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Royal Mail

I suspect that that will not be the case. Just this week, the Mayor of London, who used to be the hon. Member for Henley, was pronouncing about public sector pensions and how it was not our job to protect them. I understand the argument that the Tory party would make. It would ask why public sector pensions should be protected when people with private pensions, who are going broke, are not, and then there are the people who have no pensions. Taxpayers have to pay for that public sector protection. Given that people who have put their money into housing have lost 15 per cent. and that pension funds are losing about 35 per cent., the argument that the Government should not intervene to find the money for the pensions is powerful. However, there is a powerful argument the other way, and I am not just talking about the fact that many of the people involved got the pension rights by accepting fairly low-paid public service jobs, although that is one point. In this case, another argument can also be made. The package is not just to protect thousands of peoples' pensions; it will modernise Royal Mail, set up a new regulatory regime and guarantee the universal service obligation. The package will also raise private sector money. I might be at odds with my colleagues on this, but I have no problem with that, although I am not sure how much should be raised in that way or whether another mechanism could be used. Hooper was fairly specific on the issue; it is not only about the money that a private sector partner would involve. He says:"““We recommend a strategic partnership between Royal Mail and one or more private sector companies with demonstrable experience of transforming a major business, ideally a major network business.””" In talking about her experience with TNT and Deutsche Post, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) made it clear that those companies have experience of making a company modernise and become more efficient. Many of my comrades have sentimental views about Royal Mail and the Post Office and those views are shared by many across the country. My comrades want to protect the services, and I think that Hooper does as well—but he wants to do so by doing what is necessary to protect them. The Hooper review is called ““Modernise or decline””. He is right about one thing: doing nothing, and taking the usual Tory line, is not an option. We need to be very proactive. There is a problem with everyone wanting to cherry-pick from the report. The report holds together well, although—I will be honest—there are bits of it that I do not understand: I could not quite understand what the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) was saying about it. However, the details can be worked out in Committee. Just one last word—