Postal Services Bill

I hesitate to interfere in what is obviously an important battle of words; perhaps the Minister will take on the mantle of responding to ensure that we have equity at the end of this debate. I shall speak to the substance of the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Rogan. The sale of Royal Mail and the separation of the post office network is a momentous event and is bound to cause concern and have genuine repercussions on the universal service and on the post office network, as we have heard and will continue to hear during debates on Report. We are very pleased by the stress that the Government are placing on retaining the universal service. There has not been a sitting in which we have discussed the Bill without that provision being at the heart of the remarks that have been made; we welcome that. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Low, whose representations led the then Government to incorporate a service to blind and partially sighted customers into the universal service minimum requirement and to put it in the 2009 Bill. Nine million items a year are sent free of charge through the Articles for the Blind service, and the Bill carries through that decision, a move which will be welcomed on all sides of the House. That experience illustrates the value of proper consultation to improve results and help people to feel part of the decision rather than the victims of one. It can be argued that there is a general duty on Ofcom to take into account the interests of vulnerable groups, but the amendments would require—just at the time it is needed—proper consultation with user groups, including small business, pensioners, people with disabilities and people in rural areas. People with a disability are more likely to use mail services as a means of communication. Disabled people visit the post office to post mail more than the average. Equally, other groups who I mentioned in that list need to be consulted, and the amendments would ensure that. The other amendment deals with concerns in those parts of the UK which would be most vulnerable to any reduction in the USO or the post office network. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland certainly feel more at risk than other parts of the UK. I am not sure whether Ministers have had the chance to read the current edition of the London Review of Books and, in particular, the article by James Meek entitled ““In the Sorting Office””. It is an extremely good tour d’horizon of some of the problems facing modern post services. He spends some time describing his experiences visiting the Netherlands and the operations being carried on there, some of which were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Christopher. In particular, I draw attention to the points Mr Meek made in the article about when he visited rural parts of the United Kingdom. Muck is a Scottish island two and a half miles south of Skye. The article states: "““There are 12 households on Muck, and they get mail when and if the ferry arrives from Mallaig … Bad weather can cut the ferries down to one a week in winter. There have also been times—it happened the other day””—" when one puts a first-class letter on the early ferry and it reaches London the next morning. So they get a very variable service. The problem is that Muck now has a satellite dish for broadband internet. You can even, if you are lucky, catch a mobile signal in some parts of the island, if the wind is in the right direction—I added that last bit, but it is true. "““Nowadays email’s so important for communication that the post is getting less and less important””," says one islander: "““I'm afraid the Royal Mail's in a losing battle””." The article goes on to draw something to the wider public's attention which I had not known, which is that Jersey, "““has just announced it is abandoning Saturday deliveries in an attempt to staunch the flow of red on its balance sheet””." I think that Jersey is still a part of the United Kingdom, although it is obviously a separate entity, so we are in danger of some dilution of the USO. We will return to the question of the USO and how we will protect it. We know that the Government are on our side, but I think that there are measures that might strengthen that protection. The amendments are about consultation to make sure that user groups, including small businesses, pensioners, people with disabilities and people in remote and rural areas, are consulted, and I urge the Government to accept them.