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Royal Mail

I was not going to go down that partisan route, but I do worry about privatisation and the Conservatives. Royal Mail is the only organisation left that they did not privatise before, so it would be the first to go if they came back to office; they would start where they left off. The railways are a good example of the mess that they made. I am quite pleased, however, that we brought Network Rail back into public ownership as a not-for-profit organisation. It works side by side with private train operators, which is why I am suggesting an alternative model where a not-for-profit organisation is used to deliver a quality service and product to all customers. That should be the basis of what we do. We tend to have dogmatic and ideological debates on such matters, but at the end of the day, we often forget that the Royal Mail is there to provide a service to the public. I do not think that nationalisation or public ownership are dirty words, and the intelligent way forward in this debate is to look at alternative models. Hooper made a huge mistake in dismissing alternative models that work in this country, models which are regulated, which provide a high standard of service and which provide investment for the future. The risks involved in providing water are quite huge, but through such a model, Glas Cymru is able to invest for the long term by getting guarantees. We are giving guarantees to the banks and to everyone else. The Treasury should look seriously at the model that I am suggesting and look at what Glas Cymru is doing. It is delivering a public service through a not-for-profit model that provides a good standard of service for the people that I represent and for all of the people of Wales. That model can be rolled out across the whole United Kingdom.