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Royal Mail

I have indeed discussed the potential for putting contracts into post offices with my own local authority, the Highland council. It pointed out that it had very good service centres, but that some areas were not covered by them. There is certainly room to look further into that, so the hon. Gentleman has raised a good point. Let me deal now with the Royal Mail. It seems to me that allowing an entity somewhere simply to take a minority stake to become a business partner combines pretty much the worst elements of all worlds. If it is simply a matter of gaining access to capital and nothing else, there is a range of alternative mechanisms for accessing private capital—non-voting equity, bonds, preference stock, which the Government love at the moment, loan stock and so forth. There is also the possibility of creating a 50:50 joint venture—in other words, doing nothing about Royal Mail itself, but creating a 50:50 joint venture with both sides placing into it what they want. There are many ways of dealing with the problem, but one of my worries about taking a minority stake is how it can be valued, particularly at this time in today's markets. How do we decide how much it is worth? How much equity is sold for what price? If the stake is to be 10, 25, 35 or 49 per cent.—there is quite a difference between those numbers—we should bear in mind that a single minority shareholder will not go sticking his money into a company unless he has what is known as a shareholder's agreement, which sets out the terms that apply, making it clear whether and when the public side—the Government—can or cannot do certain things. With all those points unresolved and undiscussed, the claim that the Government's proposals offer secure public ownership seems to me to be ever so slightly disingenuous.