Following Nicholas Soames’s intervention with the Prime Minister on Wednesday 30th January a meeting has been arranged for Nicholas Soames to discuss the Post Office Closures and make further representations on behalf of the local community to the Minister of State at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, on Monday 18th February.

Mr Soames will be pressing the Minister on the basis on which the decisions were taken bearing in mind the very strong local feeling expressed in over 6,000 responses.

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Notes

Question to the Prime Minister, Wednesday 30th January

Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): The Prime Minister may be aware that the Post Office earmarked four post offices for closure in the Mid-Sussex constituency. It invited a detailed consultation for six weeks, to which there were more than 6,500 replies-all unreservedly in favour of retaining those post offices. On Tuesday, however, the Post Office announced that they are all to be closed. Why does the Prime Minister allow his Government to be party to such a rotten deceit of the public in respect of that consultation?

The Prime Minister: We have made £1.7 billion to help post offices in this country and we will continue to make money available for Post Office services. There is a process of consultation and an appeals system, although I do not know whether it was taken up. I urge the hon. Gentleman to meet the Minister in charge of the Post Office. We are listening to what people say, but the fact of the matter is that many post offices are not used in any great detail. We will continue to put the money in to help the Post Office service.