---

Postal Services Bill

The hon. Lady makes a good point. I have read that report, which I found to be an excellent report, hitting on the main points as they affect Scotland. I was talking about the management at Royal Mail. Ms Greene may have a considerable attachment to Post Office Ltd, but will a new owner of the business necessarily feel the same way? What happens when the commercial profit motive really kicks in? How much will sentimentality govern the actions of Royal Mail? That is especially important given that, as has been said on many occasions in previous debates, including in Committee, the ultimate owner of Royal Mail may turn out to be Deutsche Post or TNT, which I would suggest perhaps do not have the same sentimental attachment that we all have to our Royal Mail. As I understand it, the rationale behind the privatisation is to make the new company look for efficiency savings and cut costs. I agree with the hon. Member for Colchester that it is utterly inconceivable that the new company will not look at how it can do so in its relationship with Post Office Ltd, which will not be exempt from scrutiny under the new arrangement. In her evidence, Ms Greene said:"““I do not see other retailers as a particularly serious threat, because Post Office has an enormous amount of expertise in this area””.––[Official Report, Postal Services Public Bill Committee, 9 November 2010; c. 17, Q42.]" The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) mentioned the situation in Germany, but as the National Federation of SubPostmasters has said, there is no precedent anywhere in the world for splitting the delivery service from the post office. I asked the Minister on Second Reading whether he could come up with one, but none has been forthcoming since. I spoke at length in Committee about the situation that has developed in New Zealand. I will not go into that again at great length today—interested Members can read the report of the Committee's proceedings, where it is explained at some length. Suffice it to say that a competitor has set up what amounts to an alternative post office network targeted purely at what it needs to sustain its postal delivery business. That is another point. When Royal Mail is split from the Post Office, it will be in a very different position. Royal Mail will be looking at what it needs to be able to deliver a postal business—not a Government business, a pro-Government business or all the other things that the Post Office might do. In her evidence to the Committee, the chief executive of Royal Mail said that it would be ““inconceivable”” that anyone but Post Office Ltd would be used by the Royal Mail. The Minister, if I recall correctly, was very dismissive of the idea that an operator might want to go to, say, a major supermarket and use it for delivery of post office services. Then again, it was not so long ago that it was inconceivable that a supermarket would offer a mobile phone network, for example, be an internet service provider or perhaps offer legal services, which might happen shortly. Who would have bought a television or a hoover from a supermarket 15 years ago? Times change and that applies to the Post Office as well. In New Zealand, as I say, that has already begun to happen. That does not mean that a provider in the UK would necessarily do the same, but it is certainly a possibility. It might look into it and that provides a danger sign for post offices in the UK. New Zealand Post, of course, fought back—one of its principle weapons being Kiwibank—but this Government have rejected the option of creating a post bank in the UK with which to anchor Post Office Ltd. No two postal markets are the same and the UK Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd might be able to hold together and provide a seamless and mutually profitable business, but there are lessons from what has happened elsewhere and we simply cannot idly let the future of the post offices in our constituencies rest on the good amicable feelings that currently operate between the two companies, which might not survive the privatisation.