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Royal Mail

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from ““House”” to the end of the Question and add:"““notes the threats to the future of the Royal Mail and welcomes the conclusion of the Hooper Report that, as part of a plan to place the Royal Mail on a sustainable path for the future, the current six days a week universal service obligation (USO) must be protected, that the primary duty of a new regulator should be to maintain the USO, and that the Government should address the growing pensions deficit; notes that modernisation in the Royal Mail is essential and that investment must be found for it; endorses the call for a new relationship between management and postal unions; urges engagement with relevant stakeholders to secure the Government's commitment to a thriving and prosperous Royal Mail, secure in public ownership, that is able to compete and lead internationally and that preserves the universal postal service; further notes the Conservatives' failure to invest in Royal Mail when they were in power in contrast with Labour's support for both Royal Mail and the Post Office; and notes that legislation on these issues will be subject to normal parliamentary procedures.””" We welcome the opportunity to debate the future of Royal Mail. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) for his introduction to the debate. I confess that my research on his past career must have been less than complete. I had not realised that he had held the post of Minister with responsibility for postal affairs some years ago, so let me begin my thanking him warmly for the legacy that he bequeathed to us. His experience will have given him a familiarity with the issues. The difference between the time when he had responsibility for these matters and now is the technological revolution, which lies at the heart of many of the difficulties that the company faces. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is an experienced and very canny politician, but I do not think the motion tabled by his party is the most canny thing that he has done. If he is serious when he says that there is nothing in the Government amendment that he or his colleagues could disagree with, I warmly welcome him to join us in the Lobby tonight to vote for the Government amendment. For its 300-year history, Royal Mail has been able to rely with a considerable degree of certainty on mail volumes rising and falling in line with the country's gross domestic product. That was the case for many years, but in recent years that pattern has been overtaken by the technological revolution and the choices that citizens make every day about how they communicate with one another and how they do business: an e-mail sent is a letter not sent; a bill paid by direct debit is a letter not sent; family pictures posted on a photo-sharing website such as Flickr are pictures not sent through the post. All this has become clear and all of it has become worldwide.