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Postal Services Bill [HL]

The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, returns to the question of the Secretary of State amending the RMPP without the trustee’s consent. The Minister has dwelt on the close consultation that the Government are already engaged in, but I have not detected that he has made clear what would happen if any disagreements remained at the end of that consultation. Indeed, the whole matter is rather complicated by the possibility of plan B, which the Minister also went into on the last day of Committee on 31 March. If the Government were unable to gain the necessary permissions to take over the old liabilities directly and were forced to sectionalise the old RMPP under Clause 17, there would presumably be much more government interference in the day-to-day running of that section and so even more scope for disagreements to come up between the Secretary of State and the RMPP trustee. Having said that, I have a hunch that the Minister will tell us that he has quite a bit more work to do on this whole area and, if he does, we will clearly need to come back to it in some detail on Report. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, will not feel the need to press his amendment today.