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Royal Mail

No, I am afraid that I do not have time to give way any more. The report says that the Government should address the pensions deficit—and so they should. We are talking about £22 billion of assets and £29 billion of liabilities. The company as a company, and the business as a business, is balance-sheet insolvent, as Hooper rightly says. It will probably be quite impossible to get a private sector partner to take an equity stake, when the company has that around its neck. There are options, and the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs should by now be able to tell us what options will be pursued to deal with the problem. The real fear, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) has previously expressed, is that the Treasury—or perhaps the Cabinet as a whole, having been induced to agree to the remarkable new policy—has taken the view that the simple solution is to have a look at the £22 billion of assets. It is very useful to have £22 billion of assets, which the Government can take care of by taking them into their coffers. The £29 billion of liabilities will therefore be added to that great stock of unfunded public sector pension liabilities that the future taxpayer already faces. Who knows what will be done to those liabilities? That option would be irresponsible and very short term. Alternatives are difficult. We faced those difficulties in the past with British Telecom and others. Given what is happening at the moment, more public money being spent in vast sums is unlikely, but there may be statutory guarantees in case the new entity goes bankrupt; British Telecom was placed on that footing when it was privatised. That idea is canvassed in the report, and it could be considered carefully by the Government. We need, and have today provided the opportunity for, the Government to address the pensions problem, now that two months have passed. We need them to tell us how they will face that problem, which, so long as it lasts, puts job security and service improvements in the Royal Mail in tremendous doubt. It is a tremendous threat to today's taxpayers, future taxpayers or both. How do the Government propose to address what Royal Mail has piled up on its desk? I conclude by going back to the main question, although I did not think that it would be the main question. Of course, I dwelt on this point when I started my remarks, but there is a most remarkable outcome of the amendment that appeared on the Order Paper this morning. Instead of having a comparatively low-key debate, as I thought we would, in which we would ask questions and Ministers would give details and some indication of when the legislation would come forward and what form it would take, we find that we are trying to ask what on earth the policy is at all. [Interruption.] Well, a note of indignation comes into my voice. The Government are merely proposing that the House vote for the suggestion that the Government should address the pensions problem. Of course the Government should address the pensions problem; we have been saying that for two months. Exactly how do they propose to address it? The Government amendment"““notes that modernisation in the Royal Mail is essential and that investment must be found for it””." That does not sound as clear as Lord Mandelson was two months ago. I have never seen a more ridiculous statement of the obvious put on the Order Paper, but if the Government are inviting us to agree with the suggestion that investment must be found for the modernisation of Royal Mail, I suggest that they tell us what their proposals are for finding it, if they are abandoning the proposals that they had two months ago, when they had a private sector partner. The motion dregs everything up, including an attempt to compare the Government's investment record with the investment record of the Conservative Government some time ago; it is all our fault, apparently. That was more than 12 years ago. The motion is obviously written by a committee. It is obviously written with parliamentary process in mind. Indeed, the amendment winds up with the ringing reassurance that"““legislation on these issues will be subject to normal parliamentary procedures.””" I do not know which Labour rebel needed to be reassured that the Government would at least allow Parliament a debate—a short, cursory one, no doubt—touching on the subject, or why a motion had to be passed to indicate that normal parliamentary procedures would be used to scrutinise the measures. I can only say that this is an important debate, Royal Mail is an important service, the service is in crisis, and the Government have produced a report that says that the universal service obligation may well not survive unless they address it now. It is a serious motion. The Government had a clear policy that we would support if they went back to it. I hope the Minister will say that he will cling to it. I hope he does not obscure all questions, going through an elaborately orchestrated regime where he tries to reassure rebels on the Labour Benches that the Government are not going to do anything at all. That would not be in the national interest. In the light of the Government amendment, the future of Royal Mail is a more urgent and worrying question than it was even yesterday when we tabled the motion.