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Farepak fiasco needs probe - for The Inverness Courier
THE scandalous collapse of Farepak is blighting the lives of many hard-pressed Highland families at the cruellest time of year - in the run up to Christmas.
Farepak offered its agents and their customers "the best Christmas ever" by providing a way in which families could save for Christmas and then providing its clients with shop vouchers for presents or festive hampers.
On Monday last week, the company announced that it was insolvent and was going into administration. No one who has spent the year paying in will get their hamper or vouchers, and the present information from the financial specialists brought in to sort out the mess is that people affected are unlikely to receive their money back.
The victims are mainly people who work hard for a living, many on low incomes, and who saw the Farepak scheme - described by the company as "safe and reliable" - as a good way of building up funds for a family Christmas.
The most urgent priority is to see if anything can be done for the victims in the run-up to Christmas. The trade and industry minister Ian McCartney promised in the House of Commons last week that he would meet the Office of Fair Trading and the British Retail Consortium, who represent many of the shops whose vouchers Farepak provided, to discuss what can be done.
The collapse of Farepak needs to be fully investigated. How is it that a company like this could wait until it has had money in from customers through 10 months of the year before announcing that it could not pay anything out?
There were warning signs from the firm earlier this year but no action was taken to warn customers or to close the business down at that time. The directors need to be held responsible for their actions, in court if there is evidence of illegal activities.
Once the dreadful consequences for families have been addressed, Parliament needs to act to make sure that this can never happen again.
Post Offices
Last week the future of the Post Office network finally received the national attention that it deserved after 1000 postmasters from across the UK converged on Westminster to present their petition to save the Post Office card account and fight for future investment in the Post Office network.
Earlier in the week the Liberal Democrats called a debate in the House of Commons to force Ministers to explain their plans, rather than continuing to undermine Post Offices by stealth. The disappearance of the post office network and the closure of thousands of post offices is not inevitable. It is a choice being made by ministers, and they should not be allowed to evade their responsibility. After the events of last week, I am not convinced that the Labour government understands or cares about the future of Post Offices.
But they certainly know that there are millions of people who do care, and who will fight any closure plans.
Posted on: 24/10/2006
