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Postal Services Bill [HL]

We keep hearing about modernisation—new products and what have you. We have been hearing about this for a very long time. The Postal Services Act was supposed to put things very right but, since then, the postal services, far from getting better, have got worse. Never mind about the Royal Mail for the moment; what are the Government’s objectives? What exactly do the Government see as the job of the Post Office? What is it supposed to do? Where is it going? Are we going to have a resumption of early-morning postal services, for example? Are we going to have a second post, which we used to have? Are those objectives of the Government, or are they content, probably because of shortages of staff, to have mail in this country delivered to many areas not by 12 noon, which is the new and worse objective, but sometimes by five o’clock in the afternoon? Indeed, I had my post delivered one evening at 6.20 pm. So what exactly are the objectives of the Government? I think we want to know about those objectives. After all, the first postal service in this country was introduced by Charles I, I think it was, in 1635, and we have had a publicly owned postal service ever since then. Now, we find that it is going to be part-privatised, but the Government do not tell us how much better it is going to be under the new system. Perhaps they can tell us how the service is going to be improved, and how they will ensure that the workers in the industry are protected and the customers are not overcharged for an inferior service.