Postal Services Bill

I thank the Minister for her full reply. It was good of her to take the time to go through the detail we have raised because some of these are very technical points. Obviously we will need time to read through what she has said because she covered a lot of ground. I have not been keeping score, but my sense is that rather a lot of concessions were emerging in the previous two or three groups, which we are pleased about. We seek no vainglorious victory on this, but simply to improve the legislation, which is always the role of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition in these matters. However, I am pleased that we are beginning to see a degree of discussion and debate around the issues that is not on the lines of ““We have made the legislation and we will keep it””. We look forward to seeing what the Minister brings forward on Report. Most of what has been said in this debate and in the debates on the two previous groups has really been about the type of regulation that must apply to the universal service provision and to the universal service obligation within that. There is bound to be tension between economic regulation on the one hand, which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, spoke to very fully, and the more social regulation which this side of the Committee wishes to see strengthened in order to ensure that the citizenship approach to the service is preserved. As many noble Lords have said, this is in a sense a fault-line across all the regulation that applies to former public utilities. I do not think that anyone has got it right yet and that there are going to be tensions. You cannot have at the same time the best possible public provision and the most profit-generating and economically appropriate way of doing these things because the two are in conflict. Profit will often—not always, but often—drive out the best. We have to live with that, and as the Minister said, we have to find a judgment that will work not only now but in the long term. Although noble Lords who have spoken in the debate come from different places, we are all trying to seek one thing, which is that in times of change there will be some stability in the processes we are engaging with in this Bill. I felt that the Minister did respond in a way that gives us some assurance that on Report we will be able to see that built into the Bill. She also tried to explain why the Bill spends a lot of time future-proofing the arrangements. This may be simply because the advice she is getting from her civil servants is that, having gone through this in 2009, having walked up the aisle towards the altar and having been jilted at that point, they are experienced in these issues and therefore able to work towards producing what could be a divorce-proof marriage going forward. Perhaps there is a pre-nup situation here that we should be thinking about and using in other places, or perhaps not. Having said that, the last part of the Minister’s speech stressed that future-proofing does not necessarily open loopholes, but we feel a little sceptical about that. We would like to look at it in some detail and I suspect that it will form one of our debates on Report. However, given what the Minister has said and the assurances we have received, which are extremely welcome, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 24NZA withdrawn. Amendments 24NA to 24NC had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List. Amendment 24P Moved by