Postal Services Bill

I thank the noble Baroness for her courteous reply. I am obviously very pleased to have heard the three contributions from these Benches but I want to pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall. Of course, nothing is exactly the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago but it remains the case that the only way that the Government can get a very high price is to say that there will be no universal service obligation. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, and others would generally agree with that, but clearly the less you guarantee a universal service obligation, the more you can get, whether through an initial public offering, Deutsche Post or anything else. Furthermore, we are still waiting to see the guarantees on the inter-business agreement. The public interest—that is, the public in cities, towns and villages—is at risk, as is, by the way, the workers, and if I say ““by the way, the workers””, noble Lords will know where I am coming from. Later in our debates on the Bill we may hear something more specific and concrete from the noble Baroness in terms of commitments on the universal service obligation or the inter-business agreement. That is the context in which we are talking. As regards arbitrary deadlines, I am not the first person to mention dates with regard to the Bill. Indeed, it is self-evident that you have to mesh what we are talking about today with all the other dates that are flying around. I do not think that noble Lords should be denied the opportunity to express their opinion on this question and I therefore wish to test the feeling of the House. Division on Amendment 1 Contents 155; Not-Contents 227. Amendment 1 disagreed. Moved by