Postal Services Bill

My Lords, Amendment 2 seeks to keep the Royal Mail in public ownership and reflects the position set out in the previous Government’s Postal Services Bill, which this House considered in 2009. As I said earlier in response to Amendment 1, the difference between the position of this Government and the previous Government is that we do not believe it is necessary for the Government to retain overall ownership of Royal Mail. Public ownership has not helped Royal Mail to move with the times and to make the changes that it needed to succeed. That is why we need a different approach if we are to safeguard the universal postal service, and that is what we are committed to doing. The noble Lord, Lord Young, questioned the Government’s mandate for the Bill. The Liberal Democrat manifesto was explicit about the need for private sector investment and employee shares. The coalition agreement was explicit that: "““We will seek to ensure an injection of private capital into Royal Mail, including opportunities for employee ownership. We will retain Post Office Ltd in public ownership””." The Bill does exactly what we said we would do. There are several reasons why we should not seek to retain Royal Mail in public ownership. I covered these at length in Committee but, to summarise: first, the Government cannot provide capital fast enough and any funding we provide has to be cleared by the EU under state aid rules. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding spoke most eloquently from his past experience in support of that. Secondly, limiting a sale to only a minority of Royal Mail’s shares will reduce our ability to attract the best future owners for the company. The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked about the provision to amend the minimum requirements of the USO in Clause 33. Again, I will come to those issues when we discuss his Amendments 65 and 66. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.