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Postal Services Bill [HL]

Privatisation, my Lords; I have nationalisation on my mind. Furthermore, on finance, when we are spending hundreds of billions of pounds to shore up the banks, why on earth can we not spare some money, to add to the £600 million which already exists, to modernise and diversify the Royal Mail and the postal services? As I said, I understand that the favourite for private partner is TNT. It is hardly a suitable candidate to run the Royal Mail if press reports are to be believed. I read this headline in Sunday Telegraph: ""Royal Mail bid: tax scam"." I shall not quote the whole article, but it states: ""Employees of TNT were involved in a financial scam in which documents were falsified and backdated"." Surely, those are hardly the sort of people whom we want to run the Royal Mail. What concerns me most of all is that such legislation should be brought forward by a Labour Government. I have to keep making that point because I am so angry about it. Have they forgotten that the Royal Mail and the Post Office services ran successfully as a government department for 150 years? You could post a letter in London at 10 o’clock in the morning and get it at four o’clock in the afternoon. Yet now you cannot get your post until about five o’clock at night in some places. The service does not have to be privatised, and the tinkering over the past two decades has not brought about the improvements that were promised. There is no reason to believe that this Bill will be any different. What about the other privatisations? Have they been a great success? Ask the people. Do they think that the railways are better? Are they cheaper and more reliable? The answer from the people will be no. When I was the chairman of the land and works committee of the Thames Valley water board, I used to boast about selling water at sixpence a tonne. Now it is getting on for £2 a tonne. I assure noble Lords that water consumers do not believe that privatisation is necessarily the good thing that the noble Lord, Lord Desai, seems to think it is. As regards the energy industry, ask the people who are paying enormous prices whether they think that privatisation was a good thing. My bill went up from £133 a month to £197 a month only a couple of months ago. That must be happening to other people up and down the country as well. Privatisation does not necessarily bring the promised land. I am opposed to the Bill. I say to my noble friend—not a political friend, just a friend—that if he decides to put his amendment to a vote tonight, I shall certainly stand shoulder to shoulder with him in the Lobby.