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Royal Mail

In the very few minutes that I have, I wish to make the point that an Opposition day, when the Opposition want to make political capital—despite the situation in the Thatcher years, with which we are familiar—is not the time to have a debate on such an important subject as Royal Mail and the delivery of postal services. I have looked carefully at the Government's amendment, and there is nothing in it that I disagree with, so I have no problem with it. However, I do have a problem with what my hon. Friend the Minister said about the direction in which we are going on the Hooper report's recommendation 13 on bringing in a private partner. That leads to the suggestion that we have partial privatisation on our hands. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) mentioned the possibility of pre-legislative scrutiny, which might be a way of trying to deal with the current problems. One problem is the way in which Royal Mail has been starved of investment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) pointed out, about £2.4 billion of profits went to the Treasury under the external financing limits. That money should have been invested in Royal Mail. The liberalisation has been carried out in haste, so Royal Mail has not properly been able to compete with European competitors, and we have been at a disadvantage. The problem is how to make good the legacy of the wrong decisions that have been taken in the past. Somehow we must deal with that problem and secure the long-term commitment to the universal service obligation, and we must also find the money for investment in pensions so that delivery people all over the country, including in my local office in Burslem, know that the Government are protecting and safeguarding their pensions. I genuinely recognise that balancing all that with the need to act quickly on the modernisation agenda will not be easy. The Government could use the Hooper report as a starting point. Negotiations could also take place with the Communication Workers Union, which in its detailed response of more than 60 paragraphs stated that it wants to work with the Government to find a way forward. However, if that way forward is bound is by recommendation 13, which states that the only method of proceeding is through the private sector, I tell the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson), that it is wrong way. Although we have assurances that further legislation will be introduced, and that Parliament will have an opportunity to debate it, we need to put investment in place now. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) suggested that there are other ways in which to proceed. The private sector has no monopoly on the right way to bring in expertise to transform the Royal Mail radically. Whatever has been said about Adam Crozier and whatever he may have done for the premier league, he has not got back to me directly about individual issues that I have raised with the Royal Mail about management. We must recognise that the Government own the Post Office, and it is not good enough for Ministers to say that they cannot interfere in operational matters. The Hooper report, which was published in December, is already out of date. It took evidence during the credit crunch, and the easy, not very detailed recommendations that it makes about the way forward with a private sector partner are not right. I urge my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to reconsider and involve hon. Members of all parties in finding a way forward, so that I can tell people in the Burslem delivery office that the Government are examining their needs.