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Royal Mail

I will give way shortly, but I do not want to be drawn on to Titian now. Let me make a little more progress first, as we must get on to the serious substance of the debate. When Lord Mandelson made his statement on the Hooper report on 16 December, which was repeated by the Minister now present, he could not have been clearer about what the policy would be. He accepted the three main recommendations of the extremely good Hooper report. There were questions on pensions, regulation and, most importantly, part-privatisation. He and the Minister were clear—there was clarity in both Houses—that they were committed to bringing in a partner through a minority stake in the Royal Mail. They made it clear that that would not apply to the post office network, so Post Office Ltd would have to be separated out, as it was Royal Mail that was having private sector capital and a private sector partner introduced. We have reflected on that and waited for the details, but as our motion shows, we are prepared to agree that that needs to be proceeded with with some urgency. I realise that there were some difficulties at the time; not everybody agreed with what the Ministers said then. Indeed, the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs suffered a considerable misfortune, because on the following day, 17 December, his trusted parliamentary aide—his own Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. McGovern)—resigned. He left the Government, saying—I am relying on the BBC online site—"““I do not support what looks to me like partial privatisation of the Royal Mail.””" I do not blame the hon. Gentleman for saying that it looked like partial privatisation of the Royal Mail, because what had been announced was partial privatisation of the Royal Mail. I thought that that was what we were going to debate, but I shall now have to wait and see what we are going to debate.