BECAUSE of prolonged parliamentary business on Monday, the adjournment debate I had obtained on the post office closure consultations did not start until 11.02pm. At that time of night it was just a one-to-one between me and the Minister for Postal Affairs Pat McFadden.

The title for my debate should have been Meaningless Consultation On Post Office Closures. However, the Table Office, through which all MPs apply for this sort of debate, removed the word ‘Meaningless’.

When the Speaker is less concerned with major matters I intend to ask who gives the Table Office the power to change titles as it has happened to me before when my title Healthcare Rationing was changed to Healthcare Prioritisation – very different!

On this occasion, I made it clear I was going to show the minister the post office consultation was a sham to produce the intended result.

I was especially disappointed with Postwatch. Also, because of the failure of Postwatch to send MPs copies of a crucial letter from them to Post Office Ltd until after the final decision had been made I did not know of the inadequacy of Postwatch’s scrutiny until too late.

The minister accepted the consultation was not perfect but was not prepared to re-open the whole question. He promised to write to me about the efforts of councils elsewhere in the country to re-open certain post office branches for the good of local communities.

Such a disappointing consultation was especially frustrating as we have convinced the Department of Health that consultations on health service changes have to be independently scrutinised since the debacle that led to my election to the House of Commons in 2001.

The Independent Reconfiguration Panel, formed in 2003 to avoid another ‘Kidderminster’, is now involved in all contested reconfigurations and has just issued a report which shows that of its 14 full reviews it only supported the decisions of four, threw out three and only accepted the others with conditions attached, for example, that the replacement services should be up and running before any changes were made.

What would the people of northwest Worcestershire and south Shropshire have given for such a review 10 years ago as probably would all others in the county now it has been shown the hospital in Worcester is not big enough.

I have just met the medical director of Take Care Now, the firm responsible for our GP out-of-hours service. He reported a 47 per cent increase in the work across the county since they took over. They are auditing the service to discover the parts that need improving and they are working from their already extensive experience of providing out-of-hours services in the east of England. My impression is that they are doing well.