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Postal Services Bill [HL]

First, I declare my interests as set out in the register and, in particular, as a partner in the national commercial law firm Beachcroft LLP. At the outset, I make it clear that the Conservative Party supports this legislation in principle. However, I have to add that Ministers are now guilty of the most negligent, costly and culpable late delivery of all time. By failing to act until now, this Government have condemned the Royal Mail to 10 years of unnecessary uncertainty and inevitable decline. The loss of potential revenue and the consequent damage to staff morale has been little short of catastrophic, particularly for the pension fund and the status of the company, despite Royal Mail’s best efforts. Furthermore, as we now scrutinise this Bill line by line, I fear that its shortcomings will become all too evident. We have endured the injury of 12 years of inaction followed by the added insult of a cobbled together rush job of a Bill, so we are going to do our utmost to make this legislation work. The first group of amendments to be discussed in Committee, and which I have tabled, relate rather unusually to an issue that should be addressed in the Bill but is not; I refer, of course, to the post office network, which at Second Reading was the problem that dared not speak its name. There have been two swingeing rounds of post office closures in recent years, and under this Labour Government some 40 per cent of post offices and sub-post offices have now been closed. Perhaps Ministers truly believe that such enormous cuts to such an integral component part of our society were necessary, but it is utterly irresponsible of any Government not to consider seriously how to prevent any future closures, or even how to allow for the reopening of many of these businesses. We on these Benches were deeply sceptical of the business case that Ministers made for these closures, and of their contention that they made a real effort to find an alternative way forward. There are enormous numbers of references, particularly in the other place, to post office closures, so the Minister, Pat McFadden, has had every opportunity to come forward with some alternative strategy. Ministers’ strategy in responding to the many debates on post office closures has been to say that this is not a matter for them; it is up to the Post Office. On 13 March last year, Pat McFadden said: ""For the future, the Post Office must keep developing new products and new reasons for customers to go through the door".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/08; col. 512.]" This was against the background of what he described as a "difficult closure process". If any noble Lords decide to search Hansard for references to the Post Office, I ask them to sit back and just let them all come, because there have been so many debates about closures. Ministers have said so many times, as Pat McFadden did on 20 June last year, that, ""the Post Office has to innovate"," and that, ""There are new areas of work for the Post Office",—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/08; col. 1270.]" as though it was all the Post Office’s fault. In all the debates that I have read through, there seemed to be no clear or genuine understanding of the importance of post offices in many communities not only in rural areas but in some of the poorest areas of our towns and cities. The post office is usually the heartbeat of any parade of local shops and usually the centre of any rural community. If it goes under, particularly in a parade of shops, the shops inevitably follow. I see from the Marshalled List that my concerns are shared by many around the Committee, so I welcome this opportunity to raise this issue.