colleagues, we have achieved the two-third majority that we require for this motion. It is carried. Thank you
very much. (applause)
As we have had no other business it is my pleasure to close this conference down, to wish you a speedy and
safe journey home. Thank you for the way you've conducted yourselves. Cheerio.
(END OF SPECIAL CONFERENCE)
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