Christmas Adjournment

Speech delivered on Tue 21st Dec 2004

Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD): I wish to raise three issues that are currently causing a good deal of concern among many of my constituents.

The first issue dates back to 14 November, although the history goes back somewhat further. It arises from the Lyons review that considered where Government offices should be located. Its direct impact on my constituency began on 14 November with a visit from the chief executive of the Benefits Agency to the disability benefits centre there. He notified the staff of the intention to close the centre in Sutton during 2005 and to relocate its work and, if they so wished, its staff to Blackpool. In all, the decision will affect approximately 350 staff, many of whom are my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake).

The disability benefits centre covers most of the south-east of England—most of south London, and counties such Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and also the Isle of Wight. The services for which it is responsible are not only the processing of benefit applications and the bureaucratic processes involved in administering payments—it also provides outreach and home visiting services. How on earth will those services be provided from Blackpool? One of the concerns of many of my constituents who work in the centre is that the change in service delivery will result in a reduction in the quality of service that many disabled people receive. That message was put to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington when we met about 70 staff at a meeting in their canteen last Friday. They put forcefully their concerns about the reduction in service and their understandable anxieties about their own futures.

The meeting led me and my hon. Friend to table early-day motion 438, which is on the Order Paper today. The staff feel that the selection of the Sutton disability benefits centre has been arbitrary. Where is the business case that justifies the closure? Where is the rationale behind the decision? I am led to believe that the centre is among the best performers on the performance measurements that the Department uses. So how will delivery of the service be maintained or, indeed, improved?

For the 350 staff affected by the decision, especially part-time and low-grade staff, there is the added uncertainty about finding another job in the civil service in the Greater London area when the Government are looking to export more jobs out of the area. There appears to be a lack of co-ordination between Departments about how the downsizing in London is to be worked through.

I was told that there was a possibility of finding jobs in Croydon, which is very near to my constituency—for example, at the Home Office. On further inquiry, it turns out that the Home Office is also shedding jobs, and doing so in Croydon. So people are competing for the finite number of jobs that are opening up in London. In my part of London about 830 people from Jobcentre Plus schemes, the disability benefits centre and so on are looking for redeployment opportunities.

The Lyons report is the driver behind all this, but no evidence has been presented to staff or Members of Parliament to justify the proposal to close the centre. I hope that before the 90-day consultation is concluded, the Department for Work and Pensions will publish the business case so that we can see whether what is proposed stacks up. We can then discharge our responsibility as Members of Parliament to scrutinise the Government, hold them to account and ensure that they deliver value to the taxpayer and a better service for disabled people.

I also have concerns about the continuing programme of post office closures affecting not only my constituency but those of many hon. Members. Just yesterday, I received a letter from the Post Office Ltd. confirming the intention that it had announced earlier this year to close post offices in Cheam and Belmont in my constituency. That is bad news for my constituency and for the villages of Cheam and Belmont. It is bad news that results from a bad decision-making process. The process is fundamentally flawed.

The Post Office's so-called network reinvention programme is a euphemism for closures. It poses as a strategic assessment of the need for comprehensive postal services in a particular community. However, when we look more closely at what the Government and the Post Office are doing, it is clear that they are taking the path of least resistance. They call for volunteers at the beginning of the process and they dangle a juicy carrot to encourage those volunteers to come forward. As much as £60,000 is on offer to postmasters to give up their licences or franchises and go out of business. The process is driven by postmaster preference and, of course, once postmasters have volunteered to be part of the consultation exercise they have to sign a contract to say that if Post Office Ltd. decides to proceed with closure—despite what might be overwhelming evidence against closure—they will close. Postmasters have no choice at that stage in the process.

In September, when the Post Office began the consultation in my constituency on its area plan, we had 13 sub-post offices. The Post Office proposed to close six of them. The consultation closed on 20 October and it took the Post Office just two weeks to come to the view that it would be okay to go ahead with the closure of three of those post offices—Angel Hill, Church Hill road and Oldfields road—thus punching a hole in the local suburban network in my constituency. Those closures will make it more difficult for the elderly, the disabled and many local businesses to gain access to postal services. The consideration of the representations—submitted by Postwatch, the council and many others—was clearly limited and it fuels the impression among my constituents that the whole process was a sham. It is not genuine consultation and will not result in the overturning of any decisions. They have already been made.

Why should my constituents bother getting involved in campaigns to try to persuade the Post Office? Thousands signed petitions and hundreds wrote letters, but the news this week has come as a further blow to the traders and residents in Belmont and Cheam villages. Services will be withdrawn and it will be more difficult to gain access to pensions, benefits and all the other services post offices provide. I raise the issue because of my constituents' frustration. They thought that they had embarked on a genuine process of dialogue and consultation with the Post Office, but the reality has become clear as they learn, days before Christmas, that by the end of January most of their postal services will be gone.

My final point is also about consultation, and again I fear that it is a sham. It concerns the provision of sheltered housing in my constituency, especially that provided by Croydon Churches housing association through the schemes Distin court, Grace court, Hepworth court and Knight house. Last year, the housing association embarked on a best value review of its sheltered housing schemes. It found, not surprisingly, an overwhelming desire among tenants to retain resident wardens in their schemes. Tenants felt that resident wardens provided peace of mind, security and comfort. However, events have moved on and an employment tribunal in the London borough of Harrow concluded that, in a scheme provided by that local authority, the period of time during which a resident warden was required to remain on site on call was working time for the purposes of the working time regulations.

The Harrow judgment has been used as a pretext for withdrawing resident wardens and introducing non-resident wardens. The legal position is not clear and the interpretation of the working time directive by other employment tribunals has led to completely different answers. However, Croydon Churches housing association has prayed in aid that particular, non-binding decision by an employment tribunal to railroad residents into believing that they should accept a lesser service, despite the fact that two or three years ago they were promised that the service would be maintained as it is today. I ask the Minister for his assistance in seeking support from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in finding ways to ensure that housing associations embark on a serious dialogue with their tenants. We must, of course, comply with the working time directive, but it should not be used as an excuse to reduce the quality of service and the peace of mind that a resident warden service provides.

I end with this point. There is concern that the service to be introduced from April 2005 will result in people receiving a warden service for fewer than 15 hours a week. Under the concessionary television licence scheme, those people pay only £5 for a licence because they have resident wardens. As they will lose their resident warden, they may lose their TV licence concession, so not only will they lose the quality of life benefits and the peace of mind provided by the service, they will also end up paying more.

I ask the Deputy Leader of the House for assistance in pursuing that matter with Croydon Churches housing association, to persuade it to reopen consultations and to have a serious dialogue with the tenants to find a way through that enables them to retain residential wardens for the quality of service that that gives them.