Postal Services Bill

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 68 and 72 standing in my name. During our discussions, many of your Lordships, who are leaving the House quietly, have raised concerns about the prospect of other operators cherry picking profitable parts of Royal Mail’s delivery business. We have listened to these concerns and, as indicated in Committee, we have looked again at the Bill to check that there is sufficient protection in place. While we are confident that Ofcom has the necessary tools to ensure fair and effective competition in the market, we have come to the conclusion that there may be occasions when Ofcom will need to build in greater time to inform its use of these tools. These amendments therefore give Ofcom the power to require operators to pre-notify it of a planned commencement or expansion of a letter delivery operation on a specified scale. This notification mechanism will ensure that Ofcom has the necessary time to evaluate the potential impact on the universal service of such an operation before the operation has commenced and before any potential damage has been done to the universal service. The detail of exactly how Ofcom will calculate what constitutes a significant service will need to be determined, but the policy intention is for only significant letter delivery operations to be caught. As such it will not impose any additional burden on, for example, current access competitors, courier services or parcel delivery businesses. This is a light-touch, narrowly focused regulatory safeguard that will help Ofcom address an issue that has concerned many of your Lordships. I hope therefore that your Lordships will be able to support Amendments 58, 68 and 72 and I beg to move.