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Postal Services Bill

My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. I very much support the employee ownership proposed in this Bill, which is a great improvement on the Bill that did not complete its progress through the previous Parliament, because it includes employee ownership and because the amount of ownership proposed is very substantial. The Government have more details on that than I do. For people working in Royal Mail, there are two issues of great concern. One is that they should be part-owners in a way that this share ownership will allow them to be, in order both to have a voice and to benefit from the profits that will flow from their efforts and from the future success of the company. It is also very important that there should be the maximum possible investment in the future of Royal Mail. Those two issues have to be balanced. By expanding the number of shares that will be distributed to employees, the ownership potential for a private partner is reduced, which will reduce his, her or their willingness to put additional money into Royal Mail. I caution that there is a balance to be achieved here. Ten per cent is enough to provide a real voice and real reward, but potentially up to 90 per cent going out in some form to the private market is a real guarantee that the purchaser, whoever they are, will have to put in serious and large investment to make sure that this the company is very successful in future. That is surely what employees want, too. The noble Lords, Lord Clarke and Lord Tunnicliffe, raised many issues that underscored the complexities of trying to set up share ownership for employees in an effective way. The more I heard about all those complexities, such as how shares should be distributed between employees, the more it struck me that the Bill is not the place to set up a structure such as that. It is good to have a discussion in this House, but with so many tax and legal issues there is a need for consultation and much greater involvement by many parties, including potential private partners as well as employees. We would be trying to make the Bill do too much by accepting these amendments, as well as some of those that we will debate later.