Parliamentary Polyfilla

Pity the whips. Their tasks are bleak and thankless.

Gordon Prentice told the Public Administration Select Committee this afternoon “I’ll be voting against the Government tonight (on Post Offices) and I don’t give a toss what the whips think”. Will they wince at their own power impotence when they hear this?

My sympathy for this forlorn groups was tempered by own experience last night. At 8.00 I has a having a simple cafeteria meal after which I intended to work in the of fice until the 10.00 votes. A frantic call from a whip said "We are worried that there are not enough Labour speakers on the Budget debate. Well you come into the Chamber and speak?".

It was a sacrifice, but I did. I waited half an hour and I was called. It was chance to make some arguments about Newport and few point other points that, I believe, deserve repetition. I thought my task as the final speaker on the Labour benches was to speak for about 25 minutes. After 15 minutes, which in parliamentary time is the equivalent of clearing your throat, another whip sidled up and put a message on the bench in front of me.

It asked me to wind-up because I had been speaking too long. I am sure the whip had not listened to a word of my impassioned carefully constructed arguments. To him it is all about minutes. It  is about filling the gaps in time before the 10 o’clock. No matter what you say as long as it fits the empty time.

Good to be of service – if only as Parliamentary Polyfilla.

Scent of Revolution

There is revolution in the air on Post Offices.

Most MPs are dispirited because so much political flack has been provoked for such small savings.

The arguments for closure are powerful – umpteen Post Offices used by fewer than 16 people a week and huge and growing subsidies being ladled out for no useful purpose. But this is no longer the perception in many urban areas. In the past the Government has spent vast subsidies keeping rural post offices open and similar sums closing down urban ones. Now the fat has been trimmed away in urban areas, the present cuts are into the bone.

There is dismay in the weak presentation of the Government’s case from the quiet unexciting Minister Pat McFadden. He is gifted, but all his talents are in the back of the shop not in the front window.
Most MPs have heard firsthand the arguments from the dwindling band of elderly constituents who still rely on a neighbourhood post office. Few want to have their hands on the guillotine that ends the service in their areas.

But this is an opposition debate the vote on which will change nothing unless the Government decides to act. There is deeply ingrained party loyalty that prompts MPs to vote against political stunts by their opponents. That accounts for a great reluctance to back political opponents in these debates. The act of walking through the alien territory of political opponents lobby is a queasy one.

Enough may do it tonight to cause a major upset.

Comments

[Chris Gale]

I agree with the government on Post Offices Paul.
This is not the 1950s and time and technology moves on.
I am sorry Gordon Prentice feels the need to side with the likes of Kate Hoey on this, if local communities want to keep Post Offices open then they should set up co-operatives and run them.
The tax payer should not have to subsidise some 1950s fantasy.
Or the so called Countryside Alliance, which carps on about this subject so much, could use some of its millions to fund them, that will be the day!

[rwendland]

I have a very busy sub post-office a few doors away. Two counter staff, and you almost always have to queue, often in a longish queue. It is down for closure!

If this sub post-office is unprofitable, most must be. It's sin seems to be that it is surrounded by three (less busy I think) post offices less than a mile away, and is not on the edge of town, so closing it does not put anyone more than a mile from another post-office. Nevertheless more people have signed its petition than bother to vote in the locality.

This is a political and business stupidity. A lot of people will drive to the neigbouring post-offices - so un-green as well.

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Chris. Bad enough being in a lobby with Tories - not helped by the presence of Kate Hoey. I voted for the Tory motion and the Labour amendment. I'll be blogging on this later today.