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Postal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 63 in this group. I apologise somewhat to the House for tabling Amendment 3 at this stage. I should probably have done so in Committee, but afterthought is a great thing. The amendment concerns a small point and I suspect that, when he responds, the Minister will give the answer set out on page 41 of the Government’s response to the Select Committee report. There, they state clearly that there will be a new board for Post Office Ltd with a non-executive chair to provide a new level of support and challenge for the Post Office’s management team. When we reflected on the Bill following Committee, it seemed important to include in it the commitment that Post Office Ltd will have a separate board of directors. If a minority investment is to be brought into Royal Mail, it is important that Post Office Ltd has a separate management. The structure should be such that the minority shareholder should not be able to influence decisions made by Post Office Ltd, because under the reforms that the Government wish to bring in, Royal Mail and the Post Office will be separated structurally. As I said, perhaps I should have tabled this amendment in Committee but I should welcome the Minister’s opinion on whether it is necessary for that requirement to be put into the Bill. Amendment 63 is much more fundamental, and it goes to the heart of the remarks that I made during the interesting Second Reading-type debate that we had on the previous amendment. As the Minister is well aware, as a fundamental condition of our supporting the Bill, we require significant assurances that this is a one-off opportunity to secure the independence and financial security of the post office network for the foreseeable future. We debated this at great length in Committee, and we have slightly altered the amendment here. In Committee, we suggested a figure of £2 billion in order to try to flush out from the Government what investment they thought was necessary to produce a secure post office network, but we have not put in a fixed figure in this amendment. On the other hand, we feel that, if the Bill is passed, it is critical that it should contain significant assurances about the long-term future of the post office and sub-post office network. That is our reason for tabling Amendment 63 at this stage. I beg to move.