Postal Services Bill

My Lords, I have two amendments in this grouping. I propose, with the permission of your Lordships, to refer first to Amendment 24L. The purpose of this amendment is simple; by delaying the ability of Ofcom to review the universal postal service, the current minimum requirements of the universal postal service will be protected for six years. It is not my intention to go over a lot of the information so excellently put on the record today by the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, so I shall try to be brief. The universal postal service is a part of life for small businesses, rural communities, pensioners and others who value the six days a week, one price goes anywhere service. As noble Lords have already said, the universal postal service and the post office network are part of our nation’s infrastructure and must be protected following the privatisation of Royal Mail. By moving this amendment, I wish to ensure that the current levels of service we enjoy are maintained for six years. The British public do not want to see their service watered down. I believe that guaranteeing the service for six years, while not ideal, offers sufficient compromise for the Government to accept without discouraging any potential new provider of the postal service. Let us be under no illusions; our postal service is a national treasure. While the financial difficulties it has faced in recent years have led to a need for significant investment from the private sector, this should not be at a cost to the public, as is often the case with privatisation. If this House allows the universal service to be unprotected, the most vulnerable in our society will see increased prices and reduced services. This is not acceptable. With your Lordships’ permission, I turn to Amendment 24M. I believe that this amendment, and others like it, reflects deeper concerns about the impact that the privatisation of Royal Mail will have on services in our communities, particularly in rural areas. Noble Lords have set out in Committee a number of worries that they have about the lack of commitment from the Government to use this Bill to ensure that postal services are continued at a level that users currently enjoy. There is also a worry about the effect that this privatisation will have on the network of post offices, which are so essential to rural communities across the United Kingdom. I am instinctively nervous about this privatisation. I am not against privatisation per se but I believe that in this case the test of whether a transfer of ownership is successful is if those who need the service most see it improve. So far more questions have been asked than answered about the long-term future of postal services in rural areas, which in reality are never going to be anything other than a cash drain on Royal Mail. These concerns have been rejected by the Minister, who prefers to hand over responsibility for the maintenance of the universal postal service obligation to a regulator, whose remit is to promote competition to ensure that it reflects the reasonable needs of users. This amendment aims to slow down any attempt by the regulator to denude the service that users in rural areas enjoy. As the noble Viscount has already pointed out, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have similar characteristics in that the majority of their populations live in towns and cities and there is a substantial land mass that is sparsely populated. I ask the Minister of the day to report to Parliament on the impact of any review of the universal postal service on those areas to ensure that the people who rely on the postal service are not the first to suffer in the new age of Royal Mail commercialisation. That is why I have tabled these amendments.