Postal Services Bill

My noble friend has referred extensively to Schedule 9 covering the transitional arrangements, to which the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft also refers. Those arrangements are very necessary because it has been agreed by Postcomm itself that its present regulatory system is dysfunctional, although to be correct, I think the words used were ““not fit for purpose””. We are therefore moving from a regulatory system which is not fit for purpose to another one by another regulator. Of course I agree strongly with my noble friend in what she said about regulatory creep. So we are moving from an unsatisfactory situation into the unknown. I have a second and rather more important point to make. My noble friend on the Front Bench keeps referring to Ofcom, which is absolutely right, but Schedule 9 gives the Secretary of State three order-making powers. Given that, we must ask the Government just to think through what they might say at the Report stage about this transitional period. It is all very well to say that Ofcom will do this and Ofcom will do that, but it is accountable to the Secretary of State who in turn is accountable to Parliament. If Ofcom makes a recommendation, it may have the power to make an order itself. It does in certain circumstances, although on many occasions it does not have it without the approval of the Secretary of State. What I think Members of the Committee on all sides are interested in is not just Ofcom’s attitude towards regulation, but the Government’s attitude to the system of regulation which is laid out in tremendous detail in the Bill and which, earlier in the day, my noble friend Lord De Mauley said would be given further consideration. I am not sure that I have put it terribly well, but I think we still need to understand the basic attitude of this Administration towards a regulatory system for which, as it also said in Postcomm’s February paper, the building blocks have yet to be constructed.