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Postal Services Bill [HL]

As the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, pointed out, our Amendment 83A in this group probes a different aspect of the UPS order—the apparent requirement that a uniform tariff be made available for all types of mail. I have sympathy with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, but my main attitude to the arguments that he put forward is that I am sure that Ofcom, when undertaking the market assessment, will consider whether such a requirement is needed by users. I am concerned that to add in all sorts of frills to the minimum criteria risks adding unnecessary expense to the provision of the UPS. We feel that that makes the imposition of a levy more likely. We are as committed as other noble Lords to the UPS and I refer noble Lords to the points that we have made in earlier speeches. I understand that Royal Mail offers a bulk mail service to retail customers with zonal pricing. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that there is no intention to restrict the choice available to business and other operators. As long as the uniform tariff requirement is in place for the man in the street, we would not want to prevent any additional service that Royal Mail felt able to provide to high-volume clients, nor would we want to see bulk mail, where there are considerable opportunities for operators other than Royal Mail to offer competitive alternatives to businesses, brought into the scope of the UPS order unnecessarily. That is why I await with great interest the response of the Minister to this group of amendments.