---

Royal Mail

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, especially facing my neighbour—I almost said my hon. Friend—the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), whose contributions I always value and whose judgment I sometimes doubt. I know he was one of the first people to predict the present economic crisis. The difficulty was that he predicted it in 1997, 1998, 2000 and so on, until the present day. He might say that he is a man ahead of his time. Another phrase comes to mind; it seems to me like premature speculation. I do not share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) that the motion moved by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe was to do with wrong-footing the Labour party, although I do think that was part of it. It was quite clever to pick the emotive words—I do not want to get hung up on the point about whether it is privatisation or not, but the reference to ““partial privatisation”” was certainly going to be a red rag to many of my colleagues. That goes without saying. I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman realised that by doing that he was concentrating the debate—or certainly the Labour speeches. In some respects, however, I think there was a simpler reason why the right hon. and learned Gentleman needed to concentrate on that one particular point. Hooper makes it quite clear:"““Our recommendations are a package. Each element of the package is needed if the universal service is to be sustained: modernisation achieved through partnership, tackling the pension deficit, and changing the regulatory regime.””" I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman can agree with the rest of those recommendations. He can say he welcomes them, but they are not contained in the motion. Why does the motion not say that we will back Hooper on all his recommendations? When we take a long cautious look at the legislation, rather than a rapid look, and when we decide what we are going to do, I suspect that in Committee and at other stages, there will be a fair amount of opposition from those on the Tory Benches to the regulatory regime that we propose. History suggests that that will be the case. I suspect it is also the case that we will not get any guarantees on the pension deficit either. I may be wrong, but when we are talking about an Opposition who are committed to cuts in public services across the board in every area, including in this Department, why would Royal Mail pensions be left out? Why would the Opposition decide, ““Oh yes, we'll find the £7 billion, £8 billion or £9 billion for that while we're cutting the other services””? That just does not ring true to me. It does not chime with what we have heard in the past. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's predecessor as shadow Business Secretary would not even give a guarantee about the Post Office. I know that the Post Office is not part of today's debate, but the Government have made a £1.7 billion commitment to keep the post office network. When asked about that, the previous shadow Business Secretary, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), would not give a guarantee—I have the quotes.