Postal Services Bill

The hon. Lady is right—and we have been clear about this—that the network must be viable before going to mutualisation. The problem is that we inherited a post office network that was so badly managed that we had to turn it round. She asks for specific details, but she knows that several were set out in our November policy statement. She ought to know that the National Federation of SubPostmasters welcomed the start of the pilot scheme offering document verification for pension applications in 106 post offices in the north-east. She should also know that that is only the first of three planned pilots with the Department for Work and Pensions; the other two involve national insurance applications and testing the impact of requiring jobseekers who sign on by post to attend their local post office instead. I would have thought that she would have welcomed such pilots.