Postal Services Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) for her general welcome for many of our amendments. I began my remarks by saying that a degree of consensus had emerged in the other place. The hon. Lady spent most of her time talking about access points and amendment 19. We must be clear about what an access point is. It comes from the directive; the definition of an access point and the requirement to provide them flows from the universal postal service directive, and we then define it in this Bill. It would be wrong for us to state that it could only ever be post offices, and to enshrine that in the Bill, because, for instance, some rural communities might need access points in a form that the post office network is unable to provide. I hope that the hon. Lady recognises that it is therefore important to have some flexibility. The hon. Lady was concerned about some post offices not being accessible, and gave the example that some of them might be upstairs. In addressing the access points issue, Ofcom will be required to look at the needs of users, and its obligations, under the Communications Act 2003, are much stronger than those of Postcomm, and they include taking account of the needs of disabled people. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will understand that the accessibility requirements have been improved. On access points more generally, the hon. Lady did not give the Government credit for the fact that in the—signed and legally binding—agreement we have reached with Post Office Ltd providing the £1.34 billion, Post Office Ltd has to secure a network of at least 11,500 post offices. That is the clearest and strongest way to ensure that the network is delivered. The hon. Lady had some concerns about amendment 21, and asked why the Secretary of State would intervene before the five years was up. It is sensible to maintain the Secretary of State's ability to intervene and direct Ofcom to conduct an unfair burden review. That measure adds some flexibility to the Bill. If all the evidence pointed towards there being a need for an unfair burden review, a process to allow a review to be conducted would clearly be beneficial. We wanted that extra flexibility in the Bill.