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Royal Mail

I wish to repeat a statement made a little earlier by my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform about the Royal Mail. The Government are firmly committed to a universal postal service—that is, the ability of the 28 million homes and businesses across the country to receive mail six days a week with the promise that one price goes everywhere. The universal service helps to bind us together as a country. As well as having social importance, it is the means by which many companies build and operate their businesses. However, it does not come free. Last December, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), the then Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, invited Richard Hooper to lead a full independent review of the postal services market. Its purpose was to look ahead to the future and recommend the steps needed to sustain the universal service in a world where technology, consumer behaviour and the communications market are all rapidly changing. The review did not cover the post office network. We have now received Richard Hooper's final report. It is a serious, wide-ranging study and makes sober reading. We are publishing it this afternoon, and I am grateful to Richard Hooper, Dame Deidre Hutton and Ian Smith for their work on it. Let me set out Hooper's analysis of the challenges facing the Royal Mail. First, there has been a revolution in communications technology in the past decade as consumers have turned to e-mail, the internet and text messages. In this country, 60 billion text messages were sent last year, and we now send 5 million fewer letters per day than two years ago. Hooper is absolutely clear that the main challenge to the Royal Mail comes from the impact of changes in technology and consumer choices. His estimate is that last year the shift from mail to those new technologies cost the company £500 million in lost profits—that is five times the impact of business lost to other postal companies in our liberalised market. The message is therefore clear: making those other companies go away is not the answer to make the Royal Mail succeed. Royal Mail's success matters because it is the only company capable of delivering mail to every address in the UK, six days a week. As Hooper makes clear, that will be the case for the foreseeable future, so a healthy Royal Mail is vital to sustaining the universal service. The second challenge that Hooper describes is that of efficiency. Hooper reports that Royal Mail is less automated and less efficient than its western European counterparts. In modern European postal companies, 85 per cent. of mail is put in walk order by machine for delivery to the individual home or business. By contrast, in British local delivery offices, that is still done entirely by hand. The Royal Mail urgently needs to catch up and modernise. The third challenge is the pension fund. Hooper warns that Royal Mail has a large, growing and volatile pension fund deficit. That is near impossible for the business to manage, and it is a huge demand on its revenues. Each year, on top of its regular £500 million contribution to the pension fund, the company is having to find an extra top-up of £280 million to plug the deficit. These payments look set to rise substantially when the fund is re-valued next year. Fourthly, Hooper says that labour relations in the company need to improve. We know that levels of trust and co-operation are low and that industrial action takes place too often, and a fresh start in industrial relations is badly needed. Fifthly, there is regulation. Hooper reports a lack of trust in the relationship between the company and the regulator. There are disagreements about even basic information and those tensions divert energy from the chief challenge of modernising the business. Overall, Hooper's conclusions are crystal clear: the status quo is untenable, the universal service is under threat, and we face the choice of either downgrading the universal service as we manage decline, or acting now to turn things around and secure Royal Mail's future. At the heart of the Hooper report are three linked recommendations. First, Hooper recognises that the pension fund deficit represents a significant challenge for the company. The report recommends that as part of a package of changes, the Government should take over responsibility for substantially reducing the pension deficit. I stress that Hooper says that that would be justified only as part of a coherent package to secure Royal Mail's long-term viability. Secondly—and closely related to that—to improve its performance, Royal Mail should forge a strategic minority partnership with a postal operator with a proven record in transforming its business, working closely with the work force. Hooper believes that that would give Royal Mail the confidence, the experience and the capital to make the changes needed to improve performance and to face the future—in other words, save the Royal Mail by investing in its future. Finally, on regulation, Hooper proposes that Ofcom should take over responsibility from Postcomm for regulating the postal market. Its primary responsibility would be to maintain the universal service in the wider context of other changes taking place in the communication markets. My Department will study the report in detail and we intend to respond with a full statement of policy in the early part of next year. With backing from the Government, Royal Mail has been improving performance in recent years, but progress has been too slow, and Hooper makes it clear that, in the face of the challenges confronting the company, transformation must be faster and more far reaching. The Government agree with Hooper's analysis and recommendations. As he does, we reject cutting back the universal service; indeed, we share his ambition for a strong universal service and a strong Royal Mail. We intend to take forward the recommendations as a coherent package of measures. We will fulfil our manifesto commitment to"““a publicly owned Royal Mail fully restored to good health, providing customers with an excellent service and its employees with rewarding employment””." Bringing in a partner through a minority stake in Royal Mail's postal business will help us to deliver that goal. It will bring Royal Mail fresh investment and new opportunities to grow in Europe, and enable it to offer new services. It will provide a fresh new impetus to modernising the Royal Mail and to securing the universal service. We and the Royal Mail have already received one expression of interest from the Dutch postal company, TNT, to build such a partnership. I very much welcome that approach from an experienced postal company, just as I will welcome other expressions of interest from credible partners should they come forward. My Department will pursue that in the coming weeks. Finally, I should comment on the Post Office, which was not part of the review's terms of reference. The network of local post offices combines a unique set of commercial, public and social roles. In recognition of that, a partnership would not include the post office network. However, a healthier Royal Mail letters business will be good for the Post Office, and today's announcement will help underpin our existing commitment to the post office network. We are providing £1.7 billion until 2011 to support a network of around 11,500 branches. We will continue to support the non-commercial network beyond that time. The House will recall the recent announcement that the Post Office card account will stay with the Post Office. We will now build on that decision, to ensure a stable and sustainable network for the future. We are determined to have a post office network offering a broad range of services throughout the country, supporting both social and financial inclusion. I am delighted that the Select Committee on Business and Enterprise has agreed to undertake an inquiry into what further services the Post Office could offer. I believe that Royal Mail and the postal market can thrive in the future, provided that decisive action is taken now. Without far-reaching change, the opportunities brought about by technology will become overwhelming threats. That need not be the case. I believe that there are benefits for everybody in the package of measures that we intend to take forward. It will protect the universal service for consumers and give Royal Mail new opportunities to modernise and develop; it offers Royal Mail's staff a future in a modern, efficient postal operator, with more secure pension arrangements; and it offers the whole country a Royal Mail that we can be proud of. I commend this statement to the House.