25th Mar 2008

Post Offices betrayed by our MP

Green candidate Andy Chase condemns City of York MP Hugh Bayley's vote to close Post Offices.

After campaigning to save threatened post office branches in his own constituency from closure, Hugh Bayley MP helped to vote down an opposition motion in the House of Commons that would have suspended the governement's programme of axing post offices.

This contrasts with the principled stance taken by Selby Labour MP John Grogan, who was amongst the 19 rebel Labour MPs that voted to stop the cuts.

York Greens wrote in to the Post Office's consultation to oppose the closure of all three threatened branches in the constituency. They were also among the many people who worked hard to collect signatures on the door, and handed in a petition of over 150 names at Hugh Bayley's office, collected by Green party activists who went door-to-door.

Andy Chase, the Green parliamentary candidate for York Central, commented, "just who on earth did Hugh Bayley think he was representing? This is a kick in the teeth for those local people who worked their socks off to oppose the branch closures. If just 11 Labour MPs had changed sides, the cuts could have been stopped in their tracks."

Hugh Bayley also claimed that the opposition motion would have resulted in less government money and "more offices facing the axe." In fact, the motion simply calls for a moratorium on closures whilst other sensible options are investigated; it neither says nor implies that the existing government subsidy of £150m a year should be cut.