Postal Services Bill

I have expressed opposition to post office closures for 10 years in the House, and my view is unchanged. My colleagues and I do not think that the Post Office should be privatised, but the Bill is going through. I would laugh if it were not so sad to hear Labour Members slagging off the Government, given the number of post offices that their party closed, but I had better confine my remarks to the amendments so that you do not call me to order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Although I welcome Lords amendment 1 to an extent because it would improve the report, it does not provide a guarantee of business. That remains a difficulty: there is considerable uncertainty in local post offices about future business, and I fear that many more will close if it is not dealt with. Many are closing now, not just because of the Post Office side of the business but because of the general state of the economy. At the risk of opening up another front of argument between the two sides, I will cite Ferryden in my constituency. During the closure programme it was agreed that Ferryden's post office was needed, but the post office was in the local shop, which recently closed. The reason was not to do with the post office itself—and I appreciate that it is not within the Government's immediate control—but the fact that the small shop, the last in the village, was considered to be no longer economic. When the shop went, the post office went as well. The same difficulty exists in rural areas throughout the country. With respect to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), post offices will not take up the slack in rural areas, because they are closing there as well. It is a simple case of economics. It is unlikely that the Ferryden post office will go to another business, because it does not exist. The chances are that it will end up as an outreach programme and a restricted service to the village. The important thing is to try to keep some postal villages in that village. I should have preferred an inter-business agreement that provided certainty about the future level of business. I appreciate the difficulties, but the continued uncertainty does not help. My main point about the Lords amendment relates to new section (3A)(b), which concerns the proposed share scheme. I wanted to raise the issue at an earlier stage, but unfortunately we ran out of time. The amendment states that when shares are sold for the first time, details of the employee share scheme will be given. However, we do not know what the structure of the scheme will be. Clause 3(2) states that when the Crown no longer owns any part of Royal Mail, the share held by or on behalf of the employee share scheme must be at least 10%. I know that the Minister said that on the first sale of shares the share scheme details would be given, but the 10% is vitally important, because the Bill otherwise allows the sale of 90% of the company to one another entity, such as another postal operator. Leaving aside the argument put by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) on behalf of the Opposition about whether 10% is an appropriate figure, the choice of this level does present a potential difficulty, depending on how the shareholding is held. In Committee, the Minister was pressed on whether the shareholding would be held in a trust for the benefit of the employees—the so-called John Lewis model—or whether it would be given in individual shares to the workers. We did not receive an answer to that question.