KILWINNING POST OFFICE – AND SO MANY OTHERS - LET DOWN BY SUCCESSIVE UK GOVERNMENTS

For many, Post Offices remain an important source of day-to-day interaction, which provide access to essential services to communities, including universal access to mail, parcels, benefits, bill payment and banking services. The loss of Kilwinning post office has been a real blow to the local community and I continue to engage with Post Office Ltd to secure a replacement service.

Unfortunately, postmasters have been let down by successive Westminster Governments.

The previous Labour Government stripped post offices of the services it could provide and the current Tory Government is simply not willing to provide essential ongoing energy support to post offices which means that postmasters – already struggling to make a living, are being pushed further to the brink.

On top of all that, we have banks, which have withdrawn from our towns, relying on postmasters to deliver the services they will not, and not properly paying postmasters to do so.

I urged the Leader of the House to offer further support to our postmasters to help retain our much-needed community post offices.