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Postal Services Bill [HL]

I thank the Secretary of State very much indeed for responding so positively with the statement "Better late than never". I warmly welcome that admission. My criticism was that the whole initiative could have been so much more successful had he pursued it when he was appointed Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, has upbraided me already in a way that he never used to when he was chairman of the Trade and Industry Select Committee. If he does not mind, I must go back to some of those reports and remind myself what he was saying then, because the very idea that it needed 10 years to get it all sorted out was not something I recall him referring to when he chaired the committee. I may well be wrong and, if I am, I apologise. I welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, wanted to look forward, not back. To the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, who knows that I greatly respect his judgment in these matters, I would say that before we get in to the line-by-line scrutiny we must remind ourselves that out there, in local communities and elsewhere, there is real concern about the way in which post offices have closed, along with a wish to fulfil the intention of the Secretary of State to find some way through to those new business opportunities that he has just described. I strongly support what he said about those opportunities and about the post bank; a successful post bank would offer real long-term financial security to individuals and businesses and provide a vital role for the Post Office commensurate with the high esteem in which it continues to be held by the British people. It would have been wrong to embark on the line-by-line scrutiny without spending a little time on the issue that really does occupy a lot of people out there, in communities up and down the country. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, that we are not arguing, as he does, that post offices should be able to stand on their own two feet, because that fails to recognise the importance that they give to local communities. When the report is delivered, what happens is a very relevant question. We got a little indication at last from the Secretary of State that things are beginning to happen. My wish is to see more. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, that when people go into a post office, certainly in rural areas, they go not just for services from the post office, because post offices have often extended their services widely to become the local village store. We have to work out what the new structure should be—with access points—and what the definition should be of a post office in future. In this short debate, there has been a bit of confusion about Crown post offices and sub-post offices. Otherwise, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, made the sort of speech that he was criticising other noble Lords for making. Noble Lords should understand that we are not going to shirk the line-by-line scrutiny. The noble Lord called it a sensible amendment. Perhaps he will allow me to treasure those words. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, that his statement on the Floor of the Chamber that the Government have no intention of supporting any further closures was welcome news indeed and will be welcome news to a whole range of communities up and down the country. I suppose I should thank him for that. If that were all he had said, that would be enough for me.