---

Postal Services Bill [HL]

I support the mover of this amendment and want to underline one thing that he said towards the end of his speech. Many of us think that we are modernisers—we have been in the modernising business for a long time. The issue is whether the Hooper report as a whole is being a bit overambitious, and I shall give a couple of examples before I accept the Treasury doctrine. I say "Treasury doctrine" because a Treasury Minister in the Commons said that the Hooper report was sacrosanct and had to be accepted in its entirety. A similar case is treating this amendment in isolation. Many things need to be done to modernise the Post Office. We come down to the practical problems and, on this occasion, I ask my noble friend to reflect aloud so that his comments can be placed on the record in Hansard. Let us take one example. On the parcels side, why would DHL and TNT not simply want to merge the business with their own parcels businesses? Why would they want to improve the competitive position of Royal Mail against TNT and DHL? If you were to raise that sort of proposition in the pub, everyone would say, "You must be joking". Would it work like that in practice? I have an old Australian friend with whom I play tennis, and donkeys’ years ago he was an original partner in TNT. I asked him, "What’s your view on all this?", and his response, which was almost word for word what I have just said, was, "Just like in Holland, with 30 per cent, after two years it would be more or less TNT", or what in Holland is now called the Dutch Post Office, which runs the worldwide TNT operation. Of course, the question is whether a corporate partner can fit into the structure and do many of the things that Hooper wants to do without this ratcheting of equity. I will come on to this point later when I speak to Amendment 9. As we found in the Bullock report years ago, one problem with equity is that there is secrecy and confidentiality when it comes to giving information to and having proper consultation with workforces at every level. Those workforces need to be part of the modernisation process but people say that Stock Exchange rules make everything price-sensitive and they cannot really talk about it. As I said, that will come up later. Here, we are talking about part of a package that some of us are very sceptical about. We do not know whether we are trying to kill three or four birds with one stone, although two are very difficult when they are flung in different directions. I should like to put those questions to my noble friend.