Postal Services Bill

There have been Post Office ““locals”” pilots in all parts of the country. We are up to 80 local schemes, and Post Office Ltd has tried to pilot them in urban, rural, suburban and urban-deprived areas. It is trying to test them out over time, taking account of seasonality and cash flow, so we are learning an awful lot of lessons from them. The recent analysis of the ““locals”” project by Consumer Focus is publicly available, and although it has some concerns about privacy it was able to show that on issues such as access, longer opening hours and reduced queues, people have found the projects to be a beneficial step forward. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he was concerned about the universal service obligation and worried that the Bill would undermine it. Far from it: one of the Bill's main objectives is to secure the universal service, and Opposition Members have failed to realise that clause 30 includes stronger protections for the universal service than was previously the case. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) made a very informed speech. He was a distinguished member of the Public Bill Committee, who failed to attend only on the few occasions when the weather prevented him from flying down to London, but in looking at the amendments before us I have to say that he has made the mistake of calling for guaranteed business for the post office network and, almost, of wanting to keep things in aspic. On the train down to the annual meeting of the National Federation of SubPostmasters, I read the federation's account of its 100-year history, which mentions the concerns that existed when telegrams were being phased out, and when postal orders were used. In other words, the business and services that have gone through our post office network have changed hugely, and we have had to develop them and move on, so setting things in aspic—putting things in the Bill, as some Members want—would not help.