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(o) Post Office Limited
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
Kelly Tolhurst MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H OET
28 June 2019
Dear Kelly,
Thank you so much for your very kind letter of 19".
Congratulations on your performance at the Select Committee. I think your care
for Post Offices shines through and I now feel conflicted about the reshuffle that
may follow a change of Prime Minister: you deserve a promotion but I hope you
retain Post Office in your remit. I hugely appreciate your support and challenge
and look forward to your attendance at the Board if you can make it.
Thank you for the time on Monday on the GLO. I know that some of our former
General Counsel's focus on the legal niceties made it feel last year as though we
were not sharing information. You have my personal assurance that we will share
whatever you want and need. I can confirm that I am very happy to have both
Tom and Richard, or whoever your nominee is, on the Board sub-committee and
that we would be happy to meet with Nigel Boardman as diaries allow.
On POCA, I have received the attached letter from Guy Opperman. It doesn’t
provide any direct comfort over our concerns although our sense behind the
scenes is that they are more open to working with us. We will of course continue
to develop and advocate solutions that can be positive for customers,
Postmasters, ourselves and the Government. In the meantime, nonetheless, I
think it quite possible that this will develop into a campaigning issue for
Postmasters. I will respond more broadly to the letter shortly.
On Identity I am reviewing a letter to John Manzoni which I will share in draft
with Tom and Carl.
We are working on both the Postmaster pay review and the review of the
communication of the franchise process, as discussed and will revert to you
before we finalise either.
Finally, we have some embargoed news on trading that I would appreciate you
keeping confidential. Firstly, we have won the British Gas contract for bill
payments exclusively for 5 years which will be very welcome for Postmasters and
which will make our network even more attractive to retailers. As soon as we can
talk about it in public we will let you know.
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
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Secondly, and again confidentially, the last of the 28 banks, Barclays, has agreed
to sign up to Banking Framework 2 but, uniquely, to remove the ‘cash
withdrawal’ service from their customers through Post Offices. This news
confirms that we will make substantially more money in the next couple of years,
supporting our Postmaster pay ambitions and our commercial sustainability. We
are also considering how Barclays’ customers’ inability to withdraw cash from
Post Offices should best be communicated to those customers to see if Barclays
can be persuaded to change its mind. I will obviously share this thinking with you
and see if you would like to contribute to the debate.
Yours sincerely,
Al Cameron
Interim Chief Executive