Post offices: Mail angst

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The government's plans sound rather agreeable, so what's not to like? Quite a lot, actually

The government yesterday spelled out its plans for the post office network. And, to be fair, the commitments laid down in the document, Securing the post office network in the digital age, sound rather agreeable. On the first page is this promise: "There will be no programme of post office closures." Then there is the scheme to give the Post Office a greater role in delivering government services, to make it "a front office for government". There is even some talk about linking up the post office network with credit unions. It is quite a list, and one that prompts a question: what's not to like?

Well, quite a lot actually. Take for a start that headline claim about post office closures: note that it merely promises there will not be a "programme" of shutting branches. There may still be closures – the coalition does not rule those out; all it offers is that they will not form part of a co-ordinated strategy. Some commitment.

Then there's that front office for the government thing. A lovely idea – and how refreshing to hear ministers say that there might be scope for building up the role of post offices, rather than just running them down and giving away their functions to supermarkets and the like. This was an area that the Labour government knew it had to address, and yet never did. As the minister for the post office, Ed Davey has taken the right rhetorical step.

Unfortunately, it is just rhetoric. The government is talking about post office staff printing out forms from the internet, which is hardly the sort of shop window for public services that the biggest retail network in the country (for that is what the post office network effectively is) could provide. More to the point, though, is that all this lovely talk about the "social purpose" of the post office sits directly at odds with reports that a £70m contract to handle welfare payments will be handed over to a private company. The post office network may have an exceptional 40-year record in giro payments and all the rest, but even so this government appears to want that operation privatised. It should also be noted that LibDem MP Mr Davey has dropped his party's election commitment to set up a PostBank.

What yesterday's supposed blueprint for the future really amounts to is some nice words not joined up by any bigger vision of what the Post Office should be – and effectively contradicted by the government's own actions. The document was released on the morning when MPs took evidence on the coalition's postal services bill, which carries on plans to privatise Royal Mail, and to separate it from the post office network. Royal Mail accounts for a third of the post office's direct income; so what happens to it matters far more than any fancy document.