Postal Services Bill

My Lords, we have had an extremely important discussion of the Bill today. The real logic of what I believe the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and in particular the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, have drawn to our attention is that there is no need to regulate the monopoly issue—the Competition Commission can do that. There is not a real monopoly when you look at it; you are just cluttering up the business with an unnecessary cost. The issue is whether a regulator is needed to regulate the universal service. I can see some argument for that being the case, although, in principle, if provision of the universal service is written into the legislation and, as it were, into the charter, whether regulation is needed to make sure that it is delivered, or whether it can be done by another method, is a question. However, in terms of the competition aspect, I simply do not see any realistic case for the need for regulators to monitor it.