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Postal Services Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for being as succinct as he was in proposing Amendment 3. It seems a long time ago now, but he presented his amendment in three minutes flat, which was very kind of him. Before I go on, I will put the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, at rest on at least point today. He was concerned about what will happen to Royal Mail’s valuable collection of stamps, including iconic and historic stamps such as the penny blacks. Collections of such stamps are classified as public records. These are deposited with the British Postal Museum and Archive, and under the Bill they will remain public records. The ownership of Royal Mail’s museum collection, which contains artefacts that are not classified as public records, has been transferred to the BPMA, and as a charitable trust the BPMA cannot sell off this collection—so at least there is a little good news there. The proposal in Amendment 3, like the one in Amendment 1, does not seem to reflect the fact that the disposal of shares in Royal Mail is a commercial transaction. In particular, if the Government decided to conduct an auction and invite bids from trade buyers, it would make no commercial sense to advertise to bidders our own view of the value of Royal Mail. As my noble friend Lady Kramer has pointed out, that is not exactly the art of negotiation, because all anyone would do would be to bid to that price. We really feel that we will not do that. No trade buyer would bid above the value, and it would therefore reduce the Government’s ability to get the best result for the company and for the taxpayer, because that is what we are about. The Government will, of course, work with their advisers to consider the potential value of Royal Mail so that we can properly assess bids from buyers. However, as my noble friend Lord Eccles clearly said, there is little logic in revealing what we consider the value of the company to be before any sale. As I have said previously, the Government have not decided how they will dispose of the shares. We wish to retain flexibility, and in this way get the best result for the company and for the taxpayers, but we expect that both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee in the other place might wish to review the sale process after a sale had been completed. They would both provide their own independent view to Parliament on whether the Government had achieved value for money for the taxpayer. I have of course listened to what has been said, and it will of course go on the record. I know that there are Members of your Lordships' House who would rather that Royal Mail was not sold at all, and I understand people who have been associated with Royal Mail for many years finding all discussions of this sort very difficult, especially having gone through all this a year ago with the previous Government—a Government of their own. Yet that Government, too, could not successfully find a way out. We need to find the right buyer for Royal Mail who will keep it alive and well. These are very difficult times. No one is writing letters. We have exercised these arguments over and over again, which I am sure everyone in the House knows. We think that this is the best way forward and that flexibility until the very last minute will be needed so that we can get the best price. I therefore ask the noble Lord if he will kindly withdraw his amendment at this stage.