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Postal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response. I will turn to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle. Of course we understand that we do not wish to put in place a structure under which individuals can sell their shares to Stagecoach, for example. The model that we are trying to persuade noble Lords to adopt is what I would describe as the John Lewis model. I now realise that I thought that it was an issue of semantics between us, the Conservative Party and the Government. It is not; it is an issue of principle. We are not talking about an employee share scheme. An employee share scheme is where individual members of staff are given incentives to participate in the ownership of the business. We are actually talking about a very radically different approach, which is a John Lewis-type employee ownership trust. I do not believe that it will make the slightest different to a TNT or a Deutsche Post or anyone else when they conduct their negotiations with the Government whether 25.5 per cent is owned by the employees and the rest by the Treasury, or whether 51 per cent is owned by the Treasury. We are not talking about an employee share scheme, where of course they will have an interest, as any minority shareholder coming into an organisation is concerned, as to what proportion of the profits of the business are being allocated to an employee share scheme. Of course they have an interest in that; but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the principle of a shared ownership trust. This is fundamental to the arguments that we on our Benches have made long before this Bill was introduced. I suspect that I do not have support from the other parties, but I feel that it is important on this issue of principle to test the opinion of the House. Division on Amendment 18 Contents 59; Not-Contents 131. Amendment 18 disagreed. Amendment 19 not moved. Clause 11 : Indirect ownership of companies Amendment 20 not moved. Clause 12 : Ownership of a company Amendment 21 not moved.