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Postal Services Bill [HL]

I welcome my noble friend’s remarks. He talked about political interference and the pensions holiday; he could also have talked about the money that was taken out by the Treasury prior to that— £2.41 billion from 1988 to 1999. He is right to refer to that. He is also right to put on the record again, as I tried to do earlier, that the Post Office is modernising, although it is accused of not doing so. It has spent the £1.2 billion that he has referred to, £600 million of it on machines that are already in. Some of the orders for other machines have to be placed early, and it is now awaiting delivery of those. So modernisation is going on. My noble friend referred to the 50,000 workers who have been made redundant. The Post Office does not need this. The Bill means that we take the pension deficit and the company coming in takes the profit. That is nonsense, and I am glad that he has reiterated that. It is right that we put on record as often as we can what the Post Office has done already and how unnecessary this private investment, or part-privatisation, is.