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Royal Mail: Industrial Dispute

My Lords, I am a great supporter of the Post Office. I look on it as a social service even as much as any other type of service. I do not think that the Secretary of State was in the House when I asked my Question about the effect on people filing paper tax returns, of which I am one of the many thousands. The Answer that I was given was that you would be able to hand in your papers at a post office and have a stamp put on them. I presume that the return would have to be contained within the post office until such time as the strike was over. However, I am more concerned about those people who have already put their tax returns into post boxes, of whom I am not one. Am I correct in thinking that no date stamp goes on them until they are processed? I am getting post now, if I get it at all, that is weeks old and the postmark on it is entirely different from the date inside the letter. How will the Inland Revenue be able to assess those people and be fair to them?