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Royal Mail: Industrial Dispute

My Lords, the point that I have been trying to make throughout is that there are many parts of the country, probably the majority of them, where mechanisation, new technologies, automation and changes in working practices have been introduced. I accept that that is happening. However, in other parts, I am afraid that there is what I can describe only as stiff, if not obdurate, resistance on the part of the minority of the union, its areas and branches to seeing this national agreement implemented. As a result of that, a whole series of localised disputes has escalated and produced the threat of a national strike at the end of this week. Of course, the Government do not condone bullying. I have asked the management about this and whether it has received reports of specific instances. It says that it has not. I have asked it to repeat the request to the union, so that these instances can be properly examined. I believe that, at the last time of asking, no instances were forthcoming. If there has been harassment, of course we do not condone it. However, I must say frankly to my noble friend that if there is an instance of harassment in a locality, you do not need a national strike to sort it out, with all the calamitous damage that would be done to the business because of its lost custom and the escalating number of lost jobs that would result from it. My noble friend said that 80 per cent of those who voted were in favour of strike action, but it is also possible, as he knows, to count the votes in a different way. If you count those who were against the strike action and those who chose to abstain or withhold their vote from the ballot, you find 60 per cent against. So there are ways and ways of looking at these results and counting the figures. Throughout all the debates in this House with my noble friend on the Hooper report and the legislation, he always said that the union was up for change. The localised strikes since then and the national strike now send exactly the opposite message. That is what the union has to take into account and avoid; it has to send a different message to its future customers if it is going to turn around its business and secure as many jobs as possible in the future.