Postal Services Bill

I rise to speak as the Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, rather than as a constituency Member. I will therefore not explain why the construction of two aircraft carriers is absolutely vital to the maintenance of Royal Mail and the postal service. We decided as a Select Committee that it was not appropriate for us to consider ownership or pension issues, because they were not mainly Scottish issues, but we wanted to consider particularly the future of the universal service obligation and the future of post offices, as they are of greater importance to rural and deprived areas in Scotland than perhaps they are to many other areas of the country. We took as a given the importance of the role that post offices and Royal Mail play in the community. A number of other Members have already referred to that. Normal procedure does not necessarily mean that we cannot repeat exactly what other Members have said, but I will not do so in these circumstances. I want to move on to our recommendations on these issues. We met the Minister and had a hearing with him, and it was generally our view that he was not nearly as bad as people led us to believe. He was sincere in his view. We all thought that he wanted to support the maintenance of the post office network and the universal service obligation. There was no doubt in our view that his heart in all this was in the right place. Unfortunately, we did, however, think that his head was a bit muddled. The Minister and ourselves had identified the fact that the inter-business agreement was absolutely essential for the future of post offices, but we were not convinced that he appreciated the necessity to make it as firm as possible. We took the view that his good intentions, which we accepted, were not sufficient, because events might occur that submerged a host of good intentions. We have already seen the Government use the economic crisis as an excuse to ditch all sorts of commitments that both coalition parties made before the election. We therefore took the view, as Ronald Reagan did with the Russians on missiles, ““Trust, but verify.”” We accepted his good intentions, but we wanted to ensure that things were pinned down as firmly as possible. We welcomed the Minister's statement that he did not intend to put anything in the way of such an agreement. We took the view that there was a hierarchy of ways in which it could be approached. Undertaking to remove obstacles—well, not objecting to do so in the first place—we took as a given. He indicated that he was keen to see obstacles removed. One of our recommendations is that the Minister take positive steps to facilitate a long and robust IBA and to remove any obstacle, whether practical, legal or otherwise, that may exist. Clarifying whether there are obstacles to a 10-year IBA being signed now would remove a lot of the anxiety about whether the European Union is blocking this or any other agreement. As the second line of pursuit, we wanted a voluntarily entered-into 10-year IBA agreed before any such sale. There seemed no reason from what we heard from the Minister, given that he was willing to overcome any obstacle, why a voluntarily entered-into IBA could not be signed before sale took place. We said:"““We understand that this may affect the marketability of Royal Mail, but it is essential to the sustainability of Postal Services in Scotland.””" We appreciated that Royal Mail signing an IBA might affect the price that it achieved, because it might be seen as a less attractive commercial operation than would otherwise be the case. We none the less agreed that we wanted to include that because the preservation of post offices through the construction of an IBA and its implementation before privatisation or a change of ownership was absolutely vital.