Postal Services Bill

My Lords, this repeats an amendment already discussed in the Public Bill Committee of the other place, because we still do not really understand why the Bill is drafted as it is, so in that sense this is essentially a probing amendment. The current draft gives rise to concerns that the employee share scheme could be designed for people other than employees of Royal Mail. Do that on a wide scale and all the benefits of introducing such a scheme, which we have been through in previous discussions, will be dissipated. Of course we accept the narrow definition in the Bill of the employees of Royal Mail only, which could exclude former employees, but who else do the Government have in mind by the use of the term ““or include””? Could it be other public servants, customers or competitors? Surely the scheme has to be centred on and be for the benefit of the employees of Royal Mail, whoever it is owned by. The fault-line here, as in so many issues raised by this side of the Committee—some with the support of other Benches—is that the answer is, ““It will be all right on the night. Royal Mail is going to be sold to a wonderful company with all the virtues and none of the faults of big business””. I hope I will be forgiven for saying that, at the end of the day, it will be an average company because in the long term we are all average. We feel that this is the time for the Government to give a more specific response to this probing amendment in order to allay our fears. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say and I beg to move.