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Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order 2010

My Lords, I could not help smiling when the Minister defined the Royal Mail and the Post Office because I remember when it was called the GPO, which dates me slightly. I was also an employee and, as I recall, the postmaster-general at the time was Anthony Wedgwood Benn. How time passes when you are enjoying yourself. We welcome the increased subsidy. However, as the Merits Committee helpfully issued a health warning and said that it should be considered in conjunction with the Postal Services Bill, it is only appropriate that we register our concern about the impact of the Postal Services Bill. Of course we welcome the increased subsidy, but we would like to see enshrined in legislation the principle that the Post Office network should be used as the access points for Royal Mail. We believe that the Secretary of State should have the power to specify exactly how many access points there should be. The reason for that is that it has been suggested that a privatised Royal Mail company might think that its needs could be served by a network of some 4,000 outlets. Currently, we have 11,900 post offices. I certainly endorse the comments of my noble friend Lord Jones about the vital importance of these post offices to the local community. Of that number, some 7,000 or so could be adequate to meet the access criteria that were introduced by the last Labour Government and have been accepted by this Government and spelt out again in their recent document on the future of the Post Office network in the digital age. The criteria spell out that the access criteria introduced by Labour meant that, as the Minister said, 99 per cent are to be within three miles of their nearest outlet and 90 per cent should be within one mile. The access criteria continue with a more detailed definition in relation to urban and rural areas. The purpose of the criteria is to ensure reasonable access to post offices in both urban and rural areas. Without them, there would be no control of the overall shape of the Post Office network. We believe that a viable sustainable Post Office network is a critical part of the social infrastructure for many communities, which I was pleased to hear the Minister seemed to endorse. That is why we introduced the access criteria: to ensure that communities would continue to be fairly served by a national Post Office network. As I said, these access criteria could be met with something like 7,000 post offices, but we put in an additional investment so that we could keep the number at 11,900. If the Government are serious about wanting to keep that number of post offices open and keep the network as we know it now, there should be a mechanism that the Government can use. The Secretary of State should have the power to specify the number of post offices to be used as access points for the services of the provider of the universal postal service. I am talking about that in the context of a privatised Royal Mail. The Minister might argue that it is up to the privatised business what it decides to do, how many access points it uses and where those access point are located. That is precisely our concern. The nature of the relationship between Royal Mail and the Post Office in a privatised environment would be different. Will there be the current inter-business agreement that safeguards that relationship? We are talking about a national network and a universal service that we all agree we want to be easily accessible to everyone in the UK. Given that all parties on both sides of the House now agree on the access criteria of post offices, we cannot see any good argument for the Secretary of State not having the power to specify not only that the provider of the universal service should use post offices as access points but how many post offices that should be. If the Government are serious about protecting the Post Office network, the straightforward solution would be to enshrine in the Postal Services Bill that the Secretary of State should have that power. We are talking about using large amounts of taxpayers’ money to subsidise the Post Office network. Therefore we want to make sure that that money is used to preserve that as part of the universal postal service. It seems that other countries have no problem about not letting the Government have a say in this. Elsewhere, where there has been privatisation of the mail service—we make it clear that we are opposed to complete privatisation—there has also been legislation to protect the post office network and specify its use as access points for the universal postal service. As I said, we do not want to see the privatisation of the Royal Mail service but if the Government persist and it is going to happen, we cannot see what is wrong with including in that legislation a mechanism by which to protect the Post Office network. That is clearly what the overwhelming majority of the public want to see. Most people cannot imagine that it would ever be any different. The Government specify all sorts of regulations that private providers have to comply with: look at the various schemes that the energy companies are expected to participate in. To conclude, we welcome the increase in subsidy and in the range of services that the Minister has outlined. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will deal with our concerns in her reply.