---

Royal Mail

I share all the concern about the Post Office—I use it and realise that it is in an important institution—but to say that the Conservatives are the con artists in all this, which is out of order, is ridiculous. Our position could not be one of greater clarity. What is mystifying—what justifies the description that the hon. Gentleman uses—is the complete obscurity of the Government's position, given what they have gone through. It is important that we know where we stand, given where we have come from. I was the Minister with responsibility for the Post Office about 20 years ago—I have done the job that the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, who is sitting opposite me, is doing—and I faced all the same problems of how to ensure that the Royal Mail became a modern service organisation that could have a very strong future and could modernise in line with what was being done in other countries and so on. At that time, I went to the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to try to persuade her that we needed to introduce some private capital and private expertise as part of the programme that we were carrying forward in many of the public services. For reasons of which I am still unaware, I and many others were not able to persuade Margaret Thatcher to proceed with the partial or full privatisation of the Royal Mail. I do not want to go too much into the history, but it was widely publicised that Michael Heseltine and I made efforts to persuade the Major Government to introduce private capital into the Royal Mail—I am afraid to say that I argued to my colleagues that it would not last 10 years if we did not go down that path—but, again, I was unsuccessful. The Conservatives' approach has been consistent and clear. In 1998, when Lord Mandelson was last Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, he put forward some proposals and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who was then speaking on behalf of my party, suggested that private capital should be introduced into the business. We offered to support the Government if they wanted to do that, but they were vehement in their rejections. Lord Mandelson was dismissive of our proposal, saying that it"““should be stamped 'return to sender'””.—[Official Report, 7 December 1998; Vol. 322, c. 26.]" As recently as 2006, the current Secretary of State for Health, who was then Business Secretary, said that he would give an ““absolute, unequivocal commitment”” that a stake in the Royal Mail would not be sold to the private sector. The Conservatives have been clear in their approach, I have certainly been clear and consistent and the Labour party has been pretty clear about things so far. I congratulate Lord Mandelson on his courage and his success. Who would have thought that after all those years the labour movement would be introducing this proposal, with Lord Mandelson, echoed by his Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, commending it in this House. I welcome and support that.