---

Postal Services Bill

I made that point with respect to my own constituency earlier and the hon. Gentleman is quite right. Once Royal Mail is sold to a private operator, that operator will be focused solely on the needs of its enterprise to deliver postal services, not on the various other activities carried out by the Post Office. As I mentioned earlier, we already know that only 4,000 of the current post offices are profitable and that only around 7,500 are required to meet the current terms of the universal service obligation. Is it such a leap of imagination to think that a new owner of Royal Mail might consider whether its needs could be met with a deal with, say, supermarkets, which are increasingly opening for longer hours? I think not—especially now that Tesco Express or Metro are opening everywhere, and although they do not have the 24-hour opening of their hypermarkets, they are still open from 7 am to 10 pm. Even if they do not do so we would still be faced with the situation where two companies of vastly differing sizes and economic muscle are negotiating an agreement. It is difficult to see Post Office Ltd not coming out very badly from that.