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Postal Services Bill

First, I apologise to the House for having been absent for two of the contributions to this debate. I had an urgent meeting with a constituent who had come rather a long way, from the far north, to be here. I want to speak in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell)—notwithstanding the fact that I am not his flatmate, which might not be the best way to support him judging by what we heard earlier. I will confine my remarks to why I believe it is absolutely crucial that there should be an agreement. However, I should briefly preface those comments by reminding the House that in the previous Parliament I was my party's Business, Innovation and Skills spokesman. For a considerable time, discussions on the then Government's privatisation of the Royal Mail were in hand and I had discussions with representatives of the post offices and the unions and the Royal Mail. One view I came to is slightly different from an opinion that has been expressed by many Members today. I felt that the post offices had been the poor relation inside the Royal Mail Group, and that the fact that they did not have their own board or their own chairman meant that very often got the second-best outcome. I therefore put in my party's proposals that whatever happened—whether the Royal Mail was privatised, left as a mutual or left as public—the post office group had to be a separate entity with its own chair and board, so that it could argue its case effectively and have a real future. I always saw a strong future for post offices. Many of the reasons for that have been alluded to today: the opportunity for new financial products; the possibility of a post bank, which I remain convinced is a particularly good way of taking post offices forward; and the ability to develop post offices in a range of areas, and especially for them to be in many instances the first line of contact between the citizen and the state. A numerate, literate, intelligent and articulate person—which is what our postmasters and postmistresses are—can help people at the very start of the process of making a claim and so forth, and can help people avoid many of the problems that are encountered when they can talk only to a call centre. I always saw a strong possibility of post offices developing, but I felt that that required them to be a separate organisation. However, I also thought that, in order to ensure that there is a reasonable degree of stability in the business, it was essential that there was a business agreement for a suitable time to enable the transformation to take place.