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Postal Services Bill [HL]

I sincerely thank my noble friend Lady Turner for her nicely worded support for the basic principle of people being able to move in and out of pension schemes, and the definition of where they stand within a scheme. I was slightly amused by the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, to the haste with which the Government were able to concur with the Hooper report, on the day that it was published. How the Government could say "We agree" within hours has certainly been asked in many places—not necessarily the pubs, clubs and magistrates’ courts. People like me think that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is valid. The Hooper report was predicated on a number of false assumptions. Some of its calculations and findings do not bear scrutiny. We will obviously return to that. The Secretary of State has made a number of comments, and I am delighted that we will be able to crawl over every word that he says, once we see them published, and work out better amendments for the future. If there are things that we can improve upon, I hope that I and other people with an interest in the Bill will do so. My friend of many years, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, brings in an interesting point about the European Union. I remind the Committee that we would not be in this situation today if it had not been for the Commission’s direction to liberalise our post office in the first place. I tried to expose the indecent haste at that time, as my noble friend Lord Sainsbury tried to defend the Government’s position. We should bear in mind that that nine or 10 years’ loss of revenue, because of the false accounting system of what was Postcomm, has helped to build up the problems that we face now. Just for good measure, we do not know when some of the member states of the European Union are going to start liberalisation. We have had to live with it for all those years because we were told that it was a directive. I am looking forward to seeing what can be done. Not being a great fan of the Commission or the European Union as a whole, I would be delighted if they could go into their toolbox, find a gigantic spanner and throw it into the works of the Bill. That would achieve what I tried to do at Second Reading. I said that the Bill was ill-timed, ill-conceived, wrong and against Labour Party policy in principle. I will study carefully what the Secretary of State has said, and will be interested to see what comes out of any real examination of the European Union on this. The Secretary of State mentioned the regulator. Members of the Committee will not find me wanting in my attempts to get a fair and balanced regulator. The House has heard me make clear on a number of occasions that the regulator was rigged from the start. Have a good look at the Hooper report, and see what it says about how Postcomm has worked: worked against the interests of the Royal Mail; worked against the interests of the Post Office; and certainly worked against the interests of the Government, who have been denied funds because of how it has operated. I am pleased that the Secretary of State mentioned the regulator. We will talk about it later, and I, for one, will be the first in the queue to discuss with Ofcom how we can find a system that will assist the consumer—members of the public, who want a better service—in getting a better service. We will come to that in later amendments. I will be there, with Ofcom, if it will have me, to talk about how we can get the best deal for the public, the Post Office and the people who work in the industry. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 34 withdrawn. Amendments 35 to 38 not moved.