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Post Office Limited
Post Office Customer Support Centre
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
Kelly Tolhurst MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H OET
4 June 2019
Dear Minister,
Following our meeting on 15 May and my attendance at the Select Committee, I wanted to write to
you on a few points.
Firstly, thank you for your clear and forthright support. We appreciate it hugely.
There are a number of narratives overlapping and raising the profile of Post Office: the litigation;
Postmaster pay; franchising DMBs; all coming together in the Daily Mail campaign and the Select
Committee.
Litigation
1 won’t comment on the litigation here as Tim has just replied to your letter and we will meet
shortly. Overall, I appreciate your anxiety and share it — the litigation is damaging.
Postmaster pay
As I said when we met, our financial position will continue to improve and next year we are
forecasting profits that will enable us to increase Postmaster pay. We have already announced a
£17m pay rise on banking deposits and we will do more.
I have announced a review of Postmaster pay to report back in the Autumn following the completion
of the banking framework negotiations at the end of June. The review should enable us to ensure
that commitments are deliverable, that we recognise the needs of the very different groups of
Postmasters and we don’t generate significant, new problems for the future.
However, as I have said to the Board and our Retail team, we may not be able to wait that long and
we will work on an announcement, higher risk, that we could make in July.
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Directly Managed Branches
You discussed the approach to franchising DMBs with the team recently and my understanding is
that you remain supportive of the need to undertake this activity and the approach.
I was struck at Select Committee, nonetheless, by the fact that a lot of the members nodded at the
suggestion that our consultation is a sham. We are clear that we are not consulting on closure itself
so I can defend the process at a factual level but our position is seen as disingenuous. I have
therefore asked the team to re-design the communication and interactions, being much more
explicit and visual about what we are delivering. We will obviously share this with your team to get
the benefit of their input.
I am minded to flag to the Select Committee that we are undertaking this review. However, you may
prefer to require it of us, a point you could make when presenting your own evidence? Perhaps you
could let me know.
Select Committee and the Daily Mail campaign
I appreciate very much your assistance with defending and explaining on our behalf at both Select
Committee and with the Daily Mail.
There are points that I have raised with you, which, if announced, would underpin your status as a
champion of Post Offices and which might help the campaigners recognise that we are in safe hands.
Specifically, I would recommend:
- anextension of Network subsidy to, say, 2024. I quite understand that you wouldn’t commit
to out of cycle spending. At the same time, the principle that Government remains
committed to ensuring that unprofitable Post Offices remain open seems to be accepted.
General support for the principle - without numbers - would reassure Postmasters and
campaigners.
- anannouncement from DWP, with your help, that the future of POCA will be decided with
the impact on customers and Postmasters in mind. My meeting with the Secretary of State
was cancelled and we have not yet had a reply to my letter. I do think this is likely to
become a focus of future campaigning by Postmasters across the country if we don’t
demonstrate a joined-up way forward.
- — stating publicly that you do want to see Post Office as the front office of Government.
Mitigating the HMRC decision on foreign currency charges, which I know-you had concerns
about and running a tender that, if won, would give us the right to commercialise a much
needed future digital identity provision would help.
Post Office Limited is registered in England and Wales. Registered No. 2154540
Registered Office Finsbury Dials, 20 Finsbury Street, London, EC2¥ 9AQ. PostOffice.co.uk
Post Office and the Post Office logo are registered trade marks of Post Office Limited
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The truth is that the actions of individual departments consistently take work away from the most
vulnerable Post Offices, guaranteeing more subsidy for longer. As discussed, this can hit particular
Post Offices or regions, with a significant number of Post Offices vulnerable to the removal of POCA,
especially in Northern Ireland. This position where Government supports financially but not
commercially is, I think, hard to explain publicly.
Future financial settlement
These and other issues, the litigation, Postmaster pay, network subsidy, Government revenue and
dividends will all impact our future financial position, taking us beyond our current funding which
ceases in March 2021.
While I appreciate Government timetables for this work are uncertain, we are working on our future
financial position, which we will be debating at our Board meeting at the end of July. As you would
expect we will fully engage Tom and UKGI in this process.
How can we support you better?
I was very struck by your comments that at times you have been under-communicated with and I
have met with Tom and Carl to see how we can support you better. Obviously, from our point of
view we share very widely and quickly through UKGI and directly between our communications
teams.
I appreciate that there is a standard approach to briefing Ministers and I don’t want to make that
more difficult. However, if it would help you, I would be quite open to brief directly, perhaps by text,
just to give you an immediate heads up on events? Or to communicate directly with one person in
your team most likely to be briefing you urgently? You will of course know what works best for you
and let me know. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me at any time o}
With best wishes,
Al Cameron
Interim Chief Executive
Post Office Limited is registered in England and Wales. Registered No. 2154540
Registered Office Finsbury Dials, 20 Finsbury Street, London, EC2Y 9AQ PostOffice.co.uk
Post Office and the Post Office logo are registered trade marks of Post Office Limited