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Postal Services Bill [HL]

The amendments in this group address two concerns. Amendment 72 deals with which of the RMPP’s assets the Government intend to take. The more substantive Amendment 74A concerns the assumptions on which the safeguard in subsection (1) will be based. Let me deal first with Amendment 72. Your Lordships will appreciate that some of the assets in the RMPP are of considerably better quality than others. The variety of assets is presumably very wide, ranging from property to overseas equities to index-linked bonds, and so on. Some are subject to much higher levels of risk. If the Government are not intending to take over all the assets, do they intend to take a fair selection of each class of asset, or will they seize only the safest, leaving the highest risk and most toxic assets behind for the ongoing fund to handle? On Amendment 74A, following our debates on 31 March, the Minister helpfully wrote to my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale concerning the assumptions. It would be helpful if the noble Lord could expand somewhat on how the Government will ensure that an objective analysis of volatility and risk will appropriately be taken into account. I beg to move.