Postal Services Bill

No, it is not, and I will come to that if I have time. The Minister will be aware of my office's deliberations with him on parliamentary scrutiny when the Bill was in Committee, and I will deal with that matter if I can. We believe that it would be better to relieve both potential contenders of the powers to be granted under clause 33(5). At least the current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills would then know about that change in advance, and it would have been made through the democracy of Parliament and not by the Prime Minister as punishment. In a letter to the Public Bill Committee, the Minister mentioned the failsafe of clause 29(5), which is relevant to clause 33. However, that failsafe could work only if one had faith in the actions and intentions of the relevant Secretary of State, and we do not. Restrictions to ensure that there could not be a review before five years had passed would provide important stability to both the business and customers following privatisation. The universal service obligation is of such immense importance that it will need that period to bed down under a new, private provider. I am afraid that throughout the Committee stage, the Minister was unable to convince my hon. Friends and myself of why a review should take place after 18 months. We want a statutory period of five years, during which everyone would know that today's universal service obligation was in place. We want the consumer to be protected. As it stands, the inter-business agreement could be subject to review after 18 months, when an Ofcom review of the USO could also be ongoing. That would mean turmoil. As the Minister heard in Committee and from some of my hon. Friends today, we have only his best interests at heart. I am trying to save him from that turmoil and that caused by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State told Members on 27 October last year:"““The Bill will maintain the universal postal service at its current levels…I have no intention of downgrading this service.””—[Official Report, 27 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 360-361.]" That does not square with the Bill's contents, and the Secretary of State needs to come clean. If he has no intention of downgrading the service, why does he need a review within 18 months? In fact, the Bill is riddled with review opportunities. There are three—in clauses 29, 33 and 42. It is obvious that the Secretary of State's actions in promoting the Bill do not live up to his words. Maybe, in line with other matters that he has promoted, he does not really support the Bill anyway. We would argue that the modernisation programme under way in Royal Mail needs to be completed and bedded down before any review of the USO takes place. It is only a few months since Postcomm and Consumer Focus completed a review of customers' universal service needs, and it is against that backdrop that the Government are proposing the minimum service levels in the Bill. There is therefore no good reason to recommence the review process within 18 months of the Bill being passed. We do not believe that such a review at this time would be in anyone's interests other than those of the provider, who may want to downgrade the service for a bigger shareholder return. More than anything, we want to protect the interests of the consumer. I believe that, in principle, the amendments have cross-party support. Whereas our appeals to the Minister and his colleagues in Committee fell on deaf ears, I am a little more hopeful today. Indeed, in accepting our amendments 23 and 24 today, the Minister would be committing himself to recognising the value of the current USO, while also alerting potential bidders of his clarity on the matter—after all, we are always told that that is what business wants these days. Our amendments will offer that. It would be wrong for a business to purchase Royal Mail with the intention—or should we say the hope?—that a quick review by Ofcom and a stroke of the pen by the Secretary of State, or perhaps by some other Secretary of State, would lead to a better deal. Why do we have such fears? It is because we can see how committed the private sector is to the universal service obligation. The Minister regaled the Committee on more than one occasion with his international understanding of postal services. I would therefore like to refer him to an article in Holland's De Telegraaf on 9 June last year, so that he can test his Dutch reading skills, as opposed to his usual double-Dutch Government jargon. In that article, Pieter Kunz—I do hope that I have pronounced that gentleman's name accurately—who is the managing director of TNT's European mail networks, said that his company planned to cut 11,000 employees from its Dutch mail operations and wanted to move to a three-day-a-week delivery service. Mr Kunz went on to say that collection and delivery services would be outsourced, and that TNT would become managers of mail. However, the worrying bit about how the private sector sees the USO in the round came when Mr Kunz stated that the universal service obligation was"““a kind of Jurassic Park and we should get rid of it””." The worry is accentuated by the possibility that TNT could be the successful bidder for a privatised Royal Mail. Although Mr Kunz might think of the USO in such terms, my constituents and the businesses in my constituency see it as a valued, necessary and fundamental service. We want to prevent any such erosion wherever possible. I wish that we had an opportunity to guarantee the current service levels indefinitely, but I recognise that this is not the Government's will. However, we want the minimum five-year period to be included in the Bill, I suppose for the very same reasons that Mr Kunz—and perhaps the Minister—do not. Amendments 23 and 24 would allow the newly privatised Royal Mail to be secure in the current service delivery levels for the next five years without change. As the Bill stands, the first review could come along at any time and have far-reaching effects. I referred earlier to our time in Committee, where my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) said that a similar amendment was"““a reasoned amendment that turns on the issue of speed versus proper consideration.””––[Official Report, Postal Services Public Bill Committee, 7 December 2010; c. 592.]" He recognised that such a safeguard would prevent Royal Mail's new owner or owners from exerting any pressure on Ofcom to re-examine the minimum requirements straight after a sale, as a way of trying to secure bigger returns for shareholders. However, he and other members of the Committee recognised too—I hope that other Members will recognise this today as well—that such a safeguard would also prevent Ofcom from undertaking a hasty review before the full effects of privatisation and modernisation were understood and their impact on the service evaluated. It is not just those on this side of the House who want to protect the USO in the long term. The Federation of Small Businesses also believes that the USO"““must be protected and services must not diminish””," stating:"““Any change to the scope of the USO could have a negative impact on small businesses.””" Indeed, FSB members have shown their further concern, in that 82% of small businesses want to keep the single UK-wide pricing structure. Then we have the National Federation of SubPostmasters, which has said that"““communities across the UK depend””—" that is the key word—"““on the six-days-a-week collection and delivery at a uniform and affordable price””." Indeed, in their recent report, that august group of cross-party and pan-UK parliamentarians known as the Scottish Affairs Committee also expressed alarm about"““the Bill's requirement for Ofcom to review the minimum requirements for the USO within 18 months. We fear this may be seen as an opportunity to decrease the requirements of the USO.””" Many Opposition Members get fed up with listening to the Government telling the country what they are doing to help small business, when there is precious little sign of such help in the real world. Here is an opportunity for the Government to do just that—help small business, support these amendments and support the Federation of Small Businesses. The Minister's previous argument that clause 30 enshrines the minimum requirement and clause 33 enhances the safeguards against changes to those minimum requirements is, quite frankly and at best, smoke and mirrors. He said in Committee that under the European Communities Act 1972, the Government already have the power to change the minimum requirements of the universal service to the level required by the directive, which is five days a week, by way of negative resolution. Of course, he is correct, but he went on to say that that was not acceptable. Quite frankly, the change he proposes in the Bill is little better. We believe that our amendment 25 is just, as it prevents the Secretary of State from moving changes through this Bill as a result of Ofcom's reviews. It would empower the Secretary of State only to lay the report before Parliament, whereas amendment 26 would remove the need for any approval process as the power to amend section 30 through this Bill would be removed by amendment 25. This would, we calculate, lead to the need for new primary legislation, with all the necessary parliamentary scrutiny that accompanies it, before any Ofcom-proposed service reductions could be instigated. The Minister will remember that I tried on numerous, if not dozens, of occasions in Committee to enhance parliamentary scrutiny of these proposals, but he chose to ignore my good and kind offers. He has another opportunity here tonight to add parliamentary scrutiny to the Bill and he should do so by accepting amendments 25 and 26. Other hon. Members are waiting to speak on these and other amendments, so I would like to speak very briefly about amendment 29, particularly about what we call the final mile. We moved a similar amendment in Committee and we will support this amendment tonight. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) has regaled us with the reasons behind new clause 4. I am glad that he has had that opportunity, which he did not have in Committee, as his was the only new clause that we were unable to discuss because we ran out of time on the final day. The proposal is of merit; it provides another opportunity to protect the universal service obligation. The hon. Gentleman put forward a strong argument. Anything that protects the USO can only be a positive proposition. To conclude, amendments 23 and 24 would provide a five-year buffer before any Ofcom USO review, and amendments 25 and 26 would remove the Secretary of State's ability to alter the USO through the powers in this Bill. If the Minister believes the words of his Secretary of State that he has"““no intention of downgrading this service””—[Official Report, 27 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 360.]," he must accept these amendments. He will have an opportunity to vote for amendment 23, which we intend to press to a Division if he does not accept it. If he does not accept and support these amendments, he will be saying that one of two things will apply. Either the Minister does not believe the Secretary of State or the Secretary of State's words are an empty promise—which is it?