House of Lords
Royal Assent
Airports: London
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Spicer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to provide for sufficient capacity in the London airport system to accommodate the forecast expansion of passenger demand.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the Government are not in the business of predict and provide. We are committed to developing a new policy framework for the whole of UK aviation which supports economic growth and addresses aviation’s environmental impacts. The Department for Transport expects to publish passenger demand forecasts later this year to support the development of the framework.
Lord Spicer
If, as anticipated, Heathrow cannot take the strain, which London airport will? Perhaps I should add that I ask that Question as a former Minister for Aviation.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the Government have set up the South East Airports Task Force to look at how we can make airports in the south-east better, but not bigger.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, since the Government claim to be the greenest Government ever and have announced the construction of a high-speed railway line, will they also take forward their airline policy by restricting demand so that the CO2 emissions are reduced with the use of less environmentally polluting means?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we are indeed restricting demand: we are not authorising a third runway at Heathrow Airport or anywhere else in the south-east.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, does the Minister agree that, with five airports in London, there is adequate airline capacity? Is not the need for high-speed rail so that we can meet the needs of the domestic market, which is what is driving most aviation growth?
Lord Clinton-Davis
What effect, if any, do the Government estimate there will be on British aviation and employment if capacity in the London area, particularly at Heathrow, is reduced or remains as it is? What consideration, if any, have they given to these issues?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we have given a lot of consideration to these issues. I have talked about the South East Airports Task Force; there is also a wider, long-term, more strategic study. However, we will not make any significant increase in airport capacity in the south-east.
Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords, I forgot to declare an interest as president of the British Airline Pilots Association.
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, what proposals are there for the expansion of Manston Airport, which has a trunk road running along its southern boundary and a railway line about a mile away?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, that will be considered in the wider strategy, and no doubt the south-east airport study will look at it as well. I have to say, however, that although Manston has some attractions, it is quite a long way from London.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, I should declare an interest as a long-term supporter of the campaign to stop expansion at Stansted Airport. The Minister will therefore get great support from me for his statement that the Government are not in favour of a predict-and-provide policy. However, does he accept that the effect of long-term uncertainty about airport expansion at various points, and certainly at Stansted, has been a blight on the surrounding areas? Will he use his and the Government’s best efforts to prevail on the British Airports Authority not to hang on to property that it owns in those areas, thereby making the blight worse?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I was delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, rise, because I anticipated some support from her. The property issues surrounding Stansted are a matter for BAA. She also asked about uncertainty. During my research on this Question, I could not find 1 zeptogram of a suggestion that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State was going to change the policy.
Lord Rotherwick
My Lords, in the Minister's Answer to the Question he referred to the Government bringing forward their proposals for aviation at the end of this year. Will those proposals address the needs of general aviation, and will they bring forward a framework to revise the 1982 aviation Act?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, most of the study relates to commercial aviation, not general aviation. The noble Lord will be aware that a future airspace strategy study is under way, which will improve the planning of flights from the continent to UK airports. It will also impact on general aviation, but I hope not in a negative way.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, does the Minister hope that his watchword—that this Government do not project or provide—runs right across Government? Does it extend to other Governments? Does he think, for instance, with regard to airports, that the Dutch, French and Spanish Governments are taking the same negative approach to the question of air traffic?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we do not take a negative approach to the aviation industry at all, but we have maxed out the capacity of the population around Heathrow Airport to tolerate further expansion. We also need to constrain aviation-related emissions.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, will the noble Earl take this opportunity completely to dissociate the Government from the ridiculous plans of the Mayor of London to put an airport in the Thames estuary?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, we do not support any proposed airport in Kent or the Medway.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, does the Minister agree that aviation is one of the most successful industries in this country? In the light of what he just stated, what are the Government doing to grow it, or does he propose to reduce it? Can he also explain how much is saved by forcing more and more business from Heathrow to Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle or Frankfurt? What is the saving in green terms?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord’s first question about the importance of the aviation industry, but we do not want massively to increase the use of aviation, we want to keep it where it is. We must constrain our aviation emissions.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that in all the countries that have constructed high-speed railways, the demand for domestic air transport has declined significantly? Therefore, if the Government are determined to build High Speed 2—as I very much hope they will—they are perfectly entitled to rescale down the projected demand for domestic aviation in the United Kingdom.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the studies of aviation demand will take the noble Lord’s point into consideration. I understand that domestic aviation in Spain has been drastically reduced because of the construction of a high-speed rail network.
Lord Vinson
Does the Minister agree that in view of the fact that 90 per cent of freight and passengers will always go by road, it might be sensible to finish our motorway system first, and ease the blockages and the huge amount of pollution caused by them, before we get on with any vanity high-speed rail?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, that question is a little wide of the one on the Order Paper, but my understanding is that the strategic road network is largely complete.
NHS: Hospital Patient Maltreatment
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure prompt action when widespread maltreatment of patients in NHS hospitals is reported.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, maltreatment of patients in the NHS is totally unacceptable. The Government are determined to tackle this. Patient safety should be at the heart of everything the NHS does. The Care Quality Commission will be conducting unannounced inspections of NHS trusts. We are also seeking to strengthen accountability in the NHS and ensure that patients and their families have a stronger voice.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for that Answer. Is she aware that, over the past five or six years, I have raised in this House scores of cases of patients receiving appalling treatment in our hospitals? Although every case was properly authenticated, no hospital ever took action, no wrong-doings ever stopped, no culpability was ever admitted and no apology was ever made. Will she ensure that cases raised in this House by your Lordships will be acted upon without waiting years and years for an ombudsman’s report to arrive?
Baroness Northover
My Lords, I am well aware that the noble Baroness has had a remarkable record in raising these cases and she deserves enormous credit for that. Many of these patients have been very vulnerable and often voiceless. The first thing we have to do, therefore, is to ensure that the systems that are in place are working properly. The first duty falls to the individual NHS organisation to investigate such an incident and take action. It is for the Care Quality Commission to intervene where there are serious concerns, but the ombudsman, in her recent report, makes it very clear that we all have a responsibility here, and it must be our responsibility to make sure that patients are treated with care and compassion at every level of the service.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
Does my noble friend agree that what the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, said is very worrying? The Minister said that the Care Quality Commission is making unannounced visits to hospitals. My own hospital had two visits—one to Chase Farm and one to Barnet—just last week. Fortunately, they each received a very good report. That is the only way to ensure that there are no opportunities to hide away any maltreatment that may be going on.
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Baroness for calling me her noble friend. She is indeed quite right that unannounced inspections should surely help, though if you read the ombudsman’s reports, what is so striking is the lack of empathy for patients. Clearly, a culture change is required among those who are meting out poor care where that is the case. There is much very good care, but there is clearly a lot of poor care, and we must do everything we can at every level to try to change that.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, perhaps I may raise a more institutional issue about the hospital service. How many elderly and disabled people are languishing in hospital beds because there is no alternative—an alternative either in good residential care with or without nursing or in their own homes with a care package? I understand from a report I heard recently that there are hundreds of old people who could be moved on. It is when they languish in those beds that this kind of poor care develops, and I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, have anecdotally heard of people who say, “Just don’t get old these days”.
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. It is clearly in everyone’s interests, especially in this House, to make sure that older people are treated with care and consideration. One thing that comes through from the ombudsman’s report is that this does not apply simply to people who are stuck in hospital, although that is greatly to be regretted and we want to ensure that that does not happen. People in the hospital setting for routine care also are not treated very well. We have to ensure that for whatever reason a person is in hospital they are treated with care and compassion.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, the Minister will have been shocked, as were many of us, by the report from Ann Abraham, the health ombudsman, which reported on some very severe cases of maltreatment in the NHS. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, said, this sort of maltreatment has been going on for many years in the NHS. Is not fundamental change needed in terms of quality, standards, culture, complaints, inspection and reporting? Can the Minister explain how the new NHS reforms will address these?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Lord for that question. I would point out that the cases highlighted in that report occurred under the previous Administration. But I would not make a party political point here. It is something which we all have to address and we have to ensure that, as we change the NHS, we build in far better ways to ensure that the voices of patients and their families are heard.
There will be the new healthwatch organisations at the local level and the national level. Those organisations will report their concerns to the national board, which will talk to the CQC and advise the Secretary of State. We are hoping to put in place far greater accountability and there will be more local accountability. This is something which we all have to tackle. I note that the Royal College of Nursing has responded positively to this. But the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons have not yet responded.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, and I have talked about the malnourishment of elderly people. Age UK and Mencap have expressed concern about this issue. It will cost more if people who can no longer cope are taken into hospital because they do not have decent food. Will the Government monitor the results of cuts in the provision of meals to the elderly, the vulnerable and the disabled in the coming years following the cuts that local councils are having to make?
Baroness Northover
I should point out to the noble Baroness that the previous Government put in place arrangements to improve nutrition and to try to cut dehydration. That has not tackled this problem. I do not think that this is a problem of funding; I think it is a problem of culture.
Middle East: Rule of Law
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Soley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to promote and support the rule of law in the countries of the Middle East.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, in the Kuwaiti Parliament on 22 February last my right honourable friend David Cameron affirmed that we stand with the people and Governments of the Middle East,
“who are on the side of justice, of the rule of law and of freedom”.
As part of Britain’s long-term approach to, and friendship with, the region, and drawing on UK legal expertise, this Government undertake a range of activities to assist in promoting the rule of law. This includes training and mentoring to help build the skills and capacities of judges, justice ministries, lawyers and the police, and specialist support to develop policy and unlock legislative reform.
Lord Soley
I am sure that the Government and the House will agree that the lack of rule of law and democracy and human rights in the Middle East underpins so much of the instability and conflict in the area. I know that the Minister is aware of the proposal that I made to Zayed University in Abu Dhabi with outreach into Palestine to develop the rule of law in Palestine and Abu Dhabi. We have a very special position in the United Kingdom because of our expertise and history on the rule of law. Will the Minister continue to support the proposal that is now well developed for Palestine and Abu Dhabi to link up on the first postgraduate programme including human rights and international law in the Middle East?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, I am aware, as I think the noble Lord knows, of the project to set up the postgraduate school of law at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi combining Palestinian and Abu Dhabi endeavours. We welcome that as an excellent initiative and my honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State, Alistair Burt, has also indicated his welcome for it and suggested ways in which we in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can assist with the project.
Lord Hylton
Can the noble Lord confirm that this country has already assisted in setting up a system of courts in Qatar, and will they offer similar help to Bahrain and other Gulf States? Finally, would Commonwealth legal models provide suitable examples for similar systems in the Middle East?
Lord Howell of Guildford
On the final point from the noble Lord, who knows a great deal about these things, I think the answer is yes. Of course, we are active in offering legal assistance and legal training help in all those countries in the region that wish to accept it, which is most of them. In addition, we have the Arab Partnership Fund, which highlights priority areas for action, including the rule of law and anti-corruption work, throughout the Middle East and north African region. Obviously at the moment there are some problems in the way of carrying on these programmes, but wherever they are wanted and needed, we are pressing to offer them.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, will my noble friend agree that the rule of law must be predicated on an element of justice alongside freedom, and that most of the Middle East countries have used terrorism laws in the aftermath of 9/11 to put on their statute books some of the most repressive and catch-all legislation there is? The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned Bahrain, which has very repressive anti-terrorism laws. Are we working with these countries to help moderate their attitude towards terrorism and to provide a little more scope for peaceful dissent without dissenters being entrapped by those laws?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The short answer is yes. My noble friend is completely realistic in pointing out that there were some undesirable practices and programmes in the past. Our view is best encapsulated by a quotation from the Prime Minister when he said in Kuwait the other day:
“It is not for … governments outside the region to pontificate about how each country meets the aspirations of its people. It is not for us to tell you how to do it, or precisely what shape your future should take”,
in these countries. He continued:
“But we cannot remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success”,
in each country. That is the principle on which we proceed. Where we find obstacles, we will seek to overcome them.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I am delighted to hear that the Prime Minister gave such enthusiastic support to an initiative that was actually begun by my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton when he sat on the Woolsack. Are the Government specifically encouraging the very useful work that the Law Society and the Bar Council have undertaken in a number of countries in the Middle East?
I also agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, that human rights lie at the heart of the rule of law. In so far as that is concerned, will the Government particularly direct their attention to encouraging the countries of the Middle East to sign up to the protocols against the death penalty and the use of torture, and the protocol for joining the International Criminal Court, as Tunisia has done since the revolution?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, the answer is yes to all those points, and certainly to the support of the Bar Council. There is also the Justice Assistance Network, a cross-governmental network that draws on UK expertise to provide coaching, mentoring and twinning support for judges, prosecutors and court staff. We are active and positive in all these areas, and we recognise the work done by both the noble Baroness and the previous Government in this area.
Lord Woolf
My Lords, I should disclose that I am the president of the court referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. In that connection, perhaps I may underline the contribution being made by many law firms in the Middle East. Does the noble Lord agree that what will happen is that those countries will look at the way we observe the rule of law in this country? In those circumstances, is it not critically important to show that we meticulously observe the rule of law and recognise the importance of the European Court of Human Rights in relation to our own situation?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble and learned Lord is drawing me into a major and vastly important area on which I am not going to comment today except to say that his contribution to it is of course enormous and that we recognise the value of his opinions. But the broader question of the European Court of Human Rights, how it works and its relationship to the EU as a whole and to this country, is one that no doubt we will debate in this House vigorously in the coming weeks.
Côte d’Ivoire
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they are making to the United Nations and the European Union on the situation in Côte d’Ivoire.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, through the European Union and the United Nations, the United Kingdom offers its support for firm action on Côte d’Ivoire in the UN and the EU, and gives broad support to the work of the African Union. We supported the reinforcement of the UN peacekeeping force and continue to urge a robust interpretation of its mandate. We also supported swift action in the EU to apply strong and appropriate restrictive measures against those who support and sustain Mr Gbagbo’s regime. With our EU partners, we will review and reinforce these measures as necessary.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
I thank the Minister for his detailed response. Does he agree that while the world focuses on Japan and North Africa, we must also respond to the growing humanitarian and security emergency in Côte d’Ivoire? Some 400,000 people have been displaced, and 75,000 of them have already moved into Liberia, one of the poorest countries in the world. How will the UK respond to urgent appeals for aid for Côte d’Ivoire and, indeed, for other countries in the region that are affected such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana?
Lord Howell of Guildford
The noble Baroness is entirely right. What is happening in Côte d’Ivoire raises broad concerns that affect the global community, not just this country. I have particularly in mind the horrific murder of several women who only the other day were shot down in cold blood in Abidjan. I have been asked how we support these matters. We do it chiefly through the UN and the European Union. Our own Department for International Development is monitoring the situation and provides direct help, particularly to refugees, to whom the noble Baroness specifically referred. So, frankly, our support is not mainly bilateral but through international institutions and the EU, working in support of France which tends to take the lead in these matters. However, the situation is a worry for all those concerned with civil rights and the promotion of peace and stability in Africa. What is happening at the moment is extremely worrying.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
I hope my noble friend understands that I am not advocating that we send a gunboat, given that we have very few gunboats left to send. However, will he consider the successful operation in Sierra Leone a few years ago? Given the support that, importantly, the African Union has given to Mr Ouattara’s successful election, what practical help can the Government offer to try to get rid of the deposed president?
Lord Howell of Guildford
When it comes to detailed help, particularly if force is involved, ECOWAS is the organisation that is bound to take the lead. In principle we support the proposals made by ECOWAS, but we think that the authority of the United Nations is needed before they are taken forward. If there is to be that kind of pressure backing up the views of the African Union High Level Panel, of which I am afraid Mr Gbagbo took not the slightest notice, any such firm intervention should be made through the ECOWAS system.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, given that the focus so far has been on mediation between the two parties in Côte d’Ivoire, is it not now time to abandon that since it is clearly not working? Any attempt to broker an agreement between the two candidates, one of whom failed to be elected and one of whom succeeded, is simply futile and fuels the problem?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I think it has been right to try mediation and talk, but the noble Lord may be pointing in the direction in which things develop. Mr Gbagbo has flatly rejected any attempt at compromise and his troops continue to commit violent acts in Abidjan, as I described a moment ago. The lawfully elected president, Mr Ouattara, remains unable to take over his lawful position. Things may go that way, but in the African Union and ECOWAS there is a great wish to see whether it can be done without bloodshed first.
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie
My Lords, some considerable time ago, I was invited by the trading company Trafigura to conduct an independent inquiry into the alleged dumping of slops in Côte d’Ivoire by it. That followed an invitation to which I responded positively to conduct an inquiry led and asked for by the Labour Administration in the Scottish Executive into the cost overrun of the Scottish Parliament. I am delighted to say that a Labour Lord Chancellor had the generosity of spirit to say to me that that was exactly the way to write a report. Subsequent to that, not a single member of the deposed president’s Cabinet responded to me. They were clearly gagged. It seems to me that I was getting dangerously close to the truth that there was widespread corruption in that Administration, and that is why they do not wish to relinquish office. Do I take it from my noble friend’s previous answers that he is telling me that I should just stay silent until democracy is restored to that benighted country?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Perish the thought that I should ask my noble and learned friend to stay silent on these matters. His experience and his skill and expertise in this area and many others in the legal and other fields are very considerable, as we all recognise. He describes an interesting bit of history. Indeed, modern developments confirm that in the matter of Mr Gbagbo we are dealing with a very unsavoury character who is clinging on to power illegally and no doubt using extremely dubious means to do so. That is recognised by the African Union, the United Nations and, certainly, by Her Majesty's Government.
Financial Assistance Scheme (Revaluation and Indexation Amendments) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Freud
That the draft regulations and orders laid before the House on 31 January and 3 February be approved.
Relevant documents: 15th and 16th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 9 March.
Postal Services Bill
Lord Tunnicliffe
( ) The arrangements must ensure that an equal dividend is paid from earnings to all participants in the trust.”
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, we welcome the principle contained in this Bill which earmarks some of the shares for employees in the event that Royal Mail is sold. Introducing the Second Reading of the Bill, the Minister said:
“A commitment to employee shares was not a feature of the previous Postal Services Bill but it is an important addition to this legislation. I am pleased that it has support from all sides of the House”.—[Official Report, 16/2/11; col. 776.]
I am advised that during the debate on the 2009 Bill—I say I am advised because, although I sat through the many hours of the debate, it is now but a fading memory—we accepted representations from noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, to make provision for employee shares within the plans contained in that Bill. Of course, under the 2009 Bill, the Royal Mail would have been in public ownership, so when we said we would allow for employee shares, we were able to do so without a specific clause in the Bill at that time. Since we are all in favour of employee shareholdings in Royal Mail in principle, let me now turn to the amendment.
The benefits of employee share schemes have been widely recognised. They can include motivating employees to become more productive, helping to align the employees’ interests with those of shareholders, remunerating employees in a tax-efficient way, increasing loyalty and reducing staff turnover. Of course, employee share schemes cannot do all that on their own; they have to be part of a wider approach to good industrial relations. Employee shares will not be welcome if they are felt to be a sop, to come at the expense of pay or to be a substitute for the usual channels of interaction among management, unions and staff.
The government position is that at least 10 per cent of the shares of Royal Mail should be put into an employee share scheme. That is why our amendment proposes that 20 per cent of the company be made available for such a scheme. We know that any privatisation of Royal Mail will inevitably entail a lot of change and upheaval. Its success will rely heavily on the good will of the workforce and on improved industrial relations—and on those relations remaining improved. It would therefore be appropriate to give a greater proportion of the company’s shares to the workforce. Since this Bill is designed to achieve complete privatisation, with the Government having no direct say after the date of transfer, it is important to pin down in legislation how things are going to work. We accept the principle of employee shares, but employees need to know a lot more about exactly how the scheme would work.
First, we would like to clarify things by our suggestion that the proportion should be larger than 10 per cent. I will listen with interest to the proposal from my noble friend Lord Clarke about 25 per cent and to the Minister’s response to that—there may be complexities about 25 per cent that we will have to consider. However, we certainly urge the Government to provide for a 20 per cent share. We need to understand whether employees would really have to wait until the last Crown share is sold before being able to apply for any employee shares. We need to know what mechanism is going to be there to prevent shares going to employees one day and being sold within a year or two. If the purpose were to have employees feeling that they have a stake in the company, what long-term purpose would be served by passing shares swiftly through the hands of employees and back out to private institutions or hedge funds, even if the employees make a casual profit from the transactions?
We need to be clear that shares would be held on an equal basis with equal voting rights for each shareholder and an equal distribution of dividend. Would some shareholders be more equal than others? Will employees be able to act cohesively to influence the strategic direction of the company to some extent, albeit from a minority position? We would like to have greater certainty about eligibility criteria: who would be entitled to shares or share options and what would it mean in practice? Last, but not least, what proportion of costs would be borne by whom?
There is still much we would like to know about the scheme. Over the past 20 years in the industrialised world, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of employees who own shares in their own firms. This has happened in the UK, other European Union countries and the USA. By 2004, one-fifth of British workplaces had share ownership schemes, covering one-third of all private sector employees, encouraged by tax allowances. In evidence to the Public Bill Committee in another place, Carole Leslie, policy director of the Employee Ownership Association, said:
“I am a bit disappointed at 10%, because 10% to me is small, which means that you have to put more effort into giving employees that real voice in the company so that they do feel that it is theirs—they do feel that that ownership, if you like, is real and it is not a token”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 09/11/10; col. 71.]
George Thomson, general secretary of the National Federation of SubPostmasters, said to the same committee that,
“if Royal Mail Group is privatised, I think there is a case for the postmen and the staff to own 20% of Royal Mail Group; for that to be mutualised as a concept so you do not sell your shares when you leave the company but leave them behind; and for the CWU to be on the board of the new Royal Mail Group. So I see it not just for Post Office Ltd. I see it as let’s do it right within Royal Mail Group. If it is going to be privatised to bring in private capital, there is a case for making it 20% of the shares, which are not sold on”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 09/11/10; col. 29.]
An employee share scheme can take many different forms. We believe that it is best if we look at the possibilities now rather than leave it until the Bill becomes an Act, while there is time to design a scheme that will work best for Royal Mail.
The Bill implies some form of trust. However, it is unclear whether these shares would be held in trust, with a percentage of the dividend being paid out annually to each employee, or whether there would be a pot of shares to be handed out to individual employees as shareholders. If there is an offer of shares to employees of Royal Mail, how will this be made most attractive to employees? Will there be an offering along the lines of two or three for the price of one? Perhaps there should be multiple pots of shares for employee benefits, with one pot in the form of a share incentive programme or save-as-you-earn scheme to take advantage of the tax incentives. A further pot of shares could be set up for training, bursaries and so on, which could be held in trust. These rewards could also be linked to transformational targets.
It goes without saying that any structure proposed for the future Royal Mail must be stable, if it is to be genuinely for the good of its customers and its employees. Any change in the status of the ownership of Royal Mail should provide an ideal opportunity for setting up a scheme. I beg to move.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, in one sense I welcome the amendment. Speaking for these Benches and, I think, for the Government as well, I think there is no harm in the Postal Services Bill emphasising the importance of shared ownership. The issue has already been rehearsed, but I welcome the fact that it is being raised again. However, it is not necessary to say that 20 per cent or 25 per cent share ownership should be required. We on these Benches, and I think the Government as a whole, are determined to ensure that as many shares as possible are distributed.
Another issue that I feel strongly about, which I am glad is being rehearsed again—and on which I am sure the Minister will respond, as she has done previously—is that share ownership and the input of the employees into postal services are very important. I know that the Minister has accepted that already, and we on these Benches also think that it is very important.
There is no harm in having a discussion on these issues, but being specific about more than 10 per cent could be counterproductive. Much as we would hope that share ownership will be quite high, we want to ensure that a purchaser feels able to have a level of control of the company that the purchaser considers sufficient and appropriate. I would urge the Government to provide as many shares as possible for the postal services employees. In that sense I welcome the amendment, but we should not be prescriptive beyond the 10 per cent that we have said already. I look forward to the Minister’s response on the various questions when the time comes.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
My Lords, I declare my usual interest as a former postman. As all Members of this House will know, I am bitterly opposed to the whole idea of selling off Royal Mail in part or whole. I have a dream; I live in hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will wake up one day, have a fit of conscience and resign from the Government, the coalition will fall and we will not have the Bill at all. However, being a realist, I suppose I have to accept that we have got past that stage and we now have to look at share ownership and the protection of employee shareholders. That is my interest.
If the Bill is to proceed, the shares have to be subject to a reasonable code of conduct that does not permit what happened to some members of my union when BT was privatised. I will come back to the vast quantities of shares and share options that were given to the people at the top of BT.
Issuing shares could be a beneficial move—notwithstanding my reservations about the whole thing—but it could have unintended consequences. Workers at Royal Mail will want to know that their shares are not allocated at the expense of their pay and conditions. Receiving shares does not constitute much of a choice if you cannot get a reasonable cost of living increase when circumstances allow. Employees will want to know that their shares will not cut across their other chosen and established means of engagement within the company. They will also want to know that the company is being put on a sound footing for the future. That depends on the regulatory and other frameworks that this Bill and the Government set for Royal Mail in the future. Employee shares would hold little attraction if they turned out to be merely an anvil around the neck of employees as the ship sinks slowly under the water. I hope that during these debates we will receive genuine assurances on these points.
In speaking in favour of Amendment 18, I put my noble friend’s mind at rest in that he will not hear me waxing on about the 25 per cent figure as I do not intend to move the relevant amendment. I will try very hard to convince the Committee that 20 per cent is the right figure. I support most of the points made by my noble friend who moved Amendment 18.
First, if there are to be employee shares, I support the case for employee shareholdings to be held in trust. That is very important. I hope that the Government will not dogmatically reject that idea. If the pattern of the past is followed, employee shares will disappear like ice in a Turkish bath—they will go. They will no longer be owned by employees but will be available on the market for people to buy up. If you have your basic pay and some shares and you are under pressure to pay a domestic bill, you are tempted to dispose of the shares. If that happens, I believe that they should be disposed of back into the employee shareholding trust. I hope that the Government will take that matter into account.
Secondly, I agree that it is quite wrong for the Bill to propose issuing the first employee share only when every single Crown share has been disposed of. That would be unfair and illogical. I understand that 10 per cent is not the maximum proportion of employee shares that have been permitted in a privatisation. A whole string of bus companies were sold 100 per cent to employees. I do not suggest that the 100 per cent figure should apply in this case, but why restrict it to 10 per cent? I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, talked about the widest possible issuing of shares to staff, or allowing them to purchase them. That is very important. Unfortunately, most of the companies to which I have referred went the same way as the other privatisations, with 10 per cent or fewer employee shares, and they tended to dwindle away over time. What is the case for a bigger share? I do not pretend to be an expert on anything, but we should listen to people such as Carole Leslie, policy director at the Employee Ownership Association, who told the Public Bill Committee in the other place:
“I am a bit disappointed at 10%, because 10% to me is small, which means that you have to put more effort into giving employees that real voice in the company”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 9/11/2010; col. 71.]
We have not yet dealt with the representation of employee shareholders, although I am sure we will do so later in our consideration of the Bill.
The general secretary of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters told the same committee that if Royal Mail Group was privatised, there was a case for its employees to own 20 per cent of the group. That assertion supports the amendment of my noble friend.
Peter Stocks, managing director of the Baxi Partnership, which grew out of a manufacturing company and now advises on employee ownership, also gave evidence to the same Committee. He stated:
“I think that 10% is quite low and I think that there is a danger that if it is just shares and there isn’t a participation culture that goes with it, it won’t change a lot. We see real results in companies where the whole of the company feel that they have a sense of ownership. They feel that they participate in decisions. They discuss decisions and when they make a decision they stick with it. It was interesting watching some of our members through the recession. Employee-owned companies are affected the same as everybody else. They would have gone through an awful lot of agony about how you manage through different times but, because those decisions were made in a very participative way”—
by staff and management looking at the issue together—
“once the decisions were made they were stuck to, and bought into, by everybody. Our members have gone through the recession in a very resilient way and I think that is down to the way you manage the company”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 9/11/10; cols. 71-72.]
Let us hope that when the Government get their way with the sale there will be a company with a similar philosophy on these issues.
The staff of Royal Mail—who are mainly postmen and postwomen, but there are many others also—are dedicated people. That has been proved throughout its 350-year history. If those who remain, following the loss of 60,000 jobs in the past couple of years, are to experience the anxiety of a traumatic change of ownership of their company—I cannot get my mind around “company”, because the Post Office is the Post Office and Royal Mail is Royal Mail—and if they are to be invited to take a shareholding in their company, it should be done in a way that is fair and reasonable to them and that gives them the prospect of a real say in the success of their company.
Immediate employment is not the only issue at stake for Royal Mail staff; they also need a final guarantee that they will be able to pay their rent or mortgage. They have a big stake. Working for Royal Mail is the means whereby their children can be educated and have better prospects in life, and they use their hard-earned income for a better life. As I said on Monday, postal workers may not always see eye to eye with management, but they are always acutely aware that a viable and successful Royal Mail is in their own interests.
Employee shareholdings have been encouraged by tax allowances; £900 million a year is spent on tax relief for employee share schemes, according to the Employee Ownership Association. However, 50 per cent of that tax relief is on discretionary rather than all-employee schemes. Therefore, 50 per cent of the tax relief is going to 3 per cent of employee shareholders. The EOA says that this is poorly directed tax relief. I should add that it is grossly unfair.
When British Telecom was sold, and it was promised that a golden share would be retained by the Government, those at the top of BT held thousands of share options, although I do not know the exact figure. Any examination of BT’s annual accounts will show how many share options were given to them.
We should be very careful how we treat this exercise, and there is a good case for equality. A 20 per cent shareholding should be distributed on an equal basis to all employees. This would turn the Government’s plan from a progressive proposal to a truly radical one. It would give employees a real sense that they had a say in the direction of the company and a stake in its success. It would stand a better chance of realising the worthy aspirations that Ministers have expressed in stating the case for employee shares. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply. In the mean time, I support the amendment.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I will make a couple of comments. I very much support the employee ownership proposed in this Bill, which is a great improvement on the Bill that did not complete its progress through the previous Parliament, because it includes employee ownership and because the amount of ownership proposed is very substantial. The Government have more details on that than I do. For people working in Royal Mail, there are two issues of great concern. One is that they should be part-owners in a way that this share ownership will allow them to be, in order both to have a voice and to benefit from the profits that will flow from their efforts and from the future success of the company. It is also very important that there should be the maximum possible investment in the future of Royal Mail. Those two issues have to be balanced.
By expanding the number of shares that will be distributed to employees, the ownership potential for a private partner is reduced, which will reduce his, her or their willingness to put additional money into Royal Mail. I caution that there is a balance to be achieved here. Ten per cent is enough to provide a real voice and real reward, but potentially up to 90 per cent going out in some form to the private market is a real guarantee that the purchaser, whoever they are, will have to put in serious and large investment to make sure that this the company is very successful in future. That is surely what employees want, too.
The noble Lords, Lord Clarke and Lord Tunnicliffe, raised many issues that underscored the complexities of trying to set up share ownership for employees in an effective way. The more I heard about all those complexities, such as how shares should be distributed between employees, the more it struck me that the Bill is not the place to set up a structure such as that. It is good to have a discussion in this House, but with so many tax and legal issues there is a need for consultation and much greater involvement by many parties, including potential private partners as well as employees. We would be trying to make the Bill do too much by accepting these amendments, as well as some of those that we will debate later.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Clarke, for tabling their amendments, and also thank my noble friends for their contributions. I should perhaps declare an interest; my wife owns and jointly runs a web-based mail order company that uses Royal Mail to deliver its products.
I am delighted that the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Clarke, agree with the Government about the attractions of the establishment of an employee share scheme. I say that in the most welcoming and genuine sense. We all agree that this key feature of the Bill will help to improve employee engagement and the culture of the company. We should not lose sight of the fact that the overriding purpose of the Bill is to safeguard the universal service and to secure the future of Royal Mail. A key means of doing that will be by introducing private capital. In deciding on the size of the stake that should go to employees, as my noble friend Lady Kramer said, the Government have had to balance giving a meaningful stake to employees with the imperative of ensuring the private sector investment that the company needs. This is a matter of judgment.
I will put in context the commitment that we are making through Clause 3. The minimum 10 per cent share requirement in the Bill is the largest statutory employee share scheme of any major privatisation. The share is unprecedented, and there is no doubt that it is meaningful. Most major privatisations did not even refer to employee shares in their respective Bills. Furthermore, the share schemes that eventuated offered smaller stakes: 5 per cent in the case of BT and British Gas, and less than that for the other utilities of electricity and water. Only Rolls Royce and BA came close, at 10 per cent and 9.5 per cent respectively. However, we are committed to at least 10 per cent.
I share with my noble friend Lady Kramer experience of advising companies in similar situations. I did that for nearly 20 years, and my experience convinced me that a requirement that employees should own at least 20 per cent, or even 25 per cent, of the shares in the company, as the amendments suggest, would jeopardise getting the investment that the company needs simply by virtue of the substantial size of that stake. We therefore unfortunately cannot accept the increases to the size of the employee share scheme proposed by these amendments. I hope that noble Lords will accept that what is offered is offered in good faith, and that to commit to more would prejudice our ability to achieve a sale.
The requirement to pay equal dividends to all participants of the scheme certainly has attractions. However, Clause 3 is designed to maintain as much flexibility as possible to design the right scheme. We would be ill advised to set in stone the form of an employee share scheme until we have more certainty on the form of the private sector investment. Furthermore, there are other equally sensible methods for determining the allocation of shares and therefore dividend payments. An example of another equally sensible method is length of service, for example. I therefore urge noble Lords not to restrict options at this stage.
The noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Clarke, asked about the specific route to be followed. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, helpfully compared, for example, share trusts against individual ownership. This subject will come up again in subsequent debates on amendments. In brief, some of the benefits of share trusts are that they can be structured to last indefinitely. Depending on their design, they would always keep the capital value of the shares within the trust. Against that, this may not be the appropriate form of scheme to motivate individuals, and we will assess the merits of a share trust and other designs at the appropriate time. Individual ownership clearly offers individuals the opportunity to build up a share pot while they are employed in the business, which they can benefit from when they retire or move on. Individual shares can also be better for employees, in that they offer a greater sense of ownership and can be more tax efficient. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, suggested other options, which I found very helpful. This emphasises why it is important at this stage that we keep our options open.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, specifically pointed out some risks of going down the route of issuing shares to employees. As I have said, the exact form of the scheme is still being developed and will be likely to be dependent on the form of the private sector investment. If the share scheme allows for individual ownership of shares by employees, we will obviously explore the most appropriate way of encouraging employees to keep their shares for the long term. Many of the tax efficiencies associated with those schemes relate to a certain holding period, which could be incorporated into the scheme rules. Noble Lords should not assume that employees will automatically sell their shares. In its written evidence to the other place, ifs ProShare noted that two-thirds of BT employees retained their shares rather than selling them off.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, was concerned that there is no guarantee in the Bill that employees will get any shares until the Government have sold their entire holding. Employee shares are an integral part of our policy for Royal Mail, and we have committed to ensuring that there are shares within the scheme at the same time as private capital is introduced. This is the strongest legislative commitment of any major privatisation. The exact sequence of events in such a large and complex sale is difficult to predict at this stage. This means that we need to maintain a degree of flexibility about precisely when during the process the scheme is set up, so as not to complicate that process even further.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, quoted Employee Ownership Association evidence to the Commons Public Bill Committee, saying that 10 per cent was not enough. I might give another quote from evidence to that committee. Alexy Armitage of ifs ProShare said:
“Although they might not hold as much as 10 per cent, or more than that, they like the fact that they own shares in their company and they see that as a benefit and a worthwhile thing to do”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee; 9/11/10; col. 71.]
That is at all levels, not just executives; it goes right through those organisations.
The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, was concerned about how to ensure that management does not get all the shares. I think that was the nub of his concern. He makes a very important point. As I have said, it is too early to get into the specifics, but we imagine that management will be able to benefit from the share scheme as well as other employees. However, the point is to incentivise employees and to give most of the shares to management would simply destroy that purpose; that is absolutely not the intent.
The future ownership of Royal Mail, by both private investors and its employees, will be inextricably linked. Within the important boundaries set by Clause 3, the exact size and form of the scheme will, therefore, be informed by the type and detail of the transaction. It is very important that we keep our options open, for the reasons mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, among other things. I assure noble Lords who have taken part in this debate that their suggestions will be taken into account. I, therefore, ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this important debate and the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, for his general support. I hope that his influence will be, as I think I heard him say, that as many shares as possible go to employees. I accept that this debate is about balance and we are obviously putting our finger on a particular balance. I certainly hope that the eventual situation is closer to our position than the minimum.
I thank my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead for his contribution. I hope that the Government will look back at previous privatisations because they have not been universally successful in properly engaging employees through share ownership schemes. His other point, which supplements my own point, is important: that this must not be seen as in place of a proper relationship between employees, trade unions and the new company but must complement it and make the whole relationship stronger and more meaningful. He referred to the trust solution, and the closer we are to a trust solution than an individual-ownership solution the more comfortable we would be. We hope that the Government are thinking in that way.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that this was a great improvement on the previous Government’s contribution. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, is not here to assure me that my recollection and research are correct, but my understanding of our debate is that we took the point on employee share ownership but because our Bill did not have a 100 per cent sale, it left within our discretion an ability to award shares—fairly late in the Bill we were persuaded of that situation—and therefore our advice was that we could bring that forward without the need for a specific clause.
The noble Baroness made the point that there must be a balance between the new owners and the employees, which I take on board—I think it is the same point as the Minister made. However, she said that it would be wrong to introduce too much complexity into the Bill. My reading of the situation is that this will be quite a lengthy process, and we are seeking as much clarity as possible in this area, because we want to create confidence in the workforce. The more that can be done to create that confidence, the better the outcome.
Lord De Mauley
If it helps the noble Lord, I can say that that is a helpful suggestion.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Thank you very much. With that response, I beg leave to withdraw.
Lord Tunnicliffe
“( ) Any employee share scheme will be entitled to have at least one representative from the scheme on the board of any company operating the scheme.”
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, we have just debated the merits of having an employee share scheme, for which there seemed to be general support on all sides of the Committee. We previously debated the merits of there being an employee representative directly appointed to the board of Royal Mail. That, too, garnered some support around your Lordships’ House—I particularly recall the powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. However, despite warm words for the principle by the Minister, on that occasion at least, she refused to incorporate any provision in the Bill on this matter.
The amendment proposes that the employee share scheme should be entitled,
“to have at least one representative from the scheme on the board of any company operating the scheme”.
That person might be an employee or an agent or expert or other representative chosen by the employee share scheme to represent its interests appropriately on the board of Royal Mail. As we have heard, one of the main purposes of an employee share scheme is to secure a greater identification and involvement of the workforce with the company. Given that the employee share scheme, most probably constituted under a trust deed, is the embodiment of this, it would seem a very sensible proposition to cement the relationship by affording the trust representation at the highest level of decision making in the company.
Postal workers already have a major stake in the company, as their livelihoods depend upon its viability. They are what my noble friend Lord Myners called “high-conviction” stakeholders—the sort of people who should make up the shareholder representation on the board—because, as well as being employees of the company, they have a cash stake in its success. I understand that where these schemes have worked successfully, an example being a Norwegian airline, employees go around switching lights off in offices and storerooms where they are not needed. That is the sort of personal involvement we would want to see.
Employee shareholders with a minimum of 10 per cent shares in what would be one of the country’s major private companies—a privatised Royal Mail—should be encouraged to take part in the work of the board of the Royal Mail. Postal workers have over many decades secured comprehensive negotiating rights on matters of national and local significance. This has meant that people in the workforce have some influence over their own working lives. They have made the workplace a better, safer, more amenable and rewarding place. Royal Mail management, for its part, fully accepts that the workforce has a say in workplace relationships. Sometimes there are conflicts but in most cases these are resolved by the usual pattern of industrial relations that has been established in the industry. The modernisation agreement in March last year has improved relations and allowed the company to go forward positively.
If there is to be an employee share scheme—and undoubtedly there will be one with the enthusiasm for it in all parts of the House—it is only right that it should be introduced with employee involvement and an employee voice. Placing a member on the board to represent the employee share scheme would be a benefit to both the workforce and the employer. Of course, one representative on the board would not be able to outvote the rest of the board, but that representative could ensure that he represents the viewpoint of the employee share scheme and the employees when a decision is debated and voted on in the new company. The workforce would see that there was someone who reflected the experiences and concerns at the highest level and the employer could have an immediate expression of the wider, long-term concerns of the workforce. I beg to move.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I support the amendment, which is rather similar to something that I put forward in a previous sitting in Committee. I got the impression then that there was general agreement on all sides of the House that staff representation is a good thing that everyone could support. Everybody seems to agree that the involvement and commitment of the staff are very necessary, indeed essential, for the new company to make progress and for the future of Royal Mail. For that reason, it is necessary to state clearly in the Bill that staff representation is essential. Indeed, rather than just “at least one representative”, I would suggest that it will probably be necessary to have more than one representative, but staff representation will certainly be necessary for the success of the scheme and of the company. Therefore, I hope very much that the general agreement around this idea commends it to the Government. If they do not accept this wording, I hope that they will accept something very similar before the Bill leaves this House.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I do not think that any of us could possibly disagree with the thinking behind the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. However, I am back with my noble friend Lady Kramer in questioning whether it would be sensible to include such a provision in the Bill. The problem is that we are faced with an enormous quantum of uncertainty about what will happen to Royal Mail and the Post Office when the Bill is enacted. If we were to accept the amendment, we would be piling one uncertainty on top of another. There may well be a share scheme and an entirely separate agreement between the board and the principal shareholder—which is quite likely to be the outcome—as to what the representation on the board should be. That might indeed include employees. Whether they should be people who are also on a trust holding shares on behalf of the employees, if such a trust were formed, is a matter for speculation. While nobody can quarrel with some of the thinking behind this amendment, and indeed some other amendments, it is very difficult to believe that it would be sensible at this stage to put the matter on the face of the Bill.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, I was pleased to see the role that ACAS played in helping the company and the union come together to draw up the modernisation agreement in March 2010. That was a culmination of many years’ work and has received praise from the chief executive of Royal Mail, Moya Greene, as well as from Richard Hooper, Ministers, the Opposition and the trade union involved.
Making Royal Mail into a private company is bound to cause anxiety and create disruption for employees and management alike. In those circumstances, measures to improve the atmosphere of co-operation and cohesion are to be welcomed. The proposal for employee shares, if gone about in the right way, could help that process. Assurance on the issue of pension rights, continuity of employment and recognition rights would also be helpful. The proposal for employee shareholders to have representation on the company board is interesting and enlightened. I hope that the Government will consider it seriously.
Deutsche Post has been held up as a shining example of a postal service company. Richard Hooper showered the company with praise for its modern attitude, heavy investment in up-to-date technology and overall efficiency. I readily acknowledge that Deutsche Post, although 20 per cent of the company is owned by a state-owned bank, has been passed from public ownership to private control, but it has a statutory duty to maintain a certain number of post offices. My point is that Deutsche Post has not one, two or three but 10 employee representatives on its supervisory board. If it is good enough for Deutsche Post—a shining example of a modern, go-getting privatised post operator—and for Post Danmark and many other European companies, to have employee representation on the board, why would it be so bad to cater for employee representation on the board in the Government's plans to privatise Royal Mail?
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer—in a debate on a previous amendment—and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, questioned the need to include so much in the Bill. Building trust is an important element in this process. Positive statements from the Government at this stage would give an indication of their intent. Keeping all options open, as has been urged from the government Benches, will not give the reassurance required. I very much support Amendment 20.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
I, too, support the amendment. In my experience, where employees have a stake in the business—such as being shareholders—the greater the influence they have in that business, the bigger the responsibility they take. It is a win-win situation. The presence of employees on the board means that they react differently. The evidence from when that has happened where I have been involved as a trade union official is that their ownership of the business and its success has been reinforced. The whole workforce engages in the business as a result of that recognition.
Baroness Kramer
This discussion is expressing general agreement, as the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said, that it would be advantageous to have employees represented. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, hit the problem on the head. I am sure that she states accurately that Deutsche Post employees are on the advisory board. Under a European structure, that is exactly where you want them because that board influences policy, but it is not the board that we would recognise under British law. There are so many complexities that I do not know how we could possibly write an appropriate clause that could sit in this Bill and yet work under the six or eight potential structures and options that may arise. Therefore, although this discussion may be crucial for expressing the intention of this House, and, hopefully, of the Government, I cannot see any way that we could encode it so that it would make any sense on the face of the Bill. That is one of the problems we face when we start getting into so much detail.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
My Lords, when the Government consider the arguments we have heard about what should or should not be on the face of the Bill, will they take time to look back in history at the industrial democracy experiment that put Post Office workers—it was the Post Office then and not just Royal Mail—on local, regional and national boards? Representatives, for instance from London as in my own experience, were a conduit in decision making on very important issues like modification or improvement of services and the early days of mechanisation. That gave comfort to people. At regional level the situation was even better, but at national level not only were there two representatives—I will not name them now—on the board, but they were accountable to the rest of the workforce. The point I am making is that those people gave their time as board members—and they included women—without any share ownership. They were pleased to be part of the decision making and the understanding of why certain decisions had to be made. This was introduced in 1975, and that is why I am advising my friends on the other side to look at the history. It was only a matter of weeks after the change of Government in 1979 that the then Prime Minister—the noble Baroness who is a member of this House—decided that the scheme should be abandoned. We got the feeling then that boards were not the place for working people. I think what we have heard today shows that there are places for working people on boards.
I understand the complexities about putting things on the face of the Bill, but I believe it could be done and any prospective owner would welcome the chance of getting people in the position where they could be that vital link between the people doing the work and those who get the profit at the end of it.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I understand why the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, should be concerned about the uncertainty, but the one thing we know is that whoever buys this company will know perfectly well—it will be on the face of the Bill—that 10 per cent of the shares will be owned by the employees. That is definite, and similarly—I will be speaking later in subsequent amendments about how this might be handled—if a trust fund is established, the most appropriate way in which that would be contained within the new structure of the company would be to put an employee representing the trust directly on the board.
I see no great difficulty in drafting words to that effect, which should be considered in the light of previous experience. When we dealt with the campaign against NATS being formed back in 2001—I will also speak about that later—it would have been highly advantageous and beneficial had there been more on the face of the Bill than proved to be the case at that time. I am sure that would have convinced many of the employees about what was going to happen and the way things would go.
The success or failure of this venture, whoever buys it, is going to depend primarily on the employees’ contribution to the way the company will operate—and, yes, on capital too. That means that the new owners will have to manage the company in a way that, up to the last two years, we have not seen for a good many years within the Royal Mail. They will know broadly what they are taking on board, and I am sure that they would be very anxious to motivate and involve the employees as far as they can. Therefore, I do not see any great problem in finding a form of words to ensure that we have at least one representative.
Times are a-changing and I am surprised that there is a lack of radical approach, particularly from my noble friends on the Lib Dem Benches, on these issues. We have a recently commissioned report from my noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch about the desperate need for more women non-executive directors on boards. There is also a desperate need to have the workforce better represented in many companies than we currently have, particularly people who are low paid by comparison with those on the board with substantial incomes accruing from companies. These changes will come as night follows day, so I hope that the Government will be bold and will be prepared to look at this proposal very favourably.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
Having listened to all the debate on this issue, I must admit that I have a great deal of sympathy with what is behind the amendment. I also think that times have changed considerably. The atmosphere for putting workers of both sexes on a board was rather different and there was total hostility. I understand the Government’s difficulty about putting this in the Bill, but it would be helpful if the Minister would go away and think about a possible wording that would reassure everyone on this matter. For the well-being of those who are involved, it is important that they are represented—whatever the form, or in whosever hands, the Royal Mail ends up in.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for moving his amendment and all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. While the idea of an employee share scheme representative on the board may well have merits, it is for Royal Mail and its shareholders to decide how it will structure its board, just like any other company would. Thanks to this Bill, Royal Mail’s shareholders will include its employees in the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, spoke from his experience of the vital importance of effective employee engagement and communication. The Government wholeheartedly agree with him on that. The employee’s shareholding is not the only way to create that engagement. I understand that there are a number of initiatives that Royal Mail is following at the moment which also contribute helpfully to that—for example, the world class mail initiative.
As we have already discussed, in the debate on Amendment 4 on Monday, we ask noble Lords to accept that it is not appropriate to impose the composition of a company’s board through legislation. In fact, I am not aware of a single precedent where such an imposition has been made by statute. Furthermore, if this amendment were passed, it would mean that in the future a fully independent Royal Mail, which had no government shareholding, would be obliged to request new legislation if the company or the employee share scheme were ever to want to change the way its views were represented to the board.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her recognition that the scheme will enhance the modernisation agreement concepts regarding fostering better relations between the company and its employees. She raised the fact of employee representation on the boards of some European companies. Of course, my noble friend Lady Kramer is absolutely right that their corporate structures are very different to the typical United Kingdom board structure. The noble Baroness also gently questioned the Government’s commitment to the concept. Perhaps I may tactfully say to her that, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, admitted in the debate on the previous amendment, the previous Government had to be pushed quite hard even to agree to contemplate an employee share scheme in the 2009 Bill; we are embracing this concept wholeheartedly.
Richard Hooper’s reports for both this and the previous Government stated clearly that Royal Mail must be freed of the “spectre of political intervention”. I ask noble Lords to accept that specifying the composition of the board in statute will not help with achieving this objective. I would therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, and I thank my noble friend Lady Turner for reminding us how modest this amendment is in providing for only “at least one representative”.
As so often happens, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, probably lighted upon the essence of the debate, which is the extent to which such a provision should be on the face of the Bill. It is about whether there is uncertainty for the new owner or not. We disagree on that point. We want the new owner to know that there is going to be at least one employee representative on the board—I have to admit that we want to discourage an owner who would have difficulty with that. We want to take away the uncertainty so that, when Government are negotiating for either a trade sale or some other form of disposal, the new owner cannot resile from this provision. We believe that any owner who would have difficulty with it would not be good for the interests of the Royal Mail in the long term.
My noble friend Lady Donaghy, whose chairmanship of ACAS was so important to a period of change in that direction, pointed out that, while the European structures are different, nevertheless the acceptance of significant board-level presence is part of their legal structure. There is significant employee representation, and large, successful European companies manage with that. Under the structure of our company law, the only way we can sensibly introduce such a requirement into the new structure is by including a provision about who should be on the board. It is a change of attitude, but we are living in a changing world.
I concur with my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead that there was an important initiative in the 1970s on moving towards industrial democracy. I was involved in that on one side of the fence, many of my noble friends were on the other side, and we were starting to make some progress. In many ways I wish we had built on this so that we might not be having this debate now. We would probably be taking the involvement of the workforce for granted in the management of major companies, whether in the private or public sector, because we would have had years of experience of it working. I think that this is the time to set this down.
When I was on the government Benches, I always got a sense from my civil servants that, when they had run out of ideas, they scribbled on a piece of paper “Not appropriate”. Another one that they would come up with was, “It is unprecedented”. Of course, all law is about setting precedents, and we think that this is an occasion when this chance should be seized.
Clearly, I am not going to press the amendment today. We will read the Minister’s words with great care, but we may come back to the issue because I think it is an important marker of the style and the character of company that we hope Royal Mail will become. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, this repeats an amendment already discussed in the Public Bill Committee of the other place, because we still do not really understand why the Bill is drafted as it is, so in that sense this is essentially a probing amendment. The current draft gives rise to concerns that the employee share scheme could be designed for people other than employees of Royal Mail. Do that on a wide scale and all the benefits of introducing such a scheme, which we have been through in previous discussions, will be dissipated. Of course we accept the narrow definition in the Bill of the employees of Royal Mail only, which could exclude former employees, but who else do the Government have in mind by the use of the term “or include”? Could it be other public servants, customers or competitors? Surely the scheme has to be centred on and be for the benefit of the employees of Royal Mail, whoever it is owned by.
The fault-line here, as in so many issues raised by this side of the Committee—some with the support of other Benches—is that the answer is, “It will be all right on the night. Royal Mail is going to be sold to a wonderful company with all the virtues and none of the faults of big business”. I hope I will be forgiven for saying that, at the end of the day, it will be an average company because in the long term we are all average. We feel that this is the time for the Government to give a more specific response to this probing amendment in order to allay our fears. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say and I beg to move.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has explained, Amendment 21 relates to the scope of the employee share scheme. The words “or include”, which through his amendment he seeks to remove, allow the employee share scheme to encompass those employees of Royal Mail who work for its subsidiaries, even if those subsidiaries do not fall strictly within the definition of a Royal Mail company in Clause 2. Royal Mail has a number of subsidiaries that do not themselves directly provide the universal service, but would nevertheless be considered to be part of the overall company infrastructure and play an essential role. An example would be Royal Mail Estates Ltd, which oversees Royal Mail’s property portfolio. It is clearly our intent that those who work for any Royal Mail company be able to be part of the employee share scheme, but without the words “or include” in subsection (4), there would be significant legal doubt over whether the Government could extend employee shares to the employees of other group companies not strictly falling within the definition of a Royal Mail company.
We do not wish to create a situation where some staff in the group are barred by statute from being members of the employee share scheme. It would mean that they would not have the same incentives to engage with the business they work for and share in its future success. I do not believe that that is what the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, wants, and I therefore ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, it would be unprecedented for someone to rise from these Benches and say that they were wholly satisfied with the answer, and therefore I will not set that dangerous precedent. I will say that I like what I have heard, and I will study the noble Lord’s words with great care, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 21ZB. They are tabled in the name of my noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, who regrettably and unavoidably cannot be here today. She sends her apologies. My noble friend is currently a partnership director of National Air Traffic Services. Had she been here, she would have been able to give us the benefit of her current experience and no doubt update us on the prospects facing NATS employees, who may be moving towards 100 per cent privatisation in due course. As many noble Lords know, I was previously a partnership director of NATS, so both of us have some experience of a reasonably successfully scheme for handling employee share ownership.
There are a variety of ways in which shares can end up in the hands of employees when privatisations take place. Since the first in 1982, when 90 per cent of the shares in British Aerospace eventually went to employees, there has been a range of offerings—nine or 10 privatisations. The majority were done through institutional public offerings in which employees picked up individual shares and as owners of shares were no different from people in the market. In 2001, when the public/private partnership for NATS was formed, we saw a novel approach adopted. It involved only 5 per cent of the shares. As is often the case when we come to legislation, there is an untold story. It is that had the unions been more willing to participate in planning for the change in 2001, they would have ended up with 10 per cent of the shares rather than the 5 per cent that was eventually the case. When reference is made to the Labour Government not offering shares in the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Mandelson, I suspect that had it had a different reception in the other place there is a distinct possibility that shares would have been on offer to the employees, probably in excess of the 10 per cent currently being considered by the Government. I hope that when we look at the 10 per cent and the way the offering is structured we use those untold stories usefully.
These amendments are, to a degree, based on the experience that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, and I have had in running the trust scheme within NATS. A direct offering to employees could happen with an IPO, so that the shares disappear all over the place afterwards. It is difficult to conclude that employees have been greatly motivated by what has happened with previous share offerings, although I would not deny that entirely. This amendment seeks to engage the employees more with the company. Paragraph (a) proposes that all shares should be held for the benefit of employees in a trust. I know that this may not be entirely acceptable to all the employees. Some of them might want to get their hands on the shares and to dispose of them at the appropriate point. However, I believe that in the best interests of the company and its employees it would be far better if they are retained in a trust holding, so that while employees are working with Royal Mail they get a return on the investment of those shares during the period they hold them.
Paragraph (b) states that,
“a dividend of equal amount shall be paid in respect of each share held by or for the benefit of any employee”.
The argument behind this is that all employees should be treated the same whether they are a postman or the CEO. There should not be differentiation in the way that shares are allocated. An equal dividend should be paid out in equal shares on an equal footing.
We then move on to Paragraph (d). In the NATS scheme, the shares are evaluated each year by an independent company because they are not on the market. The shares have changed in value over the years while they are being held by an individual. When employees then come up to retirement, they know what the value of their share is at the end point, and they then get the money in lieu of their shares, which then go back into the trust. The 5 per cent stake that the employees have within NATS is maintained at 5 per cent on a continuing basis, and the employees maintain their continuing interest in the company. Similarly, this amendment is seeking to establish an arrangement whereby they would not cash them in and sell them to other people but the shares would be retained within the company. When they left the company, the shares would then go back into the trust and be reallocated to new employees who would be joining the company in subsequent years.
The Government already have plenty of experience with such a model in the light of what has happened since 2001 with NATS. I hope, as I mentioned earlier, that we might reach a better arrangement, whereby a representative or representatives of those employees with the shares would find their way to have more influence in the company than they might under the present arrangement with NATS, but that is not covered in this part of the amendment. I hope that the Government are going to be prepared—in the light of the experience with NATS—to look at this very favourably indeed. The amendments are intended to be constructive, not destructive. I hope we might find ways in which we could put more in the Bill than we did when we dealt with the NATS PPP float, where it would have given greater confidence to the employees about the way in which it was going. I believe it would be helpful to anybody who is prospectively looking to purchase the company.
As an aside, for those people concerned—and I am one of them—that Royal Mail may eventually end up in foreign ownership, in the way that so many of our privatised utilities have over the years, this in a sense could be seen as a form of a golden share in retaining a significant British interest in it too, as the employees would be based in Britain. I see the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, is going to respond—he responded with great comforts on Amendments 18 and 19, although a little less so on Amendment 20. I hope when he comes to respond to Amendments 21ZA and 21ZB he will revert back to what he did previously and be very comforting.
Lord Razzall
My Lords, the amendment is extremely constructive. However, I have a concern, which is the one echoed by my noble friend Lady Kramer. For those of us who argued long and hard during the last Bill for an employee share structure—which was resisted by the then Government—I am worried that we should be too prescriptive at present as to the form that the employee share scheme should take. Those of us who have had experience in the private sector in employee share schemes know that there are a lot of ways to skin that particular cat—this may well be one of them, but, having fought and won the battle to get at least 10 per cent held by an employee share scheme, I am worried that we will overcomplicate the Bill.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, a number of noble Lords have drawn attention to the umpteen privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s which contained an element of employee shareholding. However, time after time, the shares held initially by employees found their way into the hands of institutional or speculative shareholders. They may have started out as employee shares but they did not stay as employee shares for long. What can be done about this? I do not intend to reiterate the very cogent points made by my noble friend Lord Brooke in relation to the experience of the National Air Traffic Services scheme. However, I will respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, about being too prescriptive. If there are viable alternatives, no doubt the Minister will deal with that in his reply, and I await it with interest.
The amendment proposes that all shares held for the benefit of employees would be held in trust. That may be difficult to accept for some employees who would rather be able to cash in the shares; I speak from my BT experience. I will not go into the details of that, but certainly a lot of cashing in went on at the time.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
No. Sorry to disappoint the noble Lord; I see that he is returning to his previous night’s form. There needs to be some return on the investment that the employee can anticipate.
The amendment proposes that a dividend of equal amount would be paid in respect of each share held by or for the benefit of any employee. When paying a dividend, it is important that all shares are equal and everyone is on an even footing, regardless of where they are in the company. That is an important principle.
The amendment proposes that no employee eligible to receive shares under the scheme would be permitted under the rules of the scheme to dispose of those shares to any other person. If we are serious about a stake in the company being held by employees, that is an important point. To prevent seepage turning into a flood of shares out of the scheme, as we have seen in the past, it is important to ring-fence the shares in the proposed scheme.
The amendment proposes that, on leaving employment, shares held by employees could be disposed of only by way of a transfer for consideration to the trust. It is fair that employees who leave employment and leave the scheme would be able to capitalise on their shareholding—that is one of the incentives of the scheme. To maintain the integrity of the scheme, though, they should dispose of the share back into the scheme.
The amendment proposes that the consideration payable under paragraph (d) would be an amount equal to what the market value of the shares would have been. To achieve a fair result for departing employees, a fair price for the share would be established in the absence of an open market. That would not be very difficult if other shares in the company were being traded. If this is not the perfect formulation of our ideas or improvements could be made, I hope that the Minister will take this away, give it serious thought and come back with an improved proposal to meet the same objectives.
It is a shame that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is not in his seat. In a wistful diversion down memory lane last week he reminded us of the “Tell Sid” campaign, conducted to boost interest in the privatisation of British Gas. We were told that Sid was the name of an uncle of the late Lord Walker of Worcester, who was the Secretary of State responsible for the sale. It is a bit ironic that the British Gas share advertisements featured a series of people so anxious to alert Sid to the share flotation that one of them was a postman who got knocked off his bike in the excitement. The mind boggles. If the postmen or postwomen of Britain are to be induced to fall over in the excitement at 100 per cent privatisation of Royal Mail—somehow I doubt it—perhaps the Government should address some of the questions raised in this amendment. They are serious; they make a constructive contribution and improvements so that a good idea becomes a very good scheme. I support the amendment.
Lord Christopher
My Lords, I apologise for having been diverted to another meeting. There are two issues that concern me on which I would be grateful if there were some comment. There is an assumption that there will be a market in these shares, and I am not at all clear that that will necessarily be the case. If there is not, how is it proposed to deal with that situation?
I may have missed the point on the other issue. Assuming that something like the amendment goes through, we have an employee share scheme of this nature and shares are sold back, will we reach a position where all the shares are in the hands of this trust, or whatever it may be called? How will we deal with that situation?
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, both the possibilities outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, could indeed happen. Again, that reinforces the difficulty of Parliament setting down conditions that will need to be thought through in circumstances that may be very different from those that we in this Committee envisage.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, Amendments 21ZA and 21ZB relate essentially to the design of the employee share scheme. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, explained, their broad thrust would be to ensure that shares are placed within an employee share trust. His proposal is helpful and constructive. I thank him and, in her absence, the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for raising the issue. I know that they both have a wealth of experience in this area.
As the noble Lord explained, an employee share trust certainly has attractions, particularly for its ability to deliver the Government’s objective to ensure a long-standing employee stake in Royal Mail. The Minister for Postal Services has been clear in the other place that he sees these attractions; certainly, he does not discount the matter. However, like my noble friend Lord Razzall, we believe that it is important to keep options open on the design of the scheme until we have reached a firm decision on the form of the transaction. After all, individual share ownership has its own merits, giving the employees a very real sense of ownership.
As I have said, the design of the scheme will in part depend on the type of sale we undertake. For example, individual share ownership could be more appropriate if Royal Mail were floated. In that case, the question of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, is answered because there would be a public market in the shares. It could also make sense—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, touched on this earlier—to have some combination of a trust and individually held shares. I spoke about this area more generally at some length in the debate on Amendments 18 and 19, as I did about the risks of recipients cashing in their shares early, and I am sure that noble Lords would prefer me not to repeat myself.
As I said when we discussed Amendments 18 and 19, paying equal dividends to each employee is a laudable objective. However, there are other sensible methods of allocating shares, and therefore dividends, to employees. I mentioned that in some schemes shares are allocated depending on length of service.
As regards restricting the sale of shares to anyone but an employee share trust, I can again understand the noble Lord’s concerns to ensure that the employees’ stake cannot be diluted by shares being sold to third parties. However, again this would place an undesirable restriction on the design of the scheme and would prevent us allocating shares to individual employees, if we thought that was appropriate at the time.
As I said earlier, it is in fact very unusual for a Government to commit themselves to an employee share scheme on the face of legislation. For example, I believe that—the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, will correct me if I am wrong—there is no similar commitment in the Transport Act 2000 to create the NATS employee share trust. I hope that all noble Lords welcome this upfront commitment to employee shares at Royal Mail but accept that it would not make sense to go even further and prescribe the particular detail of the scheme in legislation. For these reasons, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I am grateful to all who have contributed to the debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, for contributing but not for what he said. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his support. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that I accept the Minister’s view that in many respects the form of the transaction will determine the structure of the offering to employees. However, as I said, I do not think that we will get an IPO. I believe that in earlier debates, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said that he would be very surprised if we did, in which case we are talking about a different kind of structure whereby we sell direct to a company or group of companies, which in turn could create the trust advocated in these amendments. In the event that no market could be used as the yardstick for determining what the dividend or the annual growth in the value of shares should be—although one hopes that they will grow in value—we could turn to a mechanism based on the experience of using independent valuations of what NATS shares would fetch if they were put on the open market.
I recognise that there are problems with being too precise in advance, but, as I have said previously, the more that could be put in the Bill, the more encouraging and supportive it will be to staff who will go into this with disquiet and anxieties. It would also be better for prospective purchasers to know what they are buying into and plan accordingly. However, the Minister’s response has provided more comfort than I perhaps anticipated, given his earlier response to Amendment 19. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Whitty
“( ) No disposal of the Crown’s interest in a Post Office company may be made before—
(a) the Secretary of State commissions and publishes an independent assessment of—(i) the current financial position of that Post Office company; and(ii) the projected financial position of that Post Office company in the subsequent reporting period; and(b) the Post Office company is profitable for two successive financial years, excluding payments from government for services of general social and economic interest.”
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I support the other amendments in the group. We move on to the future of Post Office Ltd. After debating the potential conditions for a minority mutual share in Royal Mail, we are now talking about the possibility of the complete mutualisation of Post Office Ltd, or sub-companies thereof.
In many respects, that is an entirely different proposition, because more than 90 per cent of the outlets of the post office network are already owned by small businesses. It is not clear how the Government intend to mutualise the overall arrangements. I take for my text the useful publication, Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age, produced by the noble Baroness’s department. It refers in general terms to the Government’s belief that,
“a mutually-owned Post Office Ltd could be ideally suited for the economic and social role that the Post Office network provides”.
The report also talks about the possibility of basing the mutual on a combination of employees, communities and franchisees—sub-postmistresses and sub-postmasters. However, it is clear from the text that the Government do not have a clue how this will be delivered and are therefore, rightly, seeking advice from Co-operatives UK and other bodies that are experienced in mutualisation.
Given the premise of the Bill—as noble Lords will know, my basic instincts are in roughly the same territory as that of my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead—and given that Royal Mail is to be privatised, and Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail are to be separated, we should explore the prospect of potential mutualisation in that area. However, in order to achieve a mutualised Post Office Ltd, we need to ensure that there is a viable, sustainable and profitable post office network. Although the Government in this document and in other pronouncements have indicated their commitment to that, it is built on somewhat feeble ground.
I quote from the final paragraph of the report, which states:
“We are committed to the future of the Post Office network. It is uniquely important to communities across the country but is on a worrying trajectory of decline. As we have set out in this policy statement, we are dedicated to turning the Post Office around. This will involve a major refresh of the network and its products, and the Post Office turning the size of its network to its advantage”.
That, as an introduction to a prospectus, is not hugely upbeat. It suggests that there are a number of question marks over the future of the network, some of which we have touched on in earlier debates, and some of which arise from other aspects of government policy.
The Government claim that they are committed to preserving the current network, more or less. However, there are at least four aspects of government policy that undermine that commitment. The Post Office potentially has a fantastic national network and is a very good front office of government in almost every community. It can provide a range of financial and other services and can be a major part of the logistical network for post, parcels and digital services. However, at the moment there are a number of question marks over it. Only last week, for example, we saw a continuation of the regrettable trend, admittedly started under the previous Government, of taking away government business from the post office network; I refer to the decision of the DWP to take a major benefits contract away from the Post Office. That is another blow to the sustainability of the network resulting directly from a government decision.
As we heard in the debate the other night, there is an almost incomprehensible reluctance on the part of the Government to commit themselves to a long-term inter-business agreement between Royal Mail and the post office network within the new structure. As I said then, I am not committed to the IBA being in exactly the form it is now. Clearly there are legal difficulties, to which the Government have referred. However, unless there is a stable relationship between Royal Mail and the post office network, another substantial part of the potential income of the network will begin to look extraordinarily uncertain.
In addition, we have had the rather lukewarm response of the Government to proposals for the Post Office to extend its services. In particular, I am surprised that the Government so precipitously rejected what we were working towards under the previous Government—and which was greatly supported by my former organisation, Consumer Focus—namely, the extension of Post Office financial services, and in particular the provision of those services to people who are outside the main banking system. We have seen positive moves towards being able to use the Post Office in the mainstream banking system: RBS recently signed up to that. Now one can access the majority of major high street banks via the Post Office. The problem with the financial services market is that roughly 20 per cent of the population are excluded from it; they do not have basic banking facilities and do not have access, physically and in terms of credit, to those financial services. The Post Office could very simply bridge that gap at a point that would be close to most families.
I am surprised that the Government have abandoned that proposition. There have been more encouraging words about providing additional services, but it is very strange that they have closed the door on the provision of a banking service. Another Commonwealth country, New Zealand, has made a recent and spectacular success of using the Post Office as a banking system throughout the country. We should look at such examples for this country.
Therefore, there are dark clouds over the future of the network. Noble Lords will recognise that that means there is some uncertainty as to whether we could successfully mutualise the network and Post Office Ltd. In the same document, the Government indicated that for a mutualised Post Office Ltd to be successful, it must be able to build on solid foundations, and that mutualisation will be an option only if the network is financially viable. It is not specified how it can be made viable, how the assessment will be made or how the conditions of financial viability will be determined.
The amendment proposes an independent assessment of the financial position of Post Office Ltd, including its future commercial viability. It proposes also that, before we moved to mutualisation, whatever that may mean, we would need to have seen two years of profitable operation of post office Ltd prior to the decision in principle being taken. That is exclusive of the subsidy which the Government have for the next few years committed to the post pffice network. There is no commitment beyond that, and therefore any assessment of financial viability would have to be on the basis of excluding the government subsidy. Both the assessment of the network’s viability and of the proven profitability of that network would have to be established before mutualisation could go ahead.
I am not opposed to the mutualisation of Post Office Ltd. I can see many major advantages, not least to consumers and vulnerable consumers, particularly in rural areas and the outer suburbs. I am not at all opposed to the Government’s concept, given the premise of the Bill. However, in order for it to work we need to have established, effectively and robustly, that there is a viable company and a viable network.
I hope that the amendment would provide the means whereby we made that assessment, and would make it clear in the Bill that such an assessment needed to be made before we took the next step. I beg to move.
Lord Borrie
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Whitty. He has made a powerful speech not only on the merits of mutualisation, which are largely supported in principle by Her Majesty’s Government, but on the real difficulties of moving to it with any great speed at present.
I have a guilt complex about mutualisation because in the 1990s I was a non-executive director of the Woolwich Building Society, a splendid body with advertisements which many people remember to this day; “I’m with the Woolwich”, they said. I am afraid that I was one of those who followed the lead given by the executive directors, who I of course realise were going to benefit directly as a result. The building society gave up its position as a building society and became a limited company. Not long after that, it was taken over by one of the four leading banks. So, as I said, I have a guilt complex, which has led me—I hope not too far in the opposite direction—to be generally in favour of the idea of mutuality.
I was unable to take part at Second Reading, but I notice that, in principle, there were several voices favouring the creation of a mutual to run the post office network, including the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, from the Conservative Benches, who is not in her seat today, and others. We all know that the Secretary of State, Dr Vince Cable, had indicated even before our Second Reading that the Post Office was “ideally suited” to the co-operative style of structure, where employees—sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses —and individuals in communities would all have a greater say in how post offices are run.
When the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters spokesman, Mr George Thomson, addressed the Public Bill Committee in another place on 9 November last, he was “very supportive” of the concept of mutualisation of the post office network and particularly attracted, he said, by the John Lewis model. “However”, he added, expressing it rather more strongly than my noble friend Lord Whitty, the Post Office,
“has to be worth mutualising”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 9/11/10; col. 29.]
He then expressed great doubt that it was because it was, he said, a “basket case” at the moment.
At Second Reading, Peers who favoured mutualisation were just as doubtful, although their language about the immediate prospects might have been less extreme. My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who had another meeting this afternoon but who hoped to be in the Chamber for these discussions, said that mutualisation would not now make “economic sense”.
As my noble friend Lord Whitty has said, Co-operatives UK has been asked by the Government to consider the options. Will they go for a producer co-operative along the lines of John Lewis, which I have already mentioned, or a consumer co-operative like the Co-op shops, or will it be some form of hybrid? The intention behind this amendment is to unravel that over a period of time and come up with a suitable solution, but I am sure, like the many who spoke on this subject at Second Reading, that my noble friend Lord Whitty is just as much in favour, in principle, of a mutual set-up as they were.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 21C and 22ZA to 22ZD, and comment on the other amendments in the group, Amendments 21A and 22. This is a large group of amendments and I ask the Committee to bear with me.
Generally, this Bill pumps questions on issues of accountability, considering the enormous step that it proposes for one of our most cherished institutions and the number of vague answers that we have to questions about the sale of Royal Mail and the future of the post office network. With proposals relating to the disposal of shares in Royal Mail, to the nationalisation of the pension scheme, to the regulatory regime and to the mutualisation of Post Office Ltd, greater accountability to Parliament should be built into the Bill before it receives Royal Assent.
The Bill instructs the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament once he has taken a final decision on the transfer of the Post Office Counters business to a mutual body. Once again, there is no promise of an oral Statement, no debate, no chance to amend and no vote. These amendments offer the House an opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s later proposals in detail, including their plans for mutualisation. Several years may elapse between the Bill receiving Royal Assent and the transfer to a mutual organisation, but it is important that Parliament is able to scrutinise and approve the proposal when it comes into effect. Are we being denied the opportunity to scrutinise fully because to do so might cause real difficulties for the Government, or will the cold forensic light of parliamentary scrutiny undermine the foundations on which this Bill was laid?
We will not know the answer to that unless Parliament is able to consider future important actions and their implications more fully. So many questions remain unanswered. We are asked to take a leap in the dark about how Royal Mail will be sold, about what sort of Royal Mail will emerge in the private sector, and about what obligation a privatised Royal Mail will be under to utilise the post office network. A great deal of concern has already been expressed about the nature and continuity of an inter-business agreement. In the case before us, of Post Office Ltd, we are also asked to take a leap in the dark about the type of mutual body or range of mutual bodies that might end up owning our post office network.
What will the rules be? What will be the extent of the mutual? Who will be eligible to be a member? Are all to be equal or will some be more equal than others? How will the board be constituted? Could the mutual sell off assets? Could the owner sell on to another mutual, such as a building society, store group or a mutual set up for that purpose? Could mutualisation end in disintegration? How will a mutually owned Post Office ensure that it is on a sound commercial footing? What tests would a potential owner have to pass?
It might be far fetched, but what is to stop Rupert Murdoch’s family or someone else associated with a communications company setting up a mutual body as a vehicle for running the Post Office? Is the Minister setting a timescale by which the Government intend to complete the mutualisation process, or is this an open-ended process? Who will be accountable for the success of the Post Office when it is in mutual hands? There is a provision for an annual report, but what about a Secretary of State annual report? I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to make clear whether the Secretary of State will be responsible. If he will not be, who will be? What are the safeguards to prevent a mutually owned Post Office Ltd from suffering commercial decline or even catastrophic financial collapse?
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, the profitability of post offices, touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the need for a sustainable business plan, as set out in the last amendment, is important to me. It will come as no surprise that I come at this from the perspective of rural post offices, and it is here that I wish to probe the Government’s plans. Amendment 22ZD, on a sustainable business plan, seems to me the best place to raise all my questions. Although I considered spattering them into a whole series of amendments that we have yet to come to, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to put them all under this one umbrella.
Rural post offices are a key thread in the web of rural communities. If you can imagine a web on an old barn door, you cut a key thread and the web collapses. It is the village shop that is the key, but the post office represents the cornerstone of viability to that shop as it can greatly increase the footfall in these shops. Research shows that it can increase the footfall by 15 per cent or more. Quite apart from the invaluable services that local shops provide—particularly to those in rural areas without transport, which includes the very old, the young and the poor—it is the footfall in those shops that is the key benefit to the community. It is a place where old Mrs Jones can meet up with the young Master Smith. That seems a strange request, but the old and the young have different groupings in rural villages and it is really important for the sustainability of that community that there is a cross-fertilisation between the groups within it. That can only happen in a village shop.
I am keen to probe the Government on how they intend to keep the current network of rural post offices profitable and the sort of sustainable business plan they have to ensure that they can keep to the promise that they made in the November document, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, which states:
“We will maintain the network at around its current size”.
That document sets out how the new flexible service will attract new customers, and claims that it has already done under the new post office local programme. I have my doubts that this will be enough in the long run to give the much needed boost of confidence to potential sub-postmasters to pick up the gauntlet to invest in a new business in a rural area that will probably give a very limited return, that requires a huge degree of skill in accounting, stocktaking and people skills and that involves very long hours. Somehow this vital job needs to be made more attractive. A post bank, as mentioned by noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would be a sure way to give that confidence. I endorse all his words on the subject, especially with reference to the huge success of such a scheme in New Zealand. A firm commitment in this area would give confidence to potential sub-postmasters.
How are the Government going to ensure, in that crucial plank of their sustainability plan, that government departments will deliver their services through post offices? There is no way in which that will happen if there is a cheaper route. Once the £1.34 billion that the Government are putting in has run out, in four years’ time post offices will once again start to close. I suspect that most of those closures will be in rural areas. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has already referred to the DWP's reluctance to use post offices and to its closing down the contract on the green giros, which brought about £15 million per annum into the post office chain.
The trouble is that the DWP and other departments will always follow the cheapest route. Of course, the cheapest route might be the internet. It is not necessarily cheaper for a lot of people, because it ignores the cost of owning a computer and accessing the training if you happen not to be part of the computer age. Some people in remote rural villages find that difficult. As an aside, I put in a plea, vis-à-vis long-term sustainability, that the Government use part of the £1.34 billion to equip post offices, where necessary, as mini-internet cafes and to pay sub-postmasters to help the digitally excluded in rural areas to access government services via the internet. That would be a helpful service for the Government to invest in.
It is typical that where post offices are most threatened—in remote rural areas—internet broadband connections are all too often non-existent. To put it the other way around, post offices are essential in the delivery of services where no broadband exists.
My question remains: how will the Government persuade their departments to use the Post Office? Local government services are another possibility, but under the current cuts and financial stringency how can the Government twist enough arms to make local authorities deliver through post offices as opposed to the cheaper option of using their sparse and increasingly rare local authority offices? I say that that is the cheaper option, but it is not really cheaper; it is certainly not cheaper to the consumer, who has to pay increased transport costs to get to the outlet. We should bear in mind that all too often the consumers who want to access those facilities are those who can least afford such costs.
All the recent trends in this area seem to be for the Government to reduce their use of post offices for the delivery of government services. What are the Government going to do to reverse that trend? How will they maintain the network at its current size? Do they have a sustainable business plan? I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to answer me.
While we are discussing Clause 4 and the possible mutualisation of the Post Office, do the Government intend in the near future to introduce a majority of sub-postmasters on to the board of Post Office Ltd as a trial run to see whether sub-postmasters running the Post Office company helps? I think it would. I realise that that is a bit of a googly to throw at the Minister, so I would be happy for her to answer that question in writing.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, in supporting the amendments, I want to deal with the potential political fallout of getting it wrong. The Government gave a reassurance in an earlier debate that there would be no programme of closures. We all know that you do not need a programme to have a continuing and worrying number of post office closures. The Government may well succeed in being hard-headed—and, dare I say, hard-hearted?—about the role of employees and in their business-first approach to Royal Mail. However, when it comes to the Post Office, the potential fallout is another matter. There was a huge loss of good will for the previous Government, my Government, because of the number of post office closures. As noble Lords know, 900 post offices are up for sale, and a significant proportion would not be considered financially viable unless there was an inter-business agreement with teeth. It might sound strange coming from me, but I would like to praise the Daily Mail’s post office campaign, which has been one of the most effective for any political party in its dedication and coverage.
I do not think we should underestimate the amount of political capital which will be used up by any Government who fail to ensure a successful future for the Post Office. It may be more valued by the older person, but it is the older person who votes. So in supporting these amendments, we are looking for an assurance from the Government that whatever pattern falls out—whether it is a mutualisation or whatever—a very strong effort will be made to have an inter-business agreement which protects the future for sub-postmasters and for as many post offices as possible.
Lord Razzall
The noble Lords, Lord Whitty, Lord Cameron and Lord Young, have raised some extremely relevant and interesting points on this important issue, and I find myself very split. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, confined his remarks primarily to Amendment 21A, and I find that difficult to accept as somebody who, as the noble Baroness will be aware, has argued strongly for the mutualisation of the Post Office. I am concerned that we should put in the Bill—it is exactly the same argument we had on the previous provisions—restrictions that would be likely to slow down the mutualisation of the Post Office. I am sure the noble Baroness will deal with that in her remarks.
Everything that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, says is entirely correct. I know, as does the noble Baroness, that the Ministers in her department are convinced that they will have a package that will provide financial security for the Post Office. Whether there is a constraint of coming out with detail before the Budget or before it is finalised I do not know, but I think that before this Bill is passed, it would be extremely helpful if noble Lords could be made aware in more detail of the exact package that the Minister’s colleagues in the department are confident could secure the future of the Post Office.
I hope that the Minister will reflect on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Young, because these are extremely important issues. Having made the point endlessly in debates on Bills in opposition about the importance of Parliament sanctioning important decisions, I think the principle is important that, before any significant mutualisation of the Post Office takes place, Parliament needs to have a final say. I hope the noble Baroness will take that point back for consideration.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I sympathise with these amendments. They reflect a number of concerns that those of us who spoke at Second Reading raised. I was certainly one of those as far as mutualisation was concerned. I had a great deal of sympathy, too, for the concept of banking in local post offices, but that has clearly been firmly ruled out by the Government. That does not mean, however, that they should not be thinking of ways in which they could satisfy the concerns. There should be some return to Parliament for an assurance that the route down which the Government are going will be in the best interests of those concerned. I thought the comments made by my noble friend Lord Cameron about rural areas were extremely important. The post offices are important for the sustainability of those local areas.
I hope that when the Minister replies she will feel able to give more assurance than we have had so far on this issue. I commend the amount of money available and the way in which the Government have thought through this Bill in order for it to be sustainable for the future. However, despite all the money—we will no doubt hear details after the Budget of other ways in which the Post Office and postal services will be helped—it would be in everyone’s interest if the Minister could say that there will be a hard look at reassurance on some of the many important points that have been made in this group of amendments.
The Archbishop of York
My Lords, under Amendment 21A, one of the greatest regrets about the manufacturing base of this country is that companies in the public interest were disposed of without the kind of assurance that is being asked for here. If we look at steel, coal-mining and our car manufacturing bases, public interest in those companies was disposed of in the hope that the people who took them on would make them more viable, but when they took them over they explained that these businesses were not viable. Before we knew where we were our car manufacturing base and our steel industry were not about any more.
It worries me that if you get rid of any public interest—in the case of the Post Office, it is the Crown’s interest—before you are quite certain that whatever company is created will be viable at least through some financial times, you will be in real difficulty. It would be very easy for whoever takes these organisations on to say “By the way, when we looked at the books, they were not what we thought they were”. Then someone else buys it and takes it on, and before you know where you are the Royal Mail and those other places are not about.
Although it is difficult to put it in the Bill, the assurance that this amendment seeks is absolutely necessary. As long as there still is Crown interest in the Post Office, there is a chance that we may do it properly. As soon as that goes—before there is the assurance sought in this amendment—I am afraid that we may end up with what happened to British Steel, coal-mining and the car industry.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, here we are on day three eventually at the issue of the Post Office and all the concerns that have been expressed today. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, raised a number on the future of the post office network, as did the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the most reverend Primate. These will be covered by a number of amendments that follow and I ask noble Lords if I may respond to those points in those debates.
On the future relationship between the Royal Mail and the Post Office, I hope that my commitment to the noble Lord on Monday to consider his amendment to include information on that relationship in the Clause 2 report provides him with some comfort. This group of amendments relates to the circumstances in which the Secretary of State can transfer his interest in the Post Office to a relevant mutual and the information which should be furnished to Parliament in connection with that transfer. This Government believe that mutualisation of the Post Office could be ideally suited to the particular economic and social role it plays up and down the country. We understand that sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses and other stakeholders would highly value the opportunity to have more of a say in how this well loved institution is run.
We envisage that a mutual Post Office Ltd could allow communities to tailor services to their needs and give those who know the Post Office best a greater stake in the future of the institution that they value so dearly. Indeed, the many community-run post offices across the country demonstrate that this can work. Clause 7, which we will discuss in due course, ensures that any mutual must act for the public benefit. No Post Office mutual will exist solely for the financial benefit of its members.
Clauses 4 and 7 work together to set clear parameters within which a transfer to mutual ownership could be made, but they do not oblige such a transfer to be made. That is because developing the appropriate model for a mutual Post Office must not come from the top down.
Amendments 21A and 22ZD seek to ensure that Post Office Ltd is on a secure financial footing before any move to a mutual model may be made. The network must of course be on a secure financial footing before any move to a mutual model is made. Indeed, it would not be in the interest of any Post Office Ltd stakeholders to take on the running of a company that was not in a suitable position to sustain itself. Nor indeed would the Government consider handing over control of the Post Office if they were not satisfied that the company could flourish in the absence of the levels of subsidy that are currently provided.
The £1.34 billion in funding that we are providing to the network over the next few years will do more than just guarantee that at least 11,500 post offices will remain working. It will ensure that the network can be modernised, offer an improved customer experience and so be in a better position to compete for new business. We believe that the Post Office could be in a financial position that would allow for the possibility of mutualisation by the end of this Parliament. I hope that goes some way to answering the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy. This funding will ensure that the Post Office services across the United Kingdom on which so many people rely, particularly the most vulnerable in our communities, are protected exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, so eloquently explained is needed.
Whether or not this move to a mutual structure happens, we envisage that the Government would still need to provide a small amount of subsidy to ensure that offices remain open where they might not otherwise survive, such as in rural or deprived urban areas; yet Amendment 21A would not permit a mutual to operate in these circumstances.
However, it is important that there is transparency about improvement in the financial position of the Post Office, as, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, seeks under his amendment. That is why this Bill introduces, at paragraph 17 of Schedule 12, a new requirement that the annual accounts of the Post Office be laid before Parliament every year.
We aspire to a vibrant and flourishing Post Office in the future, which does not simply rely on government handouts, but which can provide a wide range of services across a nationwide network. The markets in which the Post Office operates are highly competitive. It would not be in the interests of the Post Office, the future members of the mutual or the Government if the business plan being relied on to continue fostering that vibrant and flourishing Post Office were published, as envisaged by Amendment 22ZD.
I turn to Amendments 21C, 22ZA, 22ZB and 22ZC. These amendments all seek to require a further parliamentary approval process prior to any transfer of the Secretary of State’s interest in the Post Office to a relevant mutual. Amendments 21C and 22ZB do this as stand-alone amendments, while Amendments 22ZA and 22ZC combine to the same effect.
Clause 5 introduces an important means by which Parliament can hold the Secretary of State to account for a decision to move towards a mutual ownership model for the Post Office. However, we do not believe it would be appropriate for Parliament to have a veto right over any subsequent move to mutual ownership that is within the statutory parameters being debated today. The reason is that developing the appropriate model for a mutual Post Office must not come from the top down. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, for his observations. He may be interested to know that, subject of course to the strict statutory parameters set out in Clause 7, the interests of all of the Post Office’s stakeholders—for example, sub-postmasters, staff, business partners and customers—must come first.
Co-operatives UK, the national trade body for co-operatives, is talking to those stakeholders and will shortly report to Ministers on some potential options for a mutually owned Post Office, and before any final decision is taken by the Secretary of State, there would of course also be a public consultation. But since, at the conclusion of that process, the ultimate decision to transfer the Post Office to a relevant mutual will rest with the Secretary of State, Parliament must be informed swiftly and in appropriate detail of the decision. Clause 5 sets out those requirements. It specifies the details that must be included in the report and also requires the Secretary of State to lay it before Parliament as soon as reasonably practicable after he has made the relevant direction or authorisation.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for some of the reassurances she has given, which were the basis for tabling the amendments in the first place. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who have indicated that they too need some reassurance to the effect that mutualisation will not be pursued until there is a clear and robust Post Office Ltd or Post Office network if not absolutely in place, at least in prospect. I thank particularly my noble friend Lord Young for the complementary amendments which, in addition to the assessments that I have proposed, would require a report to Parliament and a parliamentary process. I shall come back to that in a moment.
I say to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, that I am not attempting to slow the process down. I think that it will take time to get to a position whereby we are able to mutualise, and some of what she said indicates that. Nor am I am not trying to restrict flexibility because I recognise that a range of different options is available, some of which may not be a single option because different parts of the network may be dealt with differently. As I say, I am not trying to be restrictive in this respect. However, there are some deep worries. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, indicated, there are particular worries in rural areas. The other areas that are particularly an issue are what I would call the remoter suburbs, those areas between the inner city and Surrey or Cheshire, where again the post office is an important focus and social element for those who are somewhat cut off from the economic and social mainstream. There are substantial parts of the country where the post office is a major institution, and there are anxieties. That has been demonstrated through reactions to the reduction in the number of post offices over the past few years. As my noble friend Lady Donaghy indicated, it has become a social and political issue.
The Minister said that we do not want to institute a parliamentary veto here. I think that when the Bill is considered in another place, she will find that Members of Parliament from all political parties may not want to regard it as a veto, but they will want a pretty strong reassurance that the time is right for mutualisation to take place, and therefore a report to Parliament along the lines proposed in the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Young is necessary.
Obviously I will not press the amendment tonight, but the problem is that the noble Baroness has to be completely convincing. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, slightly mysteriously referred to a package that he hopes Ministers will come forward with. I have some inkling about that in relation to the Ministers in the noble Baroness’s department, Ed Davey and Vince Cable, and, indeed, the noble Baroness herself. I am not attempting to split the coalition—not tonight anyway—but there is a different sort of split between Ministers in BIS, who I think are genuinely committed to the future of the Royal Mail and the post office network, and other departments which are not prepared to make any sacrifices in relation to the network. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and other noble Lords said, we have just had yet another example—we had some significant ones under the previous Government—of a department taking a silo view of what is in its most cost-effective interest helping to destroy the interests of government and society as a whole, particularly in rural and underprivileged areas. I think the split is not between Ministers or parties but between different Whitehall departments. We need to get some coherence there in parallel with setting up the terms of the mutualisation. We need greater clarity that the Government as a whole are behind the objective of making the post office network work. Only at that point can we clearly be reassured that this mutualisation is likely to work.
I think the main points have registered with Ministers, and I suspect these debates will go on in another place. Ministers in the noble Baroness’s department will need to ensure that the network that they envisage over the next few years will be robust, will be sustainable for a long period of time and will meet the social and economic needs of a large proportion of our population. If they can do that, godspeed to mutualisation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Before making any direction under subsection (2), the Secretary of State shall give full consideration to the creation of a Post Bank and shall, following consultation with relevant persons, lay a report before Parliament.”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, in earlier contributions many noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, expressed concern at the removal of government services from the post office. Particular concern has been expressed over the recent loss of the green giro account to PayPoint, which took away another source of business from the post office.
The post office network is a unique national resource. It has as many social and community functions as it has business activities. It is woven into the fabric of all our lives. Communities, businesses and individuals all depend on it, and I believe it should be protected and grown. I welcome the Government’s commitment that there will be no closure programme for post offices, but we are seeing the loss of many hundreds of post offices across the country. It is therefore paramount that we take action to ensure that there are no further closures of post offices by looking to build and strengthen the business.
We suggest “a cunning plan”. A post bank based on the post office is in many people’s view one of the best ways of strengthening the post office by building up and extending its current financial services and thus securing the future of the network. As both bank and post office branches have closed in many local communities, particularly the poorest, many people and small businesses have seen their direct access to postal services and essential financial services disappear. Establishing a post bank would ensure the provision of financial services based on a return to basic banking principles under which bankers are situated in and understand their local community and its needs. With its network of branches throughout the country and the high levels of trust that it enjoys, the post office is ideally placed to house a post bank. The proposal also builds on the central idea that post offices are there in great numbers, and it seems sensible to build on what we have rather than to think of other ways to use the service.
A post bank would hugely increase post office custom and would enable the Government to increase the work they pass to the post office. It would enable the post office to build up its business profitably. It would also enable the Post Office card account to be embedded in a trusted bank and would thus remove the threat that it could again be put out to tender. The post bank would be an economic driver, lending at small margins and supporting local enterprise in local communities. The current banking crisis surely provides an opportunity for a radical redesign of retail banking, including combating financial exclusion and creating an accessible and trusted banking system.
One way of doing this would be to put in place a universal banking obligation, similar to the universal service obligation placed on Royal Mail, to create a post bank in the model of the post office with statutory obligations to provide a service. A post bank would allow every local post office to offer current accounts, access to credit and direct debit facilities and to expand its present savings capacity. It would not be shareholder driven and would be able to act in the best interests of local communities and local businesses. It would be localism in action.
Baroness Turner of Camden
I rise to support my noble friend in respect of this amendment. It is very important to accept that post offices have an important social role. One of the social roles they perform is that they are a point of access for—often not very well paid—people, including elderly people, who do not use banks because they do not know how to use them, are too concerned about them or are anyway not interested in speculative investment. Some people simply want somewhere safe to put their savings so that the savings are readily available when they need them, and they know that the savings are going to be safe because they trust the Post Office.
For those reasons, along with the excellent case made by my noble friend on the Front Bench, the Government really ought to look very seriously at what is proposed here. I am sure it would be popular with a very large number of the less well paid members of the public. People want to have somewhere safe where they can put their savings. We are hoping that people will save more and we have been saying for a long time that people are not saving enough. Well, some people do save, but they do not always know where to put their savings or where to go for financial advice or assistance. This would be an excellent idea, so I hope the Government will be prepared to accept what has been suggested in this amendment.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I have long been a fan of the equivalent of a post bank—as you know, it was Liberal Democrat policy. All of the arguments were made very strongly about the advantages that a post bank would bring to the financially excluded and those who are looking more for vanilla banking as well as to improving access for small businesses. It is hard to do anything other than come up with a list of absolute positives for a post bank.
Obviously, my colleagues in the other place were very eager to seize the opportunity for a post bank as part of the restructuring of Royal Mail, but then they came across the contract between the Post Office and the Bank of Ireland—although I do not know how much they know about it because obviously the contract will be confidential. However, I notice that the three names down on this amendment are those of the noble Lords, Lord Young, Lord Stevenson and Lord Tunnicliffe, and—I am sorry if I get their histories slightly wrong—I think it must have been on their watch that the contract with the Bank of Ireland was signed. That contract hidebounds the Post Office and makes it virtually impossible for it to provide the kind of comprehensive service and range of financial services without buying out that contract. Without breaching any confidentiality, perhaps they could tell us how many hundreds of millions of pounds would have to be paid to Bank of Ireland to buy out the contract so that a post bank could be put in place. I do not have access to that information, but perhaps, having been on the watch when that contract was originally put in place, they could give us a sensible estimate of what that amount of money could be. I am rather afraid it is such a large sum that it would have been difficult even in a time of prosperity and exceedingly difficult in a time of deficit. I greatly regret that.
I am glad that we had some discussion—there will be other opportunities—about bringing on board the credit unions. This House will be well aware that the Minister, Ed Davey, and others are committed to financing the technical platform that would make it possible for the post office to be used as the face of the credit unions. Credit unions are far more fragmented than a coherent bank would be, but at least that would open up the opportunity. I will also have a few words later to say about at least providing access to current accounts in the various high street banks. I wonder if they would give us an indication of what they think the cost would be for the Government to buy out that Bank of Ireland contract to make this very attractive proposition possible.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said he had “a cunning plan”. Well, I wish it was cunning—it is not original. In fact, it was the Conservative Government of the 1970s that abandoned National Girobank. I was one of those who agitated for many years for the creation of Girobank. By copying the arrangements in the Netherlands, it was possible to introduce a simple banking system that brought cheque books and bank accounts to many thousands of people who never thought they would have a bank account. I mention National Girobank because one day, when I get enough money, I am going to ask a student or someone to do the proper research on what happened to our people’s bank, as it was in those days.
As I said in the debates on the previous Postal Services Bill a couple of years ago, only one paper in this country covered the story of what I considered the give-away of a national asset. Reference has been made to the shock that you get when you find you have got to buy out a contract, but if you had the figures on what happened at Girobank, you would start to worry even more. I know this because when it was announced that it was going to be abolished—and it was really abolished because it was so successful—Co-operative Bank, Unity Trust and a consortium of trade unions got together to try to buy the bank when it was put up for sale. First, they were told, “You need £200 million to buy Girobank”. That was the easy bit, because that was gathered together. Then the rules were changed, and Girobank was to be sold only to an established finance house—which the consortium was not—but the consortium established itself as a finance house. Then they were told, “You cannot buy it unless you have an alternative computer system that will be there if this system goes down”. So the dice were quite loaded from the start. The £200 million that was mentioned at the time of the sale of Girobank actually paled into insignificance, because the actual figure—I am quoting from memory as I have no notes here—was £118 million when it was sold to the Alliance & Leicester. The Alliance & Leicester obviously grabbed it because, at the time, there were thousands of people waiting to open an account with National Girobank. Political dogma said, “This has got to stop. It’s too successful and we’re going to do away with it”.
What has happened since? Alliance & Leicester of course has been swallowed up by Santander. If anybody thinks that the service they are getting from Santander is anything like what they got from National Giro in the beginning, and to some extent with the Alliance & Leicester, they are dreaming, because the rapacious way in which these banks work frightens me.
There is a demand for a people’s bank, so I welcome the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I ought to declare another interest: I am a member of the St Albans District Credit Union. During my years as a councillor in Camden, I saw what happened when people were at the mercy of loan-sharks, when people were threatened on their doorsteps with an extortionate amount of interest week on week. Of course there is a chance to get a link between the growth of credit unions and a people’s bank—or post bank, post office bank or Royal Mail or whatever—but the important thing to is to have a simple banking system, which allows people to have confidence in where they are putting their money. At the back of it all, despite all my criticism of what has gone on in the last few years, I still believe in the brand name of the Post Office. The Post Office has a good reputation and I hope that the Minister and her colleagues will go into one of those dusty offices, pick up the box file that says National Girobank and check what I have said about the way it was virtually given away. Incidentally, the punchline was that, within two years of trading, Alliance & Leicester cleared the amount that it paid for the bank.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall respond to the noble Baroness’s request for information. It was a substantial sum. I am not saying that to be evasive; I cannot remember the precise amount. The only thing that I would say about our arrangement with the Bank of Ireland was that it enabled a large amount of business to be generated. We should not forget that aspect of it. As an original member of Girobank when it was first formed, I concur absolutely with the regretful history of its sad demise that my noble friend Lord Clarke has recounted. For a period we had a successful people’s bank, which unfortunately disappeared as the result of another privatisation.
Baroness Wilcox
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for tabling this amendment. The Government are clear that the wide range of financial services that the Post Office offers—personal loans, credit cards and savings products, for example—are an important part of its total product suite. The Government made clear in the coalition agreement that we would look at the case for developing new sources of revenue for the Post Office, including the creation of a post office bank. We have looked at the different options and arguments for such a bank very carefully and have come to the conclusion that, particularly in the financial climate that we are experiencing, it is just not a viable option. My noble friend Lady Kramer spoke further on this and gave us her views, and I think that she felt the same.
Setting up and capitalising a new bank would be very expensive as well as creating a much more volatile and risky balance sheet for the company. Instead, we are committed to ensuring that the Post Office continues to offer wide access to existing banking facilities. For that reason, we were extremely pleased that in November last year the Royal Bank of Scotland reached agreement with the Post Office to allow RBS customers, including NatWest customers, access to their current and business accounts at the post office. That will mean that almost 80 per cent of all current account holders will be able to withdraw money free of charge at the post office, while many can also pay money in and check their balances.
In response to points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on financial inclusion, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, the Post Office already offers a range of services to help people on lower incomes, including the Post Office card account and the ability to access all basic bank accounts.
The noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, will be heartened to know that we are extremely supportive of a stronger link-up between the Post Office and credit unions. Recent announcements by the Department of Work and Pensions on credit union funding open up excellent opportunities for the Post Office to provide access to credit union services to many more people. This builds on existing co-operation between the two sectors, which is already strong. Maintaining the large branch network and increasing access to bank accounts at the post office, as I have said, is an important step towards financial inclusion.
Financial services are clearly an area with significant potential for growth. As I have said, though, the creation of a post bank would not be in the best interests of the post office network. Instead, we strongly believe that funding for the Post Office will be best spent modernising and maintaining the network. The funding that we have provided to the network will mean that the Post Office is better placed to compete for new business.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I may have misheard the Minister, but did I hear her say that all these desirable things are dependent on the maintenance of a wide network? Is it part of the Government’s guarantee that that wide network will be there?
Baroness Wilcox
Yes, that wide network will be there.
We strongly believe that funding for the Post Office will be best spent modernising and maintaining the network. The funding that we have provided to the network will mean that the Post Office is better placed to compete for new business and to further develop its offer to both local and national government, in its ambition to become a front office for the Government. As part of this strategy, we will of course also support the Post Office in expanding its financial services offering, but at this time we believe that that is best done by offering access to the existing high street banks through the post office network.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked a number of further questions on credit unions. It would be best for me to deal with those concerns when we discuss credit unions specifically in the later amendment under Clause 11. I hope that it is possible at the moment for the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her reply. I suspect that I made a mistake in trying to bring a touch of levity to the debate by quoting “Blackadder”—it was picked up by only a couple of people, one of whom used it to beat me over the head with. I suppose that that is the risk of quoting Blackadder, who seemed to have a singularly unsuccessful way of making his plans come to fruition. I should probably never use that again, so I will not.
We are delighted that the Minister has confirmed that she has looked so hard at the question of a post bank—given the coalition agreement, it would have been rather hard not to do so. I am surprised, given the way that the coalition agreement seems to permeate so much of the business in this House, that my proposal has not been given more of a favourable wind, but there we are. It got a lot of support in the speeches that my noble friends and others on both sides of the House made, and I still think that it is a good idea.
My amendment was an attempt to express the frustration that came out in the intervention that the Minister took. In some senses, we seem to be underplaying the capacity of the existing network to do so much more for society. These post office branches exist. In most cases they are active, vibrant places. People use them—I quoted the figures in my address. We need a complete rethink about the way in which the Government do business. We should take the post office network and use it to achieve more than it is currently capable of doing, given the single use that we are making of it.
How do we save our declining post offices? We use the brilliant brand. We use the securely established places that these post offices inhabit in wonderful locations, with huge footfall, in every part of our country. They are used and valued by people but we do not use them properly to achieve the further output of government. They are places that people go to for their services. People use them for transactions and pick up more information to learn—
Baroness Wilcox
If the noble Lord will bear with me, I must intervene. We do believe that there is an exciting future, so much so that we are supporting 11,500 post offices. The previous Government closed them, but we are not closing any.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I am afraid that the Minister did not quite get my point; I was in the middle of a wonderful peroration which, had she heard it to the end, would have made it clear.
I am talking not about post offices qua post offices but about post offices as an engine for doing more for the whole of government. That is what I am trying to argue the case for. The post bank would therefore be one of a number of things that, if it were located in post offices, used and built on, would be able to sustain the network and perhaps to build back to the numbers that we want to see. However, given that this is not the time to make that sort of speech or to make these sorts of arrangements and that the amendment is framed very narrowly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 21E. By nature these are somewhat technical probing amendments to see whether there is a loophole in the disposal of “any part”. That is the basis of those amendments. I am trying to set the world record for brevity in moving an amendment. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, Amendments 21D and 21E refer to the circumstances in which a relevant mutual could dispose of its interest in the Post Office. I understand that these are probing amendments.
Clause 4(4) makes clear that the only people who can own an interest in the Post Office are relevant mutuals, the Secretary of State, the Treasury, a nominee of either the Secretary of State or the Treasury or a company that is wholly owned by the Crown. The clarification envisaged by Amendment 21D is not required to achieve this.
Amendment 21E seeks to ensure that any disposal made by a relevant mutual would be a disposal of its entire interest in the Post Office. While in practice we would expect only one relevant mutual to own the Post Office at any one time, we believe this amendment to be unnecessarily restrictive. For example, there may be circumstances in which different stakeholder groups form separate corporate bodies, each taking an interest in the Post Office. Provided the Secretary of State was satisfied that each body met the conditions set by Clause 7, it would seem overly restrictive to rule out the possibility.
We will debate Clause 7 shortly, but I shall briefly summarise the strict safeguards that are put in place under it. The Secretary of State must be satisfied that the conditions in Clause 7(2) to 7(4) will continue to be met before there can be any transfer to a Post Office mutual. Those conditions ensure that the Post Office mutual must continue to act for the public benefit by promoting the use by the public of Post Office services, that its members have a clear interest in it so doing, and that disposals that might jeopardise that will be prevented.
I hope that I have sufficiently reassured the noble Lord, and I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. I will certainly reflect on those measured words. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, this amendment seeks to embed employee involvement in the operation of a mutualised Post Office by including representatives from the workforce, particularly the sub-postmasters, on the board of the mutualised entity. We on these Benches are not opposed to the principle of the mutualisation of the Post Office, but for that mutualisation to work effectively for those running the business it is logical for them to have a direct say in the operational management of the business at board level.
Mutualisation is not a new concept; its origins date back to the establishment of the Co-operative movement in the 19th century, which has many facets and is still going strong today. We on these Benches all support the Co-operative endeavour and can trace the roots of the Labour Party to it, but surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly, mutuality is still not a particularly common concept today. The John Lewis Partnership is considered to be an outstanding example of how a mutualised business can operate. In that respect, the John Lewis Partnership is admirable, but there are very few other mutualised entities of a similar size to the one which the Government propose in this Bill. Indeed, in the financial services sector, where there is a history of mutualisation, the tide has rather been flowing the other way and only a few building societies have survived as mutuals. I understand that the Government’s mutuals task force is looking at how government can stimulate the transfer of assets of NHS bodies and local government to mutual status.
Understandably, public sector workers have been hesitant to jump into new and untested structures. Recently, the Trades Union Congress claimed that a ballot at a south-east Sussex PCT showed that 90 per cent of staff were opposed to being “spun out” as a mutual—those are their words. The TUC stated with regard to that case:
“The moves towards mutuals are being driven by management rather than bottom-up. That makes a nonsense of the model because it relies on a buy-in from staff. You can't force mutuals”.
Now there is potentially a new kid on the block—the Post Office. It is indeed an interesting idea and there is clearly an opportunity to establish that business as a thriving mutual. All of us want the post ffice network to prosper, and, we hope, one day be free of subsidy, but at a level that provides coverage for the whole of the UK. I understand that the Minister has said that the minimum number of post office branches required to sustain a universal obligation is 11,500; indeed, she said that only a few minutes ago. We welcome that and look forward to receiving more detail about how that number is to be sustained. That is an important point to make in respect of this amendment. While we welcome the mutualisation of the post office network, we want to understand in more detail how this might work in practice.
In one respect mutualisation might be a straightforward share of any profits made among the members of the mutual, primarily its workforce. That is a common form of mutualisation, particularly in the Co-op, but given that the post office network relies on a significant subsidy that far exceeds its profits at present, such concepts as profit share might not appeal to the workforce if it means sacrificing their collective bargaining rights. Perhaps in this case a more attractive mutualisation model will be one that extends the participation of the workforce in the day-to-day running of the business beyond simply being the passive recipients of profit share schemes. That kind of model may also assist organisations such as the TUC to overcome their scepticism.
The logic is equally strong for the participation of a sub-postmaster representative on the board. After all, sub-postmasters run their own businesses. They know what works and what does not. There is disquiet among members of the postmasters’ federation about this Bill—a disquiet reinforced by the decision by the DWP to announce the cancellation of the green giro contract during the passage of this Bill.
As I have suggested, mutualisation can take a number of forms. My own party when in government looked at industrial democracy concepts for the Post Office way back in the 1970s and the party opposite did the same in the 1980s. Both those schemes ultimately came to nothing because quite simply employees in such businesses are always loath to give up their collective bargaining rights. Who can blame them? Therefore, in order to make the offer of mutualisation more attractive we would expect to see the Government bring through a package of measures that give the employees, managers and agents of the Post Office a real and genuine say in how the business is run. That should include direct participation on the board of Post Office Ltd.
The amendment is not prescriptive; it would leave the decision on who is elected or appointed, and how they are elected or appointed, to the employees and sub-postmasters to decide. The employees, for example, might decide to nominate an outside expert or elect one of their own trade union officials. That is a matter for them to decide. The board would benefit significantly from the input of two people directly representing the interests of the core of the workforce, and that would make the prospect of mutualisation more attractive to those who may be hesitant to embrace the concept of democratic ownership. I beg to move.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for this amendment. The Government are very keen to see sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses and staff of Post Office Ltd—the very people who know the network best—involved in the running of the business. That is why this Bill contains provisions that enable the mutualisation of Post Office Ltd.
We believe that mutualisation could help to ensure that sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses, staff and communities could in the future all have a say in how the Post Office is run. Co-operatives UK is seeking the views of the Post Office’s major stakeholders and will soon report back to my department on proposals for a mutual Post Office. The work that Co-operatives UK is carrying out seeks to address questions such as who the members of a mutual might be and which stakeholders should play key roles in how the Post Office is run in the future. A mutual Post Office must be established with the best interests of the company, the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses and the wider public, who are its customers at heart. It must be allowed to develop organically, with the willingness and participation of its members. We believe that it simply would not work if government imposed a rigid top-down structure.
Indeed, it is by no means clear at this stage that the selection of sub-postmaster and sub-postmistress and employee representatives to the board by election would necessarily be the best option for the Post Office network. There is an obvious reason for this; the mutual has not been designed yet, so we cannot know its governance structure. Enshrining its governance in legislation now and then trying to develop the mutual within these requirements goes completely against our commitment to ensuring that the mutual is developed by the people who know it best.
The Government strongly believe that the Post Office and its key stakeholders should be allowed to form their own mutual governance structure as appropriate. In the light of this, and in view of the work that is being carried out on the mutualisation of the Post Office, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her positive remarks. I am certainly interested in seeing Co-operatives UK’s report because that will obviously help us to progress this debate. I have little further to say. There are dangers in not specifying a little more what the Government really want out of mutualisation, but I accept that it is early days and that there is plenty of time for that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Whitty
“Counter access to postal, government and other services
(1) For the purpose of ensuring continued universal counter access through a Post Office company to services specified in subsection (2), the location and geographical distribution of counter access points shall be governed by the following access criteria—
(a) 99.7% of the total population shall be located no more than 3 miles from a counter access point;(b) 93.2% of the total population shall be located no more than 1 mile from a counter access point;(c) 99.8% of the total population in deprived urban areas shall be located no more than 1 mile from a counter access point;(d) 99.1% of the total population in urban areas shall be located no more than 1 mile from a counter access point;(e) 99.2% of the total population in rural areas shall be located no more than 3 miles from a counter access point; and (f) in each postcode district, 95% of the population in that postcode district shall be located within 6 miles of a counter access point.(2) The access criteria specified in subsection (1) relate to, but are not limited to, the provision of counter access to the following services—
(a) postal collection and delivery services as specified by the universal postal service order;(b) postal service products;(c) processing social benefit and tax credit payments;(d) processing of national identity and licensing scheme applications;(e) payment facilities for essential utility services;(f) cash and banking facilities; and(g) government savings instruments.(3) Within six months of the commencement of this Act, the Secretary of State shall determine and publish—
(a) the process by which the number of counter access points to services specified in subsection (2) and access criteria specified in subsection (1) shall be reviewed;(b) the frequency at which the number of counter access points to services specified in subsection (2) and access criteria specified in subsection (1) shall be reviewed.(4) In undertaking a review described in subsection (3), the Secretary of State shall consult—
(a) the Post Office company;(b) bodies able to represent the interests of consumers using counter access to the services outlined in subsection (2); and(c) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to consult.(5) Following a review established under subsections (3) and (4), the Secretary of State may by order amend the access criteria specified in subsection (1).
(6) The power in subsection (5) to amend the access criteria in subsection (1) shall be subject to the procedure in section (Super-affirmative procedure).”
Lord Whitty
My Lords, we have reached this amendment slightly quicker than I had thought we would. Although the amendment looks complicated, it is, in essence, an amendment to probe how the Government intend to fulfil the commitment made in the paper to which I previously referred—and to which the noble Baroness referred twice—that they will maintain a network of approximately the present size. The noble Baroness stated that even more precisely in her reply to my noble friend Lord Lea.
I have tabled the amendment from the perspective that my previous organisation, Consumer Focus, and its predecessor, Postwatch, have been through two alleged rationalisations of the post office network, the first of which was based on no objective criteria at all. It worked from where sub-postmasters were finding it difficult to maintain a post office, were retiring, or had some other reason for not wanting to continue. The second round of rationalisation worked on substantial and clear issues of access that were specified in crude distance terms, but nevertheless gave rationality to the assessment of whether one post office or another should change.
I must say, having inherited this situation at three-quarters of the way through, that I found it difficult for a consumer organisation to be forced to choose between the post offices in any particular town. Nevertheless, the criteria against which we operated— access to post offices among different populations, distance to travel to a post office, and so on—are reproduced in the paper from which I quoted earlier, but which I unfortunately gave to Hansard for verification. However, the document includes a table that sets out the current criteria.
My concerns are twofold. Those criteria would arithmetically allow for a network that is significantly smaller, particularly in towns and suburbs, than the current network, and I therefore need to square the assurance given by the Government that they are looking for and are in effect subsidising for the next few years a network at its current size, with the fact that theoretically, using the same criteria, they could reduce it to a size of between 7,000 and 8,000. I hope that the Government reaffirm their commitment to retaining a network of the current size.
The calculations in proposed new subsection (1) in the amendment, according to my former colleagues in Consumer Focus—I did not do the arithmetic—would sustain a network of roughly the present size. In other words, the first four criteria are considerably more stringent than those used in the previous round of rationalisation and specified in the Government’s document on the future of the network. This would not mean that every post office would need to remain open. There would obviously be temporary closures and what the Post Office somewhat euphemistically calls business-as-usual closures. There would also be movements of sites within particular areas. However, one would arrive at roughly the same number of post offices, were these criteria to be followed.
It would be interesting to know whether the Government intend to tighten up the criteria or to add different criteria that would produce figures similar to those in the amendment, or whether their commitment to the current size of the network is irrespective of particular criteria because they envisage that the moves they claim to be making to improve the volume of post offices’ business—to sustain and inculcate a different sense of purpose through mutualisation—will mean that we will end up with a network of roughly the current size.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is once more in his place. When we were discussing the IBA, he raised a pertinent question as to whether any failure to commit to the IBA—and, I would add, to direct other government work to the post office network; an earlier debate today demonstrated that we were moving away from that—threatens the Government’s commitment to the size of the network. There is a circle to be squared, and I am not entirely clear how the Government intend to square it.
One option would be to reassure consumers, sub-postmasters and the staff of the post office network that the criteria would be tighter. Another option would be a more detailed way of reassessing those criteria. In fact, proposed new subsections (3) to (6) in the amendment would allow the Government systematically to assess the criteria of access and the nature of services provided.
Another dimension that has been mentioned is that part of Post Office Ltd’s plan is to reduce the range of services provided in some post offices. There was the experiment of Post Office essentials outlets that provided a reduced range of services. Some have worked and some have not. That is not necessarily entirely consistent with the government commitment to maintain the network broadly as it is, but it may mean that different gradations of post office outlets appear within the total. It would also be useful to know about that.
Although I do not expect the Government to accept the amendment, it gives them options in adopting criteria that would sustain more or less the present network or having a process whereby they redefined the criteria for access and the services provided. It would be useful to know what the Government’s strategy was in this respect. Obviously, we take great heart from the reassurance that the present network will remain in place, but the question of how that will happen and how we square that with certain other developments that were referred to earlier remains. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments. I beg to move.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I speak to my noble friend Lord Whitty’s “omnibus” amendment and to Amendments 22C and 22E.
They all seek to introduce new clauses to strengthen access criteria to prevent the further erosion of the post office network, to ensure the provision of a wide range of services at all post office branches, and to ensure a fair distribution of the Post Office's proposed new main post offices.
Amendment 22A writes into the Bill the current level of access to post offices in the UK. As part of the 2007 changes to the post office network that included an investment of £1.7 billion and incorporated the Network Change Programme, resulting in the closure of 2,500 post offices, the Government introduced a series of distance-based access criteria. These remain applicable but are not included in Royal Mail's licence and are not set out in law. The minimum access criteria introduced by the previous Government state that 99 per cent of the total UK population should be within three miles of their nearest post office; 90 per cent of the population should be within one mile; 99 per cent of the total population in deprived urban areas across the UK should be within one mile; 95 per cent of the total urban population across the UK should be within one mile; 95 per cent of the total rural population across the UK should be within three miles; and 95 per cent of the population of the postcode district should be within six miles.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, these amendments seek to strengthen the current access criteria so that they match current post office network coverage, and to enshrine them in legislation, as well as to provide mechanisms to review these criteria. They also seek to specify the services which should be provided across the network and in which locations a full range of services is to be provided.
On Amendment 22A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the Government are committed to maintaining a nationwide post office network. The Post Office is required to provide a network of at least 11,500 branches. This is a legally binding commitment to a minimum number of post offices. The Government have made a commitment that there will be no programme of post office closures.
Post Office Ltd is also legally obliged to ensure that precisely the same access criteria introduced by the previous Government are maintained. The previous Government, of course, had the opportunity to put these criteria into legislation in their 2009 Postal Services Bill, but they did not see the need to do so. Indeed, during debate on the 2009 Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, observed that the access criteria were “very stringent”. By legally obliging the Post Office to maintain these criteria in return for the £1.34 billon of funding over the duration of the spending review period, this Government have introduced another safeguard to ensure that these stringent access criteria will still be met. In fact, Post Office Ltd continues to exceed these criteria. Last year’s report by Postcomm on the post office network, from which I believe the criteria in this amendment are derived, demonstrates this fact.
The amendment seeks to press the metaphorical pause button, to prevent any changes in the post office network from today’s position. However, this is unrealistic; 97 per cent of post offices are privately owned and operated, and there will always be changes in the network where, for example, sub-postmasters retire or move on to pastures new. It is not through regulation that we will save the post office network. To ensure that the Post Office has a vibrant future, it must be allowed to develop, to modernise and to evolve. It must focus on its customers, reaching out to new customers and winning back those who have drifted away. Major modernisation is needed in order to address the underlying economics of the network. That is what our £1.34 billion funding package will achieve.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, raised the issue of the new Post Office local model. I will come back to that in detail later this evening during the debate on Amendment 24EA in the name of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, which will be moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby.
The Post Office’s access criteria are the strongest that we know of in Europe, when you consider our safeguards for rural, urban and urban deprived areas. In Germany, for example, the requirement is for a post office every 80 square kilometres, whereas we mandate that 95 per cent of the rural population must be within three miles of the nearest post office. The £1.34 billion that we are providing will ensure that our network continues to thrive in the future.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, seeks to ensure that certain services are provided across the network. Let me reassure the noble Lord that the Government are absolutely committed to maintaining the network, and supporting Post Office Ltd as it seeks to win new business from government and other sources. The Post Office is determined to become a front office for government, by developing and applying services in a number of ways. There is continued progress on this agenda. For example, the Department for Work and Pensions has recently announced plans for three new pilots, opportunities to support the universal credit reforms, and funding set aside for credit unions that will increase opportunities for the Post Office to deliver credit union services to many more people.
An important part of restructuring the network will be for the Post Office to ensure that services are tailored to meet the needs of its customers up and down the country. We cannot, and should not, expect the Post Office to provide all its 170 services at all branches across the entire network, as this amendment seeks to achieve. In smaller branches, for example, it makes far better commercial sense for sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses to focus on the key services that most people need to use, most of the time. Of course, the services offered by the Post Office on behalf of local authorities may differ from area to area. Amendment 22C, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Young, Lord Stevenson and Lord Tunnicliffe, does indeed take this fact into account. That amendment seeks a register of access criteria to be issued by the Secretary of State setting out the minimum location and geographical distribution of post offices which provide the full range of services provided by post offices.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for giving such a detailed answer, including a good number of commitments, which are reassuring. I think she overcharacterised this amendment as too rigid. It does not say that every post office should have the whole range of services, nor does it say that the access criteria can never be altered. By this amendment, I was trying to establish whether the commitment to the 11,500 post offices is an absolute commitment or whether there is some headroom in the criteria. The noble Baroness has made it absolutely clear on several occasions tonight that the commitment is to a network of 11,500, although that is not to say that one or two might change location and quite a few might change the services that they offer and the sub-postmaster or mistress who runs them might change. You need that flexibility.
My remaining anxiety is that, although I recognise that different levels of post office would have different gradations of services, we have to allow some flexibility and some change over time as the market develops, particularly in the growth businesses. It is also important that there is some criterion for the distance to main post offices which cover the whole range of services. I think the noble Baroness said that in addition to the general criteria in relation to post office outlets, there would be some criteria about the maximum distance that people were from a main post office, or a post office—different terms are used—which offered pretty much the whole range of services. If she said that, that is more reassurance.
We have a number of things on the record, including the Government’s very clear commitment to the size of the network. I hope that within that there is not a serious diminution in the range of services which a large part of the network offers, and I certainly hope that the distance to main post offices is taken up. Subject to that, I shall be happy to withdraw the amendment at this stage.
“Closure of post offices
(1) Where any company or any other person proposes to close a post office, it shall at the earliest opportunity begin consulting representatives of the employees affected and community and other groups with an interest in the proposed closure, including consultation on that company or person’s plans for alternative provision of services provided by the post office.
(2) No decision to close may be made within the period of six weeks from the start of the consultation required by subsection (1).
(3) No decision to close a post office in a rural or a deprived urban area or an outreach service shall be taken within 16 weeks of the start of the consultation required by subsection (1).”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, as all noble Lords will be aware, post offices continue to provide a lifeline to residents in rural and urban deprived areas not only through access to postal services, but also as the shopfront for government services, as a means of benefit collection, and often as the only source of cash withdrawal in an area.
Amendment 22B aims to ensure that proper consultation procedures are followed when a post office closure is considered. It is not intended to prevent all post office closures; it simply aims to strengthen the opportunity for stakeholders to have input into the consultation process. It also provides for a longer consultation process for potential closures in rural and urban deprived areas. Rural and urban deprived areas clearly suffer disproportionately when a post office closes. Post offices have closed in vast numbers in recent years, both through formal closure programmes and through natural wastage when sub-postmasters close their businesses and post offices are not replaced.
Over the past 10 years, the post office network has declined from 17,845 in 2000-01 to 11,905 in 2009-10. This is, in large part, due to two major closure programmes, the Urban Network Reinvention programme from 2003 to 2005 and the Network Change programme from 2007 to 2009. Between them, these programmes resulted in the closure of 4,854 post offices. That means that more than 1,000 post offices have closed outside of those programmes as sub-postmasters leave, often because their post offices have ceased to be viable, and the Post Office is unable or unwilling to provide a replacement.
Approximately 11 per cent of the post office network is in urban-deprived areas. As Consumer Focus clearly states:
“Urban offices play an even more important role in urban deprived areas, particularly as they provide free access to cash, plus pensions and benefit payments”.
The 2003-04 Urban Network Reinvention programme was an attempt by Post Office Ltd to reduce the size of the network with a view to developing a more commercially viable network. It further hoped to manage the so far unplanned decline in network size that was arising from sub-postmasters' decisions to close their businesses. At the time of the programme, there were serious concerns over the fate of post offices in urban deprived areas. The Government stated that they would not close post offices in urban deprived areas unless there was another branch within half a mile or unless there were exceptional circumstances to justify the closure.
The Post Office was heavily criticised at the time due to its lack of adequate consultation. As the then Trade and Industry Committee concluded in its report on the programme:
“Post Office Ltd and Postwatch paid insufficient attention to the need to ensure that adequate consultation procedures were in place before the network reinvention programme began. Although improvements have subsequently been made, and while we understand that sub-postmasters could appreciate a speedy conclusion to consultations over the future of their branches, we think that it is vital that all stakeholders should be given the time and opportunity to present their views on closure proposals. A twelve week consultation period would have satisfied this requirement. It was inconsistent of the Government to allow a company of which it is the sole shareholder to ignore guidelines for consultation which it encourages other organisations to follow”.
Equally, the 2007-09 Network Change programme was an attempt to reduce the size of the network with a view to making it economically viable. Over an 18-month period, more than 2,500 post offices were closed and a further 500 were replaced by outreach services. Outreach services provide postal services to communities where a post office is not deemed to be viable. These are often in the form of a mobile post office, a van which visits communities at certain designated times each week and provides a core range of post office services. There are now 772 outreach services in the UK, making up 6 per cent of the post office network.
The Network Change programme was also heavily criticised due to the difficulty stakeholders had in influencing closure decisions. Research into the programme by Consumer Focus found that,
“consumers were not convinced by the UK Government’s reasons for the closure programme. Furthermore, they were very unhappy with the nature of area consultations on closures, as there was little scope to alter decisions and Post Office Ltd had not been seen to respond to concerns raised”.
The Post Office's code of practice for the Network Change programme closure consultations included a six-week consultation process. Many stakeholders felt that the consultation processes were inadequate. This was, in large part, because the criteria for closures and the decision to close 2,500 post offices had already been made prior to the consultation process. This meant that opportunities for preventing individual closures were very limited.
Post offices are still closing every week. More than 150 post offices closed on a long-term temporary basis in 2010 alone. There is no guarantee that they will reopen and many are likely to stay closed indefinitely. As Consumer Focus has said:
“Since the last programme of post office closures finished we have continued to see a dwindling in the overall number of branches”.
According to the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters, 900 post offices, an unusually high number, are currently up for sale. Many sub-postmasters are retiring or leaving the business because of the low levels of revenue generated in sub-post offices and the Post Office is struggling to find alternative premises and service providers.
It is vital that adequate protections are in place to protect rural and urban deprived communities from these closures. I urge support for Amendment 22B which ensures consultation ahead of any post office closure, planned or unplanned, and provides additional protection to rural and urban deprived post offices. I beg to move.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his Amendment 22B. An annual report on the Post Office network laid before Parliament is an important means of achieving transparency around the Post Office network. The statutory requirement in Clause 11 to lay such a report before Parliament already goes further than the current requirement in the Postal Services Act 2000, which requires only information about the number and location of post offices and their accessibility. Neither Government nor Post Office Ltd can ensure that no post offices close during the reporting period, nor can they ensure that there is always time to carry out a consultation before an office closes. For example, a sub-postmaster or sub-postmistress may retire or move away, or the premises may be damaged by fire or flooding. After all, 97 per cent of post offices are privately owned and privately operated businesses.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I welcome some of the assurances that the Minister gave. Unless I missed it, she did not address the period of consultation but perhaps she can address that in writing. There may also be an opportunity in a further contribution. In the circumstances, I will obviously take into account what she has said and, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Employment and Support Allowance (Limited Capability for Work and Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity) (Amendment) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
That a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 10 February, be annulled. (SI 2011/228)
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Merits Committee.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, this is an important debate. I start by declaring my own interest as a director of the Wise Group in Glasgow. I have no pecuniary interest but the purpose that I am afforded by being a director of the Wise Group is that, four times a year, I get to go on a wet Friday to Glasgow after a six-hour train journey. Nevertheless, it is very fulfilling and important work. The group does an excellent job for the communities that it serves in Glasgow and I am pleased to be associated with it. That explains my interest in this important subject.
The background to this debate is, quite simply, that after considerable consultation the disability organisations—most of which colleagues will know well, as we have been working with them for many years—have concluded through the Disability Benefits Consortium that these regulations imperfectly achieve their policy objective. That is a clear steer that the disability community would like the House to consider annulling these regulations and we owe them nothing less than to do that.
I start by acknowledging the work of the Minister, who has brought drive and commitment to this policy area since he wrote his original report those few years ago. I am absolutely at one with him in trying to discourage inactivity and encourage sustaining work. I think we both understand that Carol Black’s work changed the game of active labour markets and I stand four-square with him in trying to make sure that we can develop and deliver schemes that enable people to get out of inactivity and into work. That work has to be productive and sustainable, but if they can do that then the well-being of the client group that we are seeking to serve will improve.
I am founding the evidence for this evening’s debate on the excellent work that has been done, as I say every time we talk about the subject, both by the Social Security Advisory Committee and by the Merits Committee, which looked at this in very great detail in its 23rd report. These are complicated regulations but if any colleagues are looking for a quick summary of exactly where this subject’s importance lies and of its importance to the individuals concerned, they should look at appendix 1 of that report and the evidence that was laid out there compellingly. The Social Security Advisory Committee report that was produced, which was done with formal reference to these regulations, also repays careful study and is worth reading.
I start with a concern that is new to me and disturbing if true. I would like to hear the Minister’s view on it. The SSAC says, in its conclusions at paragraph 19:
“The Committee is concerned that there is a disagreement of substance between the Department and the external stakeholders who participated in the review as to whether the”,
work capability assessment,
“in its present form could be said to be working satisfactorily”.
If that is true and the stakeholder community is talking past the department and neither party tries to get back into some sort of meaningful communication, it is in no one’s interests. I do not know what happened in the past but that is the first time I have ever seen an SSAC report saying anything so stark. I do not know whether it is true but I would like an assurance that the Minister will redouble any of the efforts which I know he has been making to ensure that that gap is expeditiously closed. It would be inimical to the interests of the client group that we are trying to help if the pressure group community does not have confidence in its channels of communication with the department. I hope that he can give us that reassurance.
The other evidence which is the core of the debate is the Social Security Advisory Committee’s view at paragraph 4.3. I will quote another sentence which encapsulates a whole load of evidence that I do not have time to go into. Perhaps other colleagues might pursue that, particularly on mental health, learning disability and fluctuating conditions. After a very big consultation—I think it had 400 responses—the committee noted that the department is undertaking an ongoing programme of review but concluded, among other things:
“There appears to be a widespread perception that, overall, rather than simplifying, streamlining and refining the test, these amendments”,
in these regulations,
“will make it harder in practice for claimants to demonstrate that they are incapable of work or that they have limited capacity for work or work-related activity”.
That is the core of my concern, which the department now has to address. As I say, I am absolutely indebted to the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Merits Committee, as we all are. Indeed, Richard Tilt, the chairman of the former committee, is an extremely wise man and his experience will, I hope, be available to us for some time to come.
Briefly stated, this is one of the biggest changes that I have ever seen in social security since I started studying this policy area when I was elected to another place in 1983. Why? Because in April we will open the door to a national reassessment of 2.6 million people. We have a model which arguably does not work for employment and support allowance claimants yet. It is a work in progress, but I am absolutely persuaded that Parliament is trying its best to get on top of it. However if in April we are really considering taking on an extra 10,000 or 11,000 new cases each week—it might be each month, but whichever—it is a very big increase and raises questions about capacity. We have to consider the capacity of the Atos Healthcare medical professionals who do these functional capability assessments for work capability assessments, and it raises questions about capacity for jobseeker’s allowance as well.
There is a huge difference between a customer making an application de novo for employment and support allowance and somebody in Glasgow who has been unemployed for 10 years, who has been on incapacity benefit, and who gets a letter asking him to call at the Atos Healthcare professional centre to have his benefit assessed. He will know that if he does not get the continuing levels of support that he currently enjoys he could be £30 per week worse off at a stroke.
I go back to where I came in. I am absolutely in favour of ensuring that everybody who can contribute to the world of work should do so. There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that there are people who need a wake-up call, to use the expression of my American friends. Indeed, there are people who swing the lead, do not play the game and act in bad faith. I know all these things. However, to take 2.6 million over three years and put them through a process where the model has not been absolutely rigorously road-tested to everybody’s satisfaction is not safe. That is the case that the disability organisations have been making to me.
If that is not hard enough we have the deficit reduction programme, which I also support. We cannot ignore the fact that this country is now poorer than it was a while ago. There are also regional and spatial dimensions because labour markets vary. The labour market in Reading is very different from that in downtown Glasgow, which must be borne in mind. On top of that, the work programme, which again I support, is still in gestation. We do not know the detail of how the work programme will serve the client group that we are seeking to help. I think that the identified concerns about the functional capability assessment—it is not a medical assessment—are well founded. If anybody has any doubt that there are problems around it, I point out that the successful appeal rate against decisions on the current scheme is high, suggesting that attention must be paid to these provisions, particularly for mental health and fluctuating condition clients.
There are advantages in the regulations. I certainly welcome the chemotherapy and residential drug changes. They are not to be diminished in any way because they will help substantially the group that they are designed to serve. The biggest complaint comes from the disability stakeholder pressure group community. Professor Harrington has published his phase 1 report, which is truly an excellent piece of work. It offers a series of recommendations which really deal in a much more real-world way with the kind of problems that people face. The complaint is that we are not waiting for the totality of the Harrington work to be put in place. He is already starting on the second annual independent assessment, where he will look at the descriptors for fluctuating circumstances and the like. The results of that will be available probably in late 2011. We should not be opening the gate to the national reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants until we see what Professor Harrington can come up with. That is what the disability organisations say and it is a prima facie valid claim.
Colleagues will know this because we spent a lot of time on the Welfare Reform Act 2007, when the previous Government sensibly required a five-year annual set of reviews. Some of the complaints that the disability groups make is that this will be a piecemeal change, which is the legislators’ fault. We rightly felt that it was not safe to do it without getting independent reviews. The previous Government were right to do that and this Government were right to get Professor Harrington on the case. He brings hope to the whole situation—he certainly does to me.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the House should be indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for giving us the chance to debate the regulations this evening. Like me, and other noble Lords I see present, he has been involved in issues concerning the employment and support allowance and the WCA for a long period. The noble Lord congratulated the former Government on insisting on the annual reviews. If memory serves, that may have been an amendment that he pressed on us at the time.
I start by explaining my understanding of the rationale of why the work capability assessment and the employment and support allowance were introduced. It was part of the journey which recognised the importance of work for people's route out of poverty, their self-esteem, well-being and health. The concept was that, for the vast majority, work, or good work, is good for you and that, as a society, we should support people to get into or closer to the labour market. I think that that is common ground between the previous Government and the current one.
As we know, the work capability assessment was designed to focus on a person's capability, rather than their incapacity, as a building block to help them progress, where appropriate, towards work. The switch from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance was more than just semantics. Although support via Pathways was available before, the introduction of the WCA signalled a determined change to support those who could towards the labour market.
The approach seeks to identify three groups of people: those considered capable of work; those who could work at some point with the right support—the work-related activity group; and those who cannot or should not be expected to work. The concept is to make those determinations by reference to application and a range of descriptors with the objective of determining an individual's functional capability.
There is nothing in the documents that we have received from the stakeholders that calls into question that fundamental approach; and I doubt whether we will hear it called into question by noble Lords this evening. Indeed, the first independent review of the WCA by Professor Malcolm Harrington concluded that the principles underpinning the new assessment remain valid. He stated his belief that the system is not broken or beyond repair; that, at least, is reassuring.
We should acknowledge and welcome the fact that the introduction of WCA has been subject to review—the internal DWP review began in March 2009—and it is the recommendations from that review which, I understand, are reflected in the regulations. Professor Harrington’s independent review, the first required under the Welfare Reform Act 2007, was responded to by the Government in November 2010. It was accepted as a vital contribution to the continuing development of the WCA, and the recommendations were accepted in full.
Although most of the recommendations were to do with process and covered customer experience, the Atos assessment, the decision-making process and the appeals process, there were important recommendations concerning descriptors—in particular, the need for further work to review the mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors and how they are working for those with fluctuating conditions—issues which were raised at the start of the process and which have continued as the ESA has progressed. We support the recommendations, but that raises the question of how they sit alongside the outcome of the internal review, which has caused some of the challenges about which we will hear tonight.
The Government's response to Professor Harrington's report indicated that they would await a further report on mental health descriptors in late December and early January. Where does that report rest? Why is it considered appropriate to proceed with the current changes to the descriptors without the benefit of that report?
The criticism of the regulations has come from a range of sources, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. They variously cover the points that the review has been carried out too early with limited evidence; that recommendations from the statutory review—Professor Harrington’s review—are still being worked on; and that changes to descriptors will make it more difficult to identify those with limited capability for work, those who should be in the work-related activity component.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee. It recommended that certain changes be postponed, stating:
“The Committee recommends that the Department does not proceed with the remaining proposed changes to the descriptors until these have been reconsidered in the light of the findings of the independent review of the WCA and the experience of the trial of the migration of IB customers to ESA”.
Why has the department not taken that path?
Mind, and others, has raised concerns about the regulations regarding mental health descriptors. They extend to the simplification of the assessment, reducing the mental function descriptors by a third, from 10 to seven questions. Is that at the expense of comprehensiveness rather than in unison with it? There are deep concerns about how well the WCA descriptors record the impact of mental health issues. The simplification of the descriptors will exacerbate the problem.
Assessment of an individual's awareness of hazards will now simply focus on the need for supervision, rather than the significance and frequency of the risk posed. Ability to get about and cope with change will no longer be assessed in terms of frequency, which will impact negatively on people with variable or fluctuating conditions. The loss of the propriety behaviour descriptor means that the assessment fails to capture the significant distress caused to people with depression, anxiety and paranoia by misinterpreting or overreacting to the behaviour of others.
The National Autistic Society has expressed similar concerns about reducing the 10 mental health descriptors to seven. It states:
“This reduces opportunities for people to score sufficient points to receive the benefit. Five descriptors which specifically address the needs of people with autism have been reduced to 2. The lower-scoring elements of several descriptors have been removed, and many have been simplified. This makes it much harder to represent the complexity of needs many people with autism experience, and barriers to employment they face, through the assessment”.
It has raised many other points.
Doubtless, noble Lords will also have read the brief from the Disability Benefits Consortium, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. It asserts:
“An individual who ‘cannot mount or descend two steps even with the support of a handrail’ could now be classed ‘fit for work’ … Someone unable to stand at a workstation for more than ten minutes could now be deemed ‘fit for work’… The descriptors for turning star headed sink tap have been removed, consequently there is no functional assessment for the ability to turn or rotate the hand, despite this representing a form of manual dexterity vital in many workplaces … The changes remove all lower-level descriptors in some categories, for example, there are now no six point descriptors within manual dexterity, making it hard for people with multiple impairments to qualify”.
The noble Lord may not be able to deal with each of those points tonight, but those are genuine, practical, real issues raised by people who know. If they are right, that clearly undermines the thrust of the assessment, which we agree that we should be making.
We should have common cause in getting the descriptors and the process right. The Government must convince us that they have not jumped the gun on these changes and answer the searching questions raised by the various lobby groups, which will doubtless be raised further tonight.
We look forward to receiving the Minister’s reply on these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has initiated a very important debate, because these issues have run with the WCA and the employment and support allowance from day one. I believe progress is being made and certainly can be made, but there is some way to go yet.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as the named carer of an adult in receipt of severe disablement allowance. I also associate myself with the words of my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope. I concur both with his concerns and with his support for the need to enable as many people with a disability as possible who have not worked or have not worked for a long time to be assisted into appropriate work through an appropriate process that takes account not just of what they cannot do but of what they can do.
Among the many disability charities which consider this statutory instrument to be premature due to the as yet incomplete recommendations of the Harrington report is, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, has mentioned, the National Autistic Society, of which I am a vice-president. I would like to focus on the concerns for people on the autistic spectrum. In order to qualify for the ESA in a work-related activity group, people have to be assessed to have gained more than 15 points. The way in which it is currently proposed to change the descriptors, as we have already heard, has a detrimental impact on people on the autistic spectrum. I remind the Minister that it was only last Thursday at Oral Questions that I asked him to confirm that the Government accept that autism is a communication disorder.
The descriptors take no account of communication difficulties, verbal or non-verbal, due to mental impairment. This is a major omission. Communication and comprehension are essential in the workplace, and it is a critical area of impairment for people with autism. Making oneself understood is covered only by a physical descriptor, descriptor 6. Unless guidance clearly states that this covers people who find it difficult to communicate due to a non-physical disability such as autism or a learning disability, these needs will not be recognised in the assessment. Noble Lords will understand my concern that already I am looking at areas where autistic people should be given a point on that descriptor scale, but getting them to reach the 15 points, if appropriate, is already excluding those areas where they will be in some considerable difficulty. Understanding and comprehension impairments are covered only due to a sensory impairment under descriptor 7, where the emphasis is on aids used by those with hearing or visual impairment.
The wording of the descriptor itself is vague; it is based on an ability to complete “two sequential personal actions” in the context of planning, organisation, and problem-solving. People on the autistic spectrum—even those with honours degrees and high IQs—always struggle with planning, organisation and problem-solving. It is too broad to be meaningful and leaves too much scope for interpretation to accompanying guidance. For people with autism, this may vary from turning on the tap and wetting their hands within the process of washing their hands, or getting ready for work and then making their own way to the workplace. For many, doing that unassisted will be a major challenge.
The National Autistic Society is also very concerned about changes to descriptor 17. It has been simplified to make the wording clearer, but it has become overly simplistic. Someone who frequently has uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour, particularly when under pressure or in an environment with which they are really not familiar—that sort of behaviour would be unreasonable in any workplace due to cognitive impairment or mental disorder—cannot realistically be assessed as not having limited capability for work. As the proposals stand, we do not believe that employers would accept as employees people who the descriptors would deem as capable for work, but showed those sorts of behavioural problems in the workplace.
People with autism may exhibit behaviour which does not meet the minimum criteria set out in this new descriptor 17, but which would cause disruption in the workplace. For example, people will flap, hum or spin. I know of one person who, in a stressful situation in the workplace, would make cat noises as a sort of comforter in order to exclude the distress going around him. There is a limit to how long those working with people like that will put up with somebody making cat noises on a continuous basis in a busy office. These are all regarded as individual or rather quirky, but they are very real parts of their disability.
I say to my noble friend that there is genuine concern about the speed with which these changes are being brought in, ahead of what Professor Harrington is saying.
I mentioned that I am the named carer for a person on severe disablement allowance. This allowance, which comes within this legislation, is a very old disability benefit; it was something often given to young adults and adolescents who, having come out of full-time education, were at that time assessed and deemed not able to apply for paid employment. I would not even want to exclude them from the new opportunities for employment as disabled people, but—and I particularly refer to learning disability, mental health and autism—many of them are now getting on a bit because they were awarded this some years ago. Some of them will be in their 30s and 40s or even older and for many of them, getting the support they have been given to date to enable them to live as independently as possible or to be as socially integrated as possible has not been an easy journey. It has been a long journey and there has been a lot of input to get these people where they are today. But their situation is always going to be fragile, and there is nothing that I can see in the way these assessments are made to take account of what is at the moment a sustainable situation, as far as independent living is concerned. We must not put too many demands on them, however, and ensure that the process associated with it does not give them some form of detriment as a result. As my noble friend Lord Kirkwood mentioned, they might lose money, which is a very important part of their life and allows them to be able to plan and be secure with their finances.
There is another form of detriment. People may find that their self-confidence is shattered after it has taken years to build up; they may find that they can no longer cope with independent living of one sort of another as a result of being put through a process which undermines that stability. You cannot put a price on that detriment. I say cautiously to my noble friend who I know is sympathetic to these issues, please do not let this Government cause detriment to those vulnerable people.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. I, too, will begin by declaring a personal interest. My 38 year-old son, who has a learning disability, was well described by the noble Baroness towards the end of her speech. He is always being assessed for what he cannot do and not for what he can do, which is incredibly demoralising for him. We his family spend our time trying to help him succeed and he would really like a job.
Some years ago, when I was consulted as president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists on the development of a work capability test, I suggested that the focus should be on capability, not lack of capability, from the point of view of the person being assessed. Although this is called a work capability assessment, it is an assessment of incapability.
I understand that, as my son is in receipt of severe disablement allowance, he may be required to undergo a work capability assessment. I tried out the online work capability self-assessment to see how he would fare. I will not go into the details but, of the three possible outcomes that we have heard about, he fell into the third category and would not be required, according to my assessment, to undertake any work-related activity. Perhaps that is a relief to me, in that his finances might not change, but I am sure that it would be a huge disappointment to him if that was the case.
So far that might be fine, except that the assessor may come to a different decision, in part perhaps because of my son’s lack of insight or understanding of his difficulties. He might then have to undergo an appeal and not everyone has the stomach for, or the capability for, an appeal. My reaction to trying out the test was that there is some sensitivity in the mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors but probably insufficient sensitivity in the questions which relate to the type of complex difficulties that my son faces in his wish to be part of the workforce. They are difficulties which would require focused and sustained support to enable him to obtain work-related activity. The last thing that I or any parent in my position wants is for my son to fail yet another assessment, especially one which emphasises what he cannot do.
Another concern is that, if the assessment finds that he is capable, he is then given insufficient support, which would do terrible things to his self-worth and self-esteem. I question whether this assessment has been adequately road-tested and would want to avoid even one disabled person and his or her family having to face unnecessary appeals or loss of income through being unwilling to face yet another appeal. Even participating in the process of this assessment could be detrimental to the person’s mental heath.
My noble friend Lord Rix shares my concerns and has asked me to express his support to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, today and to give his apologies as he is unable to contribute to this debate owing to family illness. He believes that many people with a learning disability will be denied vital support to help get them into work if they are not found eligible for employment and support allowance. That mirrors my concern. My noble friend believes that the crude indicators used in the regulations must be changed to more accurately reflect an individual’s capabilities.
For example, my noble friend is deeply concerned about the merging of the three descriptors—“memory and concentration”, “execution of tasks” and “initiating and sustaining personal action”—into one. They have been replaced with just one descriptor, “Initiating and completing personal action”. According to the regulations, this,
“means planning, organisation, problem solving, prioritising or switching tasks”.
The removal of the descriptor titled “execution of tasks” means that the time taken to complete a task will not be included as part of the assessment. This is particularly relevant to people with a learning disability and is likely to be a significant barrier to employment.
The current system already fails to meet the needs of people with a learning disability. My noble friend Lord Rix suggests that these regulations do not effectively assess limited capability for work, which means that the additional barriers and support needs of people with a learning disability are not being fully recognised in the assessment.
With less than 7 per cent of people with a learning disability who are known to social services being in any form of paid employment, the barriers to finding a job, combined with deep-rooted prejudice and discrimination, are already significant. Is it too much to ask that a coalition Government who claim to put fairness at the heart of their decisions should seek to tackle some of these barriers instead of perhaps making them even more difficult to overcome? For this reason alone, I and my noble friend Lord Rix, call for these regulations to be annulled.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, the DWP is in the middle of doing a very large jig-saw. The picture on the box is of a lot of people scurrying to work. In one corner older people are still going out to work, and in another corner people with disabilities are going about their business with the replacement DLA. But at the moment the pieces of the jig-saw are all jumbled up on the table, perhaps with the Minister frantically trying to find the straight edges. Are these regulations the pieces with the straight edges or not? I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood for giving us the opportunity to discuss these regulations because there are some disturbingly divergent views, as we have heard most movingly this evening.
The Merits Committee has said that the regulations may imperfectly achieve their policy objective, which is not something that it says at all frequently. In particular, it encourages the House to seek further information from the DWP on the rationale for putting these regulations forward now. It will not be disappointed, as all noble Lords have raised this matter. This is a recurring theme in all the evidence that we have been sent, from the CAB to the disability benefits consortium.
There is puzzlement that the DWP wants to bring in these changes now for several reasons. The principal reasons are: that the data from the migration trials from incapacity benefit in Aberdeen and Burnley have not yet been evaluated; that we are expecting more changes to the descriptors and to the work capability assessment as a whole once Professor Harrington has published his second-year review; and that the bar is thought by some groups to have been raised so high that there is now hardly any difference between those in the employment group of ESA, which comprises the limited capability for work people, and the support group, which is the limited capability for work-related activity people.
The Social Security Advisory Committee is more forthright because looking at DWP regulations and commenting on them is its job. It says, as we have heard, that apart from a few changes which it welcomes, the department should not proceed with the remaining proposed changes to the descriptors in the WCA until they have been reconsidered in the light of the findings of the Harrington report into the WCA and the migration trial of IB claimants. Why is it that the DWP believes that the changes to many of the descriptors are improvements, when the disability and other lobby groups say, as we have heard this evening, the exact opposite; namely, that the changes represent a tightening of the screw, making it harder for claimants to claim ESA?
I believe that the answer may lie in the different interpretations of the purpose of the work capability assessment. It was set up to replace the personal capability assessment as a test of a person’s capability for work rather than their incapacity. As Professor Harrington says in his review,
“the WCA was designed to be a first positive step towards work for most people”.
However, he also says that it is not working as well as it should, which is borne out by the fact that 40 per cent of appeals against a decision that an individual is capable of work are currently upheld. This surely shows that something is seriously wrong with the assessment. In particular, Professor Harrington says that there are clear and consistent criticisms of the whole system and much negativity surrounding the process.
The wider interpretation of the purpose of the WCA is not just whether it looks at someone’s theoretical capability of work but whether it works in the real world of work. This is where the Social Security Advisory Committee report and the lobby groups diverge quite strongly from the DWP. The SSAC tries to be fair. I think that it is worth quoting two sentences from the report in full, which states:
“The Committee recognises that the assessment of capability for work is a contentious and emotive issue and has always advocated a positive approach to the assessment of capability that looks at what the individual is able to do and their adaptation to their health condition or disability, rather than focusing solely on what a health condition or disability prevents the individual from doing. However, the Committee also recognises the complexity of many individual cases and the significance of the factors that may determine capability in the real world but which cannot be easily measured by a test that scores functional capability”.
I would contend that this is why there are such divergent views between the SSAC, the Merits Committee and the lobby groups on one side and the DWP on the other. The DWP is obviously not prepared to wait until the migration trials have been evaluated to change the descriptors or for Professor Harrington’s task group to report on the mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors, which will report to the Minister later this year.
However, there is a way forward, bearing in mind that the recommendations from Professor Harrington’s first report have been accepted in full by the Minister—here I echo my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. There are five recommendations, which can be summarised as follows: that more empathy should be built into the process, with JCP managing and supporting the claimant; that the transparency of the Atos assessment should be improved; that there should be better understanding by Atos of mental disabilities; that decision-makers should be better empowered; and that there should be better communication of feedback between Jobcentre Plus, Atos and the First-tier Tribunal to improve the quality of decision-making on all sides.
Professor Harrington’s full report is very instructive on all these matters. For example, he says that the language and logic used in the LiMA computer system,
“is not very intuitive or accessible to claimants who receive their final report”.
He goes on to say:
“The Atos Training and Development handbook encourages”,
healthcare professionals,
“to use open questioning and not to rely on the LiMA system”.
However, in practice this hardly ever happens. He also sheds light on the fact that claimants are expecting a medical examination, which looks at their illness or impairment, rather than an assessment of their functional capability. It does not help when the Atos healthcare professional conducting the assessment does not look at the claimant at all, but rather at the screen, nor does it help when the healthcare professional has poor knowledge of some of the less common health conditions, such as Parkinson's disease. Another key part of Professor Harrington's report was that the Jobcentre Plus decision-makers rarely make a decision that disagrees with the evidence provided by the Atos assessment because they lack the confidence to do so. In other words, the decision-makers are often just decision stampers.
The DWP says it is working to implement these recommendations as quickly as possible. I think the whole House would like to know how the department is getting on with this implementation, because this is not just an extremely important matter but, I believe, the key to the whole reputation of the work capability assessment when the migration from incapacity benefit is rolled out nationwide. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister would tell us what steps are being taken to implement the current Harrington proposals.
The Merits Committee report is, as usual, an absolute model of clarity. It states, as has been stated already today, why it is so important that the work capability assessment is got right. Those who are deemed to be fit for work and are on JSA will receive £65.45 a week, those who are found to have limited capability for work, and therefore on the work-related activity group of ESA, will receive up to £91.40, while those in the support group of ESA will receive up to £96.85. The difference in the levels is substantial.
Before I finish, I unequivocally welcome the change in Regulation 35 which allows claimants awaiting chemotherapy to be placed in the support group. However, in general, it is difficult not to agree with the SSAC's view that, in removing some of the subtleties in the descriptors, about which we have heard so graphically today,
“the test's relevance to the real world has not been enhanced”.
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for tabling this prayer today, and I echo his core concerns. I declare my interest as chairman of Forward-ME and that one member of Forward-ME is a member of Professor Harrington's task group looking at fluctuating conditions.
There has always been a problem with the descriptors for the work capability assessment, particularly for people with mental illnesses and for those with what are termed “fluctuating conditions”. During the progress of the Welfare Reform Bill four years ago, I raised concerns about the ability of Atos medical staff to discern the difficulties encountered by people with ME/CFS when, on the day of the assessment—which is not, as some claimants think, a medical examination—those being assessed might have been able to perform a number of tasks on a one-off basis but they were frequently unable to repeat the tasks on a consistent basis. There seemed to be no room for detailing pain, muscle weakness, fatigue and other disabling symptoms that occur intermittently and often severely. As a result, the assessor has awarded very few points and the decision-maker has then considered them fit for work. In every case that I have encountered, people with ME/CFS who have appealed to the medical tribunal have succeeded in their appeals and their benefits have been reinstated.
When Professor Harrington published his An Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment last November, the hopes of ME/CFS sufferers were raised. Other noble Lords have quoted from his report, and I am sure that the Minister knows it off by heart, so I will not repeat it all. The Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, as others have said, accepted all of Professor Harrington's recommendations on behalf of the Government. Under “A programme for work for year two” in that report, Professor Harrington wrote:
“This programme focuses on: the descriptors, particularly in assessing fluctuating conditions”.
He had already set up a task group to look at mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors, and I am aware that that group has reported to him. In the new year the task group to review the descriptors for fluctuating conditions started work. They are due to report to Professor Harrington in April this year. I understand that the mental conditions report will be published in the summer and that for fluctuating conditions in the autumn.
I am aware that the internal review of the operation of the regulations was required by statute. I am also aware that all of the disability organisations involved disowned the report, which they say was flawed. They rejected the recommendations because of, among other things, the negative effect that they would have on disabled people and their families. As other noble Lords have mentioned, the Social Security Advisory Committee was unhappy with the part of the regulations that relate to the descriptors. It recommended that they be deferred until Professor Harrington's independent review of the WCA was complete and the evidence of the outcome of the trial of migration of incapacity benefit claimants to employment support allowance or jobseeker’s allowance was available. As we have heard, the House of Lords Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee accepted that the internal review found that the performance of the WCA was not working satisfactorily and it commended the DWP for wanting to revise it. However, the committee also highlighted some of the flaws in the current statutory instrument. These have already been discussed.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, I am pleased that the regulation that applies to claimants undergoing or likely to undergo chemotherapy is to be amended, as well as that which applies to drug or alcohol rehabilitation claimants. However, in the light of the conclusions of several reports and the views of a great many experts in mental health and fluctuating illnesses, and the fact that Professor Harrington has been asked to review the descriptors for both these conditions and will be reporting on both by the autumn, I cannot understand why the Government insist on making changes which all the experts, except the DWP, regard as draconian and premature.
We keep hearing about the Prime Minister’s ambition that we should all be happy, and that any government measures should include a happiness score. Has the Minister measured the happiness of the thousands of claimants who are terrified that their benefits are going to be severely reduced, who will go through months filled with anxiety and apprehension as they wait in an ever-lengthening queue to appeal to a first-tier tribunal, or who become totally demoralised because they are forced to apply for jobs knowing that no employer will take them on? Has he calculated the cost of the increased financial burden that will fall on the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which will have to cope with the anticipated increase in the number of appeals following decisions that are likely to be seen as unreasonable?
In order to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the WCA, Professor Harrington recommended building empathy into the process, better training for decision makers, accounting for the particular difficulties in assessing mental, intellectual and cognitive impairments, and empowering and investing in decision makers so that they are able to take the right decision. Would the Minister kindly tell the House whether these recommendations have been implemented?
How are decision makers to come to the “right decision” if they are not given all the information because of the limitations of the descriptors to be used according to these regulations? Are they free to ignore the Atos report if the claimant’s statement and any accompanying medical evidence conflicts directly with the findings of the Atos doctor? I am particularly concerned about people with ME/CFS who have frequently been denigrated and who feel defeated by a system that refuses to recognise their illness. The additional stress these regulations will impose on them will not help to improve their condition. Like many others, I am deeply unhappy about these changes. They are going to prove hugely costly, both financially and emotionally, to claimants and I suspect to the DCA, but then that is another department, is it not? Why can the DWP not wait until Professor Harrington reports later this year? Why the urgency?
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, many speakers have already gone over the new regulations in great detail, and I do not wish to repeat what others have said and go into all the ramifications. I propose just to talk about the impact of the new regulations on blind and partially sighted people, which is likely to be quite serious and which illustrates that the regulations as we have them at the moment are not fit for purpose. I think that other speakers have been unduly kind about the regulations. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said that he was in favour of them. I have to say that I am not in favour of them as they stand. I am more with the Social Security Advisory Committee, which has said that they are not yet fit for purpose in a number of respects, that they were being rushed through prematurely, and that the department should take them back to await the second phase of Professor Harrington’s review. There should be more mature reflection on some of the points that have been made about the regulations and further consultation with the stakeholders who have been so critical of them, about which we have heard.
As has been stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, these regulations fundamentally undermine the structure of the employment and support allowance where claimants with limited capability for work are put into either the work-related activity group or the support group. The new descriptors make the limited capability for work test, the gateway to the benefit, unreasonably difficult to pass for many disabled people, certainly for blind and partially sighted people. By setting such a high threshold for eligibility for the ESA, they transform the limited capability for work test into a limited capability for work-related activity test, which large numbers are bound to fail. This in effect erodes the distinction between the two tests, undermining the intention of the Welfare Reform Act 2007 that there should be two distinct groups of claimants, one moving towards work—the work-related activity group—and the other with no conditionality—the support group. Under these regulations, the number of disabled people able to qualify for the work-related activity group will drop dramatically, as whole groups are largely excluded by the eligibility threshold.
The Merits Committee, in its first report of this Session, stated that the department itself estimates that 23 per cent will be found fit for work and will be required to make a new claim for jobseeker’s allowance, with its obligation to participate in activities to improve job prospects. The Social Security Advisory Committee believes that the DWP has underestimated the support required by this vulnerable group of claimants. It has also said a number of other things: first, that the current descriptors are also inadequate for measuring the capacity of those with mental health conditions, sensory disabilities or fluctuating conditions; and, secondly, that there needs to be a closer correlation between the tests and normal work situations. For example, someone who needs to be accompanied to familiar places by a helper is not sufficiently adapted to their condition to be capable of work, yet this would score only nine points under the proposed new descriptors and would therefore not enable that person to get through the gateway and qualify for the benefit.
The disability organisations that have made submissions to the Merits Committee have also made a number of other points. The perspective on work skills needs to be wider. Someone might be able to pack boxes all day, but not be able competently to find their way to the factory canteen; or again, people with a limited capability for work—blind people are actually instanced for this—may be able to work, but in a very circumscribed set of jobs. There is an insufficient supply of those jobs in a depressed job market.
I wish to concentrate on the impact of the regulations on the situation of blind and partially sighted people, and in doing so I declare my interest, although at my time of life I am not likely to be applying for employment and support allowance. However, I am a vice-president of the RNIB, which has had a certain amount to say about these regulations. Those who know about these things are clear that the new regulations will have a disastrous impact on blind and partially sighted people, who will in all likelihood fail to qualify for the ESA if the regulations come into force. This is deeply concerning, they say, considering that many blind and partially sighted people have limited capability for work and so should be able to qualify for the ESA, where limited capability for work can be demonstrated—which, I repeat, will be very difficult to do under the new regulations.
A person of working age who loses their sight will need to learn new skills such as independent mobility and how to use a computer using screen magnification or speech output software, as well as new everyday living skills such as cooking, dressing, cleaning and so on. It is not appropriate to require someone in this position to end up claiming jobseeker’s allowance, yet that will be the impact of these regulations. Under the proposed limited capability for work test, a blind person’s difficulties in performing most work-related activities would be ignored and only extreme difficulties in navigation and maintaining safety would be assessed. A visually impaired person would be considered to have a limited capability for work only if they were unable to navigate around unfamiliar surroundings without being accompanied by another person.
The RNIB says that it does not believe that Atos has the specialist knowledge and expertise in a medical test centre environment to carry out functional assessments of the mobility of people with sight loss. It says:
“For example, we are unclear how they would determine whether or not a person is unable, due to sight loss, to navigate a familiar route without support, when they will be assessed in an unfamiliar environment at the test centre, under conditions of limited time for the assessment to be completed”.
The department’s internal review stated that it was the department’s intention to continue to work with experts and specialist disability organisations to refine the descriptors related to sight loss. However, this has not happened, despite requests to meet officials. For that reason, the department really ought to look further at the regulations before it has these discussions with interested organisations that it says in its internal review it is its firm intention to have.
For many blind and partially sighted people, the regulations, if brought into force, could see them denied the ESA. This is due to the high qualifying threshold being put in place around limited capability for work and the failure properly to assess the effects of sight loss. The regulations will seriously undermine the distinction between the work-related activity group and the support group, and force people who should be eligible for the ESA on to the JSA, which is not the appropriate benefit for people with limited capability for work. I do not believe that this is either appropriate or that it was the intention behind the Welfare Reform Act 2007.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I did not want to interrupt the noble Lord, but I think he said that I had said I was in support of these regulations. I am not and I do not believe I said that—if I did it was certainly not my intention. I tried to play back some of the concerns that have been raised with us. I certainly support the concept of the ESA and of the WCA, but I do not support these particular regulations.
Baroness Murphy
I will be very brief because the debate has gone on for quite some time now. Other noble Lords have eloquently described the present difficulties with these regulations. However, I sympathise in some ways with the difficulties that the Government have, because we all share the intention that we should get more people who are currently receiving disability support into work; and what the Government are trying to do—and the previous Government were trying to do—is exceptionally difficult to get right. The development of those descriptors and an assessment tool is going to take more than the time allowed.
I am not saying that you should not pilot, try or try to revise the assessment tool, which is actually what the Government have tried to do. That seems perfectly legitimate, so I am not entirely in support of withdrawing these regulations, because unless we continually try to improve them, we will never get to the point at which they are adequate. However, I return finally to what the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, has said, because it is not the descriptors or the work capacity assessment that are the real problem. The real problem, which I think Professor Harrington described so beautifully, is that the process is,
“mechanistic, impersonal and lacks empathy”.
Here we have a population of worried, anxious people with a profound range of difficult disabilities to try to assess accurately, and there needs to be a culture change within Jobcentre Plus, Atos Healthcare and the healthcare assessments themselves. That is the fundamental problem. We could work on these descriptors. I know that the Government are doing so with extra help from specialists in the mental health field. I ought to declare an interest here as a psychiatrist. The work that is going on is essential, but unless we can change the culture of these assessments to make them more user-friendly we will not get people back into the work that would help them to lead better, fulfilled lives.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
As president of MS Cymru, I want to flag up the problem for people with fluctuating conditions. All the difficulties around the assessments have been clearly laid out and I will not repeat them, but there is a real problem for people who have an assessment and then, possibly a week later, dramatically deteriorate. It is the fluctuating nature of conditions such as MS that is causing a lot of anxiety to people out there. The provision for those on chemotherapy is greatly welcomed, but I ask the Minister to explain how the second part of Professor Harrington’s review, which he is doing in conjunction with the MS Society, will be incorporated. How will the Government handle the possibility of quite a lot of appeals or even challenges when the next phase is rolled out?
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, most of the points that I wanted to make have been made, so I will be brief. I emphasise the serious concerns that have been expressed by disability organisations, most particularly that these changes are premature. As we have heard, the second phase of the independent review led by Professor Harrington is still under way, and the advice on refining the mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors has not yet been seen by Ministers, so in all likelihood we will be faced with two major, costly and confusing changes to the WCA to be made in a single year.
I emphasise that the cost of these changes has not been covered. The cost of people having to go to tribunals when their assessment needs to be overturned is enormous in terms of stress, worry and consequent ill health, but it is also a waste of time and money for the country. As the CAB has pointed out, the current WCA assessment routinely fails to identify disabled people’s genuine needs and inappropriately allocates them to jobseeker’s allowance, only to have that decision overturned on appeal. Currently 40 per cent of cases are overturned on appeal, which must cost the state a considerable amount.
According to the Welfare Reform Bill documents, almost £20 million was spent in 2009-10 on appeals to the tribunal service and, according to figures from the Disability Alliance, that means that roughly £8 million was spent on appeals to rectify the failings in the current WCA. There is now a nine-month backlog for appeals in some areas. If the new descriptors go ahead as planned, these changes could lead to even greater pressure on the system, especially since, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, pointed out, new ESA claimants will be joined by an estimated 10,000 people per week being migrated off incapacity benefits from April 2011.
The Government’s expert independent body, the Social Security Advisory Committee, has recommended that these plans are not implemented now. I urge the Government to follow their advice.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, for bringing up this matter. He understands these matters so well and I support what he has said. This is a complex matter. Disability is complex, as it differs in so many ways.
There is great concern from many disability groups, as has been said, as well as the national AIDS group, which has not been mentioned. HIV is a very complex condition. People with it have to live on drugs for the rest of their lives. On some days they are better than on other days, and some drugs work in different ways on different people. This is a complex matter.
I hope that the Minister will get these regulations right. I have two questions for him. Who will be doing the assessments? Will these people be adequate? This is of great concern to many people, and this debate has illustrated how very complex the whole matter is.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, this is an important opportunity to discuss the regulations. A lot of points have been raised and I will try to deal with as many as possible. However, I take this opportunity to lay out the position coherently. I take the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that communication has been less than perfect. I shall try to describe what is happening to reinforce that communication programme and I commit to ensure that it is maintained.
There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the assessment and what we are doing to make it fairer and more effective. The first point to make is that these regulations seek to take the first step in improving the work capability assessment. They were developed in conjunction with technical experts and with considerable input from specialist disability groups. As noble Lords have acknowledged, they will ensure that individuals awaiting, or between courses of, certain chemotherapy will be placed in the support group without face-to-face assessment. They will expand the support group to cover people with severe disability due to mental health problems and communication problems—that includes people with autistic spectrum disorder, about whom the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, was concerned—and they will ensure that the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability so that we can provide them with the right support.
Before proceeding to debate the finer points of the regulations, I would like to put the reform into a context. The legislation before us today is part of a far broader commitment by the Government to tackle worklessness and intergenerational poverty. This is a very real and very urgent problem for us all, especially given that there are now 2.6 million working-age people claiming incapacity benefits, of whom some 850,000 have been claiming for a decade. This is a massive brake on the economy, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds every year, but that is not the most important point. The true cost of this level of inactivity is paid for by individuals left languishing on long-term benefits without hope or opportunity for a better life. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said about the scourge of inactivity. If we abandon these people, we fail in our duty as Members of this House. For too long, too many people have had to pay for our failure to act.
Before the recession, there were 63 consecutive quarters of economic growth—that is the longest growth period the economy has enjoyed, as historians can best work it out—and the economy created 4 million additional jobs. Yet under the previous Government—I am not being political—just over half those jobs went to foreign nationals. The result was that, even before the recession hit, we still had 4 million inactive people. Millions of people were without jobs in a growing economy, yet the system was trapping them. That is why we were sucking labour from abroad. The system offered too few people the opportunity to escape and to make a better life for themselves. We must not fail them again, because the country cannot afford it, and neither can the individuals, their families or our society.
Studies have shown that welfare dependency, social isolation and lack of purpose in life have a debilitating affect on individuals. Decades ago, the late Aaron Antonovsky argued that the purpose in life—what he called coherence—was crucial to understanding human health and well-being. More recently, Waddell and Burton’s excellent review of the issue, written four and a half years ago, reinforced the evidence that showed that work is generally good for you. There is ample evidence that prolonged periods of inactivity and unemployment contribute to declining mental health. That is why the welfare reforms that we are introducing are so important, and that is why the regulations are such an essential element in transforming the lives of millions of people at risk of being abandoned to welfare dependency.
These reforms are the key to providing the lost with a path out of the cycle of dependency and poverty, and helping them on to the path to new opportunities. That is why we are embarking on a large-scale re-evaluation of those on incapacity benefits through the work capability assessment that will take in some 1.5 million people—not the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit who the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned —over the next three years. It is also why we are introducing the universal credit to make sure that work pays, and why we are introducing the largest welfare-to-work programme that this country has ever witnessed.
This is designed not to badger or bear down on the vulnerable but to give them a road map to a better life. It is only by tackling welfare dependency and starting to dismantle the benefits trap that we can help people escape the huge social costs of worklessness, social exclusion and intergenerational poverty. Many noble Lords will know how difficult it is to wrestle with the issue of child poverty without this kind of route.
Those who cannot work will of course continue to get the support they need. However, for those who can make the journey back towards the workplace, we will offer them structured support to become work-ready. This will provide real help for many of those who have previously been abandoned by the system—those who were simply labelled as incapacitated and largely ignored, whether they wanted to work or not.
The work capability assessment was introduced in October 2008 as a key part of the assessment process to determine entitlement to employment and support allowance. It replaced the personal capability assessment and represented a significant and overdue change in assessing an individual’s ability to work. It was developed in conjunction with technical experts, along with considerable input from specialist disability groups.
However, it was clear from the outset that, unlike the PCA, the WCA should be subject to an ongoing process of review, evaluation and refinement. Indeed, it was this House that passed the amendment that introduced the requirement for an independent review of the WCA for the first five years after its introduction—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. It was the only amendment from this House that made its way into the original legislation for the work capability assessment, and it received support from all sides. That was slightly before my time, but I know many noble Lords will remember it well.
The Countess of Mar
The noble Lord said that the department worked with disability groups. Why have those groups unanimously dissociated themselves from the internal report?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I am pleased to answer that question. I am rather surprised by the actions of the groups. I have seen a lot of correspondence and a lot of internal work. There was very full engagement by both sides, and a lot of correspondence about fine-tuning the regulations. At the end of the process there seemed to be real agreement. Therefore I am genuinely surprised that, after the passage of some months, the consensus seems to have been significantly eroded. Income elements may have come to the fore, whereas the technical analysis that was the subject of the interplay between the department and the groups was perhaps easier to get to grips with.
I will go back to describing the system. The wider system that we inherited, after the measures that the internal reviews described, contained flaws that we as a new Government have looked to put right as quickly as possible. In June we launched the first of the five annual independent reviews of the work capability assessment—the first of the reviews that this House legislated for. It was carried out by Professor Malcolm Harrington, a highly respected occupational physician. He reported last November. He did not consider that the work capability assessment was broken but felt that it was not working as well as it should and made a series of recommendations to improve its fairness and effectiveness. We have fully endorsed his review, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, pointed out, and we have committed to implementing his recommendations as quickly as possible.
The first key element of those recommendations—I am borrowing, again, from the description of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas—is that we empower Jobcentre Plus decision-makers to make the right decision. They will have clear responsibility for the decisions they make and will be given the support that they need to ensure that those decisions are independent and considered. I hope that that is one of the reassurances for which the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was looking.
The second recommendation is to ensure that individuals are treated with compassion by clearly explaining everything to them, helping them to fully understand the process they will go through and ensuring that they know that they can provide additional evidence, including medical evidence, for consideration at any time. I hope that that is the second of the reassurances for which the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, was looking.
The third major change is to improve the transparency of the Atos assessment by ensuring the audio recording of assessments in the Atos pilot. The other element involving the Atos process is that we will account for the particular difficulties in assessing mental health conditions by ensuring that Atos employs “mental health champions” at every centre.
Nearly all these changes will be in place for the start of the reassessment, with the remainder completed in time for the summer. We have also appointed Professor Harrington to conduct the second independent review. He will now examine the assessment in more detail, particularly focusing on mental health descriptors and fluctuating conditions.
I shall now respond to the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on fluctuating conditions. The fact that conditions fluctuate is now embedded in the descriptors. We just want to make sure in this next piece of work that we get that absolutely right. We look forward to Professor Harrington’s recommendations following the second review in due course.
The regulations before us today are part of this improvement process. They come from the internal review undertaken and fully supported by the previous Government. That review suggested a number of changes to clarify and improve the technical descriptors; noble Lords have made these points so I will go through them quickly. The changes include placing individuals awaiting or between courses of chemotherapy in the support group; expanding the support group to cover people with certain communication problems and severe disability due to mental health conditions; greater provision for individuals who are in residential rehabilitation due to drug or alcohol misuse; ensuring the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability; and simplifying the language of the descriptors to ensure fair, consistent and transparent applications. These changes will improve the work capability assessment. They will increase the number of people with severe disabilities who are provided with unconditional support in the support group. They will ensure that we do not deny employment support to individuals who, with our help, can get back to work.
The internal review consulted a range of experts and groups and, as I described just now, tried to reach consensus. Significant concerns were expressed by the groups around the descriptors. I will not go into those because I am short of time, but I can respond to the noble Countess, Lady Mar, on fluctuating conditions. It must be possible for all the descriptors to be completed reliably, repeatedly and safely, otherwise the individual is considered unable to complete the activity.
The Department for Work and Pensions has undertaken rigorous testing of these changes to understand their effects. The department modelled the impact of the changes on data from almost 60,000 assessments, and a panel of experts was brought together to examine the changes in significant detail. Where any issues were identified during this process, further refinements were made to the descriptors. From this analysis we expect the changes to increase the number of new claimants who are put in the support group, specifically, those who are awaiting or are between courses of chemotherapy, and some whose limited capability relates to certain mental functions and communication difficulties.
I have run out of time, but I hope that the House will indulge me for two more minutes as this is really important. We are committed to the principle of continuous review and refinement of the work capability assessment. As part of that principle, we have reviewed in detail the working of the work capability assessment and consulted in depth with specialist disability groups to improve the assessment. The addendum to the original report shows how far such concerns were taken on board in these regulations. We are committed to taking Professor Harrington’s review to improve the sensitivity of the process. Of the 17 recommendations that he made, we will have 15 in place in time for April and the other two in a couple of months. I hope that that is a final reassurance for the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and the noble Countess, Lady Mar.
The changes that we are making in the regulations will improve the work capability assessment. They will expand the support group to cover people with severe disability due to mental health conditions and communication problems. They will ensure that the descriptors take account of someone’s adaptation to a condition or disability and accepting these regulations means that we can make these important improvements now. We remain committed to the principle of continuous improvement to the work capability assessment. I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, will feel able to withdraw his Prayer to Annul these important regulations.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. It has been a long but excellent debate. I thank all noble Lords who have participated. I shall certainly look carefully at the record tomorrow to ensure that we learn the lessons that have been laid in front of the House during the debate. I am pretty sure that the Minister will do the same—that he will take the opportunity of reflecting very carefully on what he has heard and the tone in which some of these powerful speeches have been made.
Knowing the Minister as I do, I know that he will also take away from the debate the fact that he may have some work to do to reconnect the department properly with the disability community and the pressures groups that represent it. I hope he will take that commitment on personally and not leave it to his senior officials, very highly regarded as they may be. I hope that he will personally invest time to make that connection good, otherwise it will fall foul of broken communications in future if it is not put right.
Reflecting on the debate, I think the Minister has got an amber light; he did not get a red light, but he still can in future if he does not complete the commitments he made—speaking for myself, I am willing to accept them—but he has not got a green light. I hope I am reflecting the tone of our excellent debate in seeking the leave of the House to withdraw this Prayer.
Postal Services Bill
“Increased use of post office accounts
The Secretary of State shall give due consideration to how the use of post office accounts, and the facilities available in respect of them, may be extended and shall lay a report before Parliament within three months of the commencement of this Act.”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to require the Secretary of State to give full consideration of how more use can be made of Post Office card accounts and to extend the services available in respect of them. The Post Office card account was launched in April 2003 as an alternative for those who could not or did not want to open a basic bank account when the direct payment of benefits was introduced. The contract for that account is extremely important to the post office network, being worth around £1 billion to post offices between 2003 and 2010.
There were, it is fair to say, some issues around the Post Office card account contract. Suffice it to say that the matter was resolved in November 2008, not least because of the intervention by my noble friend Lord Mandelson. He was able to announce then that the Post Office card account had been saved for the Post Office. On 13 November 2008, Richard Bates, head of community services at Consumer Focus, said:
“Post Office card account users will be delighted that they can continue to access their money in an environment they trust and that is within easy reach. The decision is good news for consumers and provides a bedrock for the viability of the post office network”.
He went on to say:
“Consumer Focus thinks the Post Office Limited is in a strong position to play a much more expanded role in financial services. … Today's decision is a good step in the right direction. People tell us they need the option to deposit money, pay bills and make savings in their Post Office card account. The Government must now provide and promote these services”.
It is interesting, given some of our recent debates, that there was a particular cheer at the news in Northern Ireland, where 190,000 people have their pensions and benefits paid into a Post Office card account using nearly 500 Post Office outlets.
In many ways, the Post Office card account has been a major success. Around 4.3 million people now receive benefits via such accounts, of whom approximately 40 per cent are pensioners. The account plays a central role in service provision in a whole host of areas, providing great benefit to communities across the country. Each week, 6.5 million visits are made to the post office network with a view to withdrawing funds from the Post Office card account, and it has been calculated that those under 65 who hold such an account are 28 times more likely to be “unbanked”. These same people—those in receipt of state benefits and tax credits—are also the most likely to use high-cost credit, while those without bank accounts are the least likely to hold any other financial product.
We have heard already today that the Government are looking for ways to extend appropriate, inclusive and functional services to Post Office customers. We welcome that commitment. The National Federation of Sub-Postmasters, in its Six Steps to a Sustainable Post Office Network, emphasised that:
“The Post Office card account … reminds vital for the post office network and”—
I stress these words—
“its functionality should be increased”.
That is what this amendment is about.
Post Office card account customers are some of the least well served by financial services in society. They make up 20 per cent of visits to Post Office branches each week and spend as much as £2 billion in the network each year. It should be a priority for the Government, in seeking to protect and grow the network, to find ways to develop that account. A robust Post Office card account must be an essential part of the portfolio of financial services that the Government are now proposing for the Post Office, not least because it will provide valuable bridges to financial inclusion and much needed committee support. Before the Government transfer the Post Office to a mutual, we think it sensible to require the Secretary of State to give full consideration to how more use can be made of the Post Office card accounts and to extend the services available in respect of them. I beg to move.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I shall speak briefly on my very short Amendment 23A, which I put before this House partly to have the excuse to name and shame and, perhaps more importantly, to give the Secretary of State in his annual report to Parliament the opportunity to name and shame. My decision to put forward this amendment came through a conversation with Age UK, which was careful to point out to me that in 2006, when it did its survey of older people,
“44% … used the post office to collect their pension, 43% for access to cash and 56% used it to pay their bills”.
That demonstrates what an important role the Post Office played in the financial life of older people.
Age UK welcomed the Government’s announcement, as did I, last November that their ambition is for all UK current accounts to be accessible through the post office network. Of course, the significant majority of high street banks are now going along with providing that service, but there are two major exceptions. Here is my opportunity to name them: HSBC and Santander. They do not make their standard current accounts accessible at post offices. Age UK has pointed out that older people could say, “This is very inconvenient”. Perhaps they are in deprived areas or in rural communities where there are no easily accessible bank branches. They could transfer their accounts to one of the banks that use the Post Office, but the reality is that switching accounts is complex and difficult. There are endless forms to fill out and I know from experience that it frequently goes wrong. To put that additional burden on older people is unacceptable.
We had a good discussion not long ago when in every part of this House there was real concern for the post office network, but even more for the communities to see more financial services available through the Post Office with its trusted name and accessibility and to keep people out of the hands of loan sharks. There were endless reasons, and it is important to provide the Secretary of State with the little reminder that there is a mechanism that can be used to name and shame. I hope that it will not be needed and that the banks will have fallen into line, but if they have not they ought to hear themselves declared on at least one of the Floors of Parliament.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)
My Lords, for clarity I confirm that when we have said that we will write to noble Lords, we will of course put copies of these letters in the Library.
I thank noble Lords for tabling the amendments. As I said earlier, the Government are clear that the wide range of financial services offered by the Post Office—for example, personal loans, credit cards and savings products—are an important part of its total product suite.
I shall begin with Amendment 22D, and attempt to ease the noble Lord’s concerns about access to and use of Post Office accounts such as the Post Office card account, which can be used by people to collect their benefits through the Post Office. The Government are absolutely serious about protecting the post office network, and we fully support the Post Office as it seeks to develop the services that it offers. The Post Office card account is currently available across the network and will remain accessible at all post offices, including the new post office local model. The Post Office is a valued partner of the Department for Work and Pensions to deliver benefits through this account. One of the things that people most like about the Post Office card account is its simplicity. The Post Office card account remains a simple product, aimed at those who are unable or unwilling to open a basic bank account. Those who want additional features have a very wide choice of basic bank accounts, and many current accounts, which are readily accessible at post office counters.
That brings us to Amendment 23A in the name of my noble friend Lady Kramer. I know that my noble friend has a great deal of experience in the banking industry and I always value her contribution to our debates. The Government have been absolutely clear in their ambition for all UK current accounts to be accessible through the post office network, making post offices the convenient place for everyone to access their cash. In November last year the Royal Bank of Scotland reached agreement with the Post Office to allow RBS customers, including NatWest customers, access to their current and business accounts at post offices. As I mentioned in the debate on Amendment 21B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, this will mean that almost 80 per cent of all UK current account holders will be able to withdraw money free of charge at post offices, and many can also pay money in and check their balances.
Of course, this is excellent progress, but I agree with my noble friend that we must continue to strive to ensure that all the UK’s major banks provide access to their current accounts through post offices. All the UK’s major banks, as well as the Nationwide Building Society, provide at least one basic bank account that is accessible at post offices, but we would encourage HSBC and Santander also to offer access to their current accounts through the Post Office. With a network larger than all of the high street banks combined, and 20 million customer visits each week, the Post Office offers unparalleled access to their customers.
We therefore continue to support the Post Office’s ambition to ensure access to 100 per cent of UK current accounts. However, it is not necessary to include that stipulation in the Bill. Clause 11(2)(b) already requires the Post Office to provide details of the services provided at post offices, and we would fully expect that to encompass the financial services that it sells over its counters. Although the decision to allow customers access at the post office is ultimately a commercial one for the banks to make, the Government have made clear our commitment to encourage those arrangements to be put in place.
Amendment 24, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who is not here, is about credit unions. Let us remember that co-operation between the Post Office and credit unions is already strong, and the Government support it becoming even stronger. The Department for Work and Pensions recently announced a significant package of support for the credit union sector, which includes funding set aside for a shared credit union and banking platform, subject to a feasibility study. That would open up opportunities for the Post Office to provide credit union services such as banking transactions, bill payments and low-cost credit services to many more people.
We made clear in our policy statement, published last November, that we support an even stronger link between the Post Office and credit unions, and we have demonstrated clear progress against that aim. I fully recognise the worthy intentions behind the amendments, and I hope that noble Lords and the noble Baroness will be reassured about the good work that is already under way in those areas. Placing those obligations or reporting requirements in legislation would simply increase bureaucracy. We will continue to encourage co-operation between credit unions and Post Office Ltd, and to support the Post Office in its provision of financial services. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment tonight.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her words. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for joining the debate in speaking to a complementary amendment. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Kennedy was unable to speak to his amendment; but that did not seem to matter, as the Minister answered the points that I think that he would have made. We will tell him that in future it is almost unnecessary to be here, because the force of his personality was such that she felt that she had to answer his points.
The Minister gave us some positive words about the Post Office card account and picked up the point that we want to do all we can to ensure that access to the banks is improved and made available to as many people as need it. We will study what she said, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) the locations where post office services are, at the time of the report, not being provided but which are identified in the Post Office plan as outlet locations”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I shall also speak to Amendments 24C and 24D. All the amendments are an attempt to strengthen Clause 11, which relates to an annual report on the postal network being produced.
Clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament and to give copies to Scottish Ministers, Welsh Ministers and the offices of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland. Amendment 24A requires the report to contain information on locations where Post Office services are not being provided at the time of the report but which are identified in the post office plan as outlet locations. This form of reporting would be an important development; it would enable stakeholders to distinguish between the Post Office’s intended network and that which they are actually able to achieve.
A major concern has been the number of sub-postmasters leaving the business, as they are unable to make a sufficient living from their post offices. We have heard that more than 900 post offices, which is believed to be an unusually high number, are up for sale. Likewise, we know that more than 160 post offices closed on a long-term temporary basis in 2010. Many more will have closed on a short-term basis. It is important that these changes in the network are clearly reported and that an accurate picture of service levels around the country is reported.
Amendment 24C requires the report to include the number and locations where Post Office services have ceased to be delivered since the last report and the reasons for this service reduction. As things currently stand, post offices close and services are reduced without explanation or justification to the public. Closures as part of a national closure programme went through a form of public consultation, which allowed for some degree of accountability and understanding of the criteria for closure. However, when individual post offices close, no such indication is given.
Not only are post offices continuing to close but the Post Office is preparing to undergo another significant round of change through its new model for the network. Under current proposals, 4,000 main offices will be identified that will continue to provide the full range of services, and 2,000 sub-post offices will be transformed into what is known as “local” or “essential” post offices. These will provide a reduced service; the remainder of the post office network is expected eventually to be developed along this “essentials” model. I would welcome a clarification of that aspect.
It is important that the impact of these changes is properly monitored. The amendment seeks not to change the Post Office’s plans but to ensure that a clear understanding of the shape of the network is achieved. While these changes are not closures, they constitute a major change in service provision. Likewise, the introduction of outreach services as replacements for post offices—often in the form of a van servicing a community a number of set times a week—constitutes a significant reduction in service levels in most areas. It is important that we monitor these changes. At the time of the network change programme between 2007 and 2009, it was envisaged that 500 post offices would be replaced by outreach services. There are now 772 outreach services, which make up 6 per cent of the network.
It is on these grounds—the importance of understanding what is happening to the post office network during closure programmes and understanding programmes where the models are changing—that we seek to strengthen the terms of this Bill. I trust that the House will support the amendment.
Baroness Wilcox
I ask for clarification so that I do not answer a question that has not actually been asked. Is the noble Lord, Lord Young, speaking to Amendment 24EZA as well?
Baroness Wilcox
My ball, I think. An annual report on the post office network laid before Parliament is an important means of achieving transparency around the post office network. The statutory requirement in Clause 11 to lay such a report before Parliament already goes further than the current requirement in the Postal Services Act 2000, which requires only information about the number and location of post offices and their accessibility. This Government have made a commitment that there will be no further programme of post office closures. We are committed to creating a sustainable future for the Post Office, and Post Office Ltd is legally obliged to maintain a network of at least 11,500 branches over the spending period and to ensure that they uphold the access criteria. These commitments should mean that noble Lords have far less reason to worry about post office closures than in previous years. While we agree that there should be an annual report on the post office network, an annual report on its own is only an annual report.
Other means of monitoring the post office network are already in place and have already been put before Parliament. For example, a comprehensive list of all post offices in the country, which is broken down by parliamentary constituency, is placed in parliamentary Libraries each summer. Equally, Schedule 12 ensures that Post Office Ltd’s annual accounts must also be laid before each House of Parliament on an annual basis.
My department monitors Post Office Ltd’s compliance with the access criteria on a monthly basis, and Post Office Ltd also publishes details of the monthly changes in the network currently subject to local consultation on its website. On a quarterly basis, the Post Office sends reports on the number of post offices and their geographical distribution to the parliamentary Libraries. Data is also provided to Consumer Focus on a quarterly basis to enable it to scrutinise the results independently. All these measures ensure that the information that Parliament receives on the post office network is as thorough and as up to date as possible. Finally, should the Secretary of State feel that it is necessary to obtain further information from Post Office Ltd, Clause 11(4) allows this to happen.
This provision ensures that the Post Office’s report must include such other information as the Secretary of State requires. I believe that this obviates the need for any separate report from the Secretary of State as would be required under Amendment 24EZA. A further report would be an unnecessary duplication. For all those reasons, I believe that including in the Bill the various requirements set out in Amendments 24A, 24C and 24D would simply add unnecessary bureaucracy.
The Post Office plays a vital social role in communities up and down the country and the reporting procedures in the Bill reflect that, but we should not forget that these are requirements not faced by any of the Post Office’s competitors. There is an importance balance to be struck here, as the greater the reporting requirements imposed on the Post Office, the greater the cost and therefore impact on the Post Office’s competitiveness. I hope that, with those reassurances, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for her detailed response, which I will study carefully. In the light of the comments made, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) the use of the network by the universal service provider, and any changes in the preceding year”
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, Amendment 24B would strengthen reporting requirements on the Post Office to reflect also on the use of the network by the universal service provider and how this may have changed in the preceding year. Once again, Clause 11 requires the Post Office to send a report to the Secretary of State each year about its network of post offices. As I have previously said, the network must give details of the number and location of post offices in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It must also give details of the postal services, the services provided under arrangements with a government department and other services provided by the Post Office. It must further give details of the accessibility.
I will not repeat what I said on the previous amendment, but the reporting arrangements in Clause 11 are important and wide ranging. However, they can be helpfully strengthened by Amendment 24B to reflect the challenges that the Post Office will face following separation from Royal Mail. It is vital that due consideration is given as to how the universal service provider—currently Royal Mail but following the successful passage of this Bill potentially one or more alternative postal operators—will use the post office network when it ceases to be part of an integrated company.
Many stakeholders have grave concerns regarding the risk to the post office network from the proposals in the Bill to separate Post Office Ltd from Royal Mail. The Post Office is dependent on Royal Mail business for its survival. One-third of its revenue and one-third of sub-postmasters’ pay is generated from selling Royal Mail products and services. If the two businesses are forced to separate, a privatised Royal Mail will be, or could be, likely to look elsewhere for retail outlets to sell its products. There is no guarantee it will use post offices to the same extent.
The Bill does not safeguard the inter-business agreement through which Royal Mail guarantees use of the Post Office as its retail arm. When it comes to be renegotiated a privatised Royal Mail will look to reduce costs, possibly by using other outlets such as supermarkets or high street chains instead of post offices. The Government will not undertake to extend the current five-year IBA to 10 years. It is on those grounds that we believe that Clause 11 needs strengthening as per the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale
I am rather surprised that the noble Lord did not seek to group this amendment with the amendments that have just been discussed because, to a great extent, he is covering the same point, although I noticed that he brought the inter-business agreement into his comments towards the end. On that basis, I rather hope that the Minister will to a great extent repeat the answer that she gave to the last group of amendments and in particular her reference to Clause 11(4), which gives the Secretary of State the power to ask the reporters preparing the Post Office report to produce information on any subject relating to the post office network that he believes is necessary at a particular time. This is likely to vary from year to year. I therefore do not think that it is particularly suitable to put this in primary legislation.
Baroness Wilcox
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for moving the amendment and my noble friend for pointing out that it is very similar to the amendments that I spoke to just now. I will see if I can again convince the noble Lord that my response will be a good answer for him to take away and think about.
As we have discussed, the annual report is an important means of achieving transparency around the Post Office network. It is, of course, also right that an annual report on the Post Office network should give details of the postal services that the Post Office provides. That is why we have included this requirement specifically in Clause 11(2)(b). This section requires the annual report to contain details of,
“the postal services … that are provided at … post offices”.
We would expect this to include any postal services that the Post Office provides on behalf of the universal service provider. The income that the Post Office receives from mail and the services that it provides for Royal Mail are, of course, vital and sub-postmasters highly value the footfall generated by mails customers. Indeed, Royal Mail and the Post Office are natural partners and we envisage their relationship continuing for years to come. There is an overwhelming commercial imperative for the two businesses to work together. Indeed, the chief executive of Royal Mail, Moya Greene, commented on the strength of the network and said that it would be “unthinkable” that there would not always be a strong relationship between Royal Mail and the Post Office.
However, we know that the projected decline in letter volumes means that postal services will not be a growth area for the Post Office, despite potential opportunities in parcels. That is why the Post Office is developing new revenue streams, as detailed in our policy statement. We should all be clear that the majority of the Post Office’s income already comes from other sources, in particular financial services, government services and telephony.
The latest Postcomm report on the network of post offices in the UK contains a breakdown of the percentage of Post Office Ltd’s revenue derived from mails, including postal services, as well as financial services, government services and telephony. This information is shown on an annual basis from 2003-04, which allows you to see the change not only since the preceding year but over several years. This information, currently included in the Postcomm report, is exactly the type of information that we would wish to be included when the responsibility for the report transfers to a Post Office company. However, I understand that the continuing relationship between the Post Office and Royal Mail is an important issue for noble Lords and, as such, I would be happy to take this suggestion away to consider. For the time being, therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for her reply and her willingness to take the issue away. This is clearly a charm offensive—she supplies the charm and I will endeavour not to be offensive! In light of her comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, there was no intention on our part to have these amendments dealt with separately. We did not have a request to group them, but I must admit that although they cover different areas, they are associated with one another. I shall keep this contribution brief.
Amendment 24E aims to strengthen reporting requirements for the Post Office to ensure that the level of access to post offices and post office services for both small and medium-sized businesses is monitored. Given the importance of that relationship, which has been recognised by all sides of the Committee, we are focusing on this particular aspect. The amendment seeks to strengthen Clause 11 by recognising that medium-sized businesses as well as small ones are highly dependent on post office services and therefore should be included. Small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99 per cent of all businesses in the UK. They provide 59.8 per cent of private sector employment and 49 per cent of private sector turnover. SMEs are indeed the backbone of the UK economy, and hence it is our view that this amendment would make an important contribution towards strengthening Clause 11. I await with interest the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale
The noble Lord is of course absolutely right. As the director of an SME myself, I sympathise exactly with the words he has just enunciated. It therefore occurs to me to ask my noble friend why Clause 11(3)(c) only refers to small businesses. It seems illogical.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I suspect that the noble Lord is right. I shall need to check it, but I tend to agree with him at the moment. However, I do not want to delay the Committee.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I agree with the aim of the noble Lord, Lord Young, that the annual report on the post office network should provide information about the accessibility of the company’s post offices to small and medium-sized businesses. I do not know that I can answer the question put by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale; I surely will, but not immediately.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, does that mean that my noble friend is, for the second time, going to take this away and look at it rather more favourably than some of the other things we have heard over the past couple of days?
Baroness Wilcox
Yes.
We know that businesses value the post office network. According to research by the Federation of Small Businesses, almost 20 per cent of small businesses visit the post office every day and nearly half visit twice a week. So I share the concern and I agree with the intention of the amendment. But, as was pointed out by my colleague the Minister for Postal Affairs in the other place, Clause 11 already encompasses what I think noble Lords want it to cover.
First, we should be clear that there is no universally recognised definition of what constitutes a small or medium-sized business. In the United States, the term “small businesses” generally refers to businesses with fewer than 100 employees, while “medium businesses” refers to those with fewer than 500 employees. In the United Kingdom, SME statistics define a small business as one with 10 to 49 employees and a medium business as one with 50 to 250. If we are going to be very technical here, and one can often be very technical when it comes to legislation, it could even be argued that since the UK SME statistics define a “small business” as a business with between 10 and 49 employees and a “micro business” as one with between one and nine employees, both micro businesses and sole traders could be excluded from the definition in Clause 11(3), but that is not the Government’s intention. After all, 95 per cent of SMEs have fewer than 10 employees and we know that post offices play a particularly valuable role for this group.
We therefore intend the term “small business” here to include all businesses with fewer than 250 employees in line with the broader UK statistical definition of an SME. I am quite happy to make that commitment to your Lordships, and of course if the Secretary of State was not satisfied that the Post Office was providing broad enough information to meet this requirement, he could direct the Post Office under the powers of Clause 11(4) to provide any additional information he felt necessary. I do hope that this clarification will reassure the noble Lords, and I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Young, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for that. Was it edification, clarification or education? I will study carefully the comments that she has made and in the circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lea of Crondall
“Operating methods of post offices
(1) A company which is engaged in the provision of post offices shall not require changes to be made to the operation of any post office in relation to any of the matters listed in subsection (2) unless the conditions in subsection (3) have been satisfied.
(2) These matters are—
(a) the terms on which any sub-postmaster operates a post office;(b) the required opening hours of any post office;(c) the services offered by any post office; and(d) the physical conditions in which the services are provided.(3) The conditions for the purpose of subsection (1) are that—
(a) there has been consultation with representatives of the employees affected by the proposed changes and any sub-postmaster affected, as well as with relevant consumer groups;(b) a report has been submitted to the Secretary of State by the company proposing the changes, including the proposed timescale for the introduction of the changes.”
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who is unable to be present. We believe there is feeling among sub-postmasters that Post Office Ltd will now have too free a hand to implement changes in what are now styled as post office locals, which may result in them losing a significant amount of revenue. That would throw into question the whole viability of many such sub-post offices and their associated shops.
This amendment is in three proposed subsections. The first subsection sets out the relationship between the second and the third, which concludes that there has to be consultation with representatives of the employees affected by the proposed changes and any sub-postmaster affected as well as with relevant consumer groups. Under subsection (3)(b) of the proposed new clause, the company would have to submit to the Secretary of State a report proposing the changes, including the proposed timetable for the introduction of the changes. The matters concerned are: first, the terms under which the sub-postmaster operates the post office; secondly, the required opening hours of any post office; thirdly, the services offered by any post office; and fourthly, the physical conditions in which the services are provided, such as how the staff operate on one counter and so on.
It is apparent that there are worries about the contract to be negotiated so far as sub-postmasters are concerned. We understand that the payment of commission rather than a guaranteed annual sum is one of the features that is likely to lead to a substantial loss of income—perhaps the Minister would like to comment on that.
I have of course looked at the BIS booklet about the pilots, which is very well set out but neatly sidesteps the question of what happens if the sub-post districts are fewer and further apart. Individual examination of the pilots does not quite reveal what is a plausible scenario: that they would be much further apart. For example—this is simple arithmetic from school—doubling the radius of a catchment area from three miles to six miles will not just double the area concerned, because r2 means that you are going from nine square miles to 36 square miles.
Finally, page 16 of the booklet—this is in connection with the pilots—says this is a way in which you can implement the Government’s big society reforms at the local level. It is too late at night to play around with the concept of the big society, but surely that is particularly grotesquely inappropriate when the number of sub-postmasters is likely to fall. I am reminded of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which after all has some similarities of concept to the big society, with Big Brother and so on. In that book he introduced “doublethink”, whereby words often mean precisely the opposite—this is a mixture of George Orwell and Lewis Carroll, I guess—of their natural meaning. So the big society now has big wide spaces with fewer services. I beg to move.
Viscount Tenby
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall and others. In doing so, I confess that I will be singing from the same song sheet as my noble friends Lord Cameron and Lady Howe. On the basis that a good song bears singing again, I make no apology for returning to the theme.
The Government have stated that they will not add to the 5,000 or so closures to the network so sadly seen in recent years, but I suggest that they are being a little disingenuous. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Let me explain. Conditions can be created that may make it difficult for some sub-postmasters to continue to trade profitably. For example, there may be the withdrawal of the ability to offer road tax renewals, as the Minister referred to earlier, or to facilitate the postage of packages over a certain weight. It has just been announced, for good measure, that the contract in respect of pension and benefit cheques has been awarded to Citibank, which is to subcontract to Paypoint, a company that works through newsagents and garages. This is a decision that has been described as “bitterly disappointing” by the National Federation of SubPostmasters, while the spokesman for Consumer Focus has been quoted as saying that,
“Government has committed to making the Post Office the ‘front office’ for public services. The decision … seems out of step with that”.
Most of these sub-post offices combine retail outlets with postal counter services, certainly in the suburbs but mainly in rural communities. They provide a lifeline for the increasingly large element in our population of the elderly and often infirm. It is no good talking to such citizens about electronic gadgetry and the like. They want to be able to access the outlets without recourse to a car, and to experience tried and trusted procedures when they get there. The lifeline that the retailer needs to maintain is a viable business. What is additionally important from their point of view is that, arising from these services, these shoppers also buy the often-quoted packet of cornflakes and more besides. These sub-post offices are the very outlets that the Post Office should be seeking to support with the introduction of new products and services. They are indeed the jewel in the crown, and this amendment seeks to protect that jewel properly.
Lord Rowe-Beddoe
My Lords, I support the amendment in a general way. During the course of today, your Lordships have understood that many of these amendments are interrelated and we have seen much repetition. I am greatly relieved to have heard the Government’s response to many of the amendments. My concern at Second Reading was that I wanted a definition of “programme of closure”—“programme” being the operative word—and what that means. Now we know that we are talking about a network of 11,500; the Government have made themselves clear, and the Minister has repeated that on a number of occasions.
The amendment tries, as many have done previously, to provide a safeguard. I am convinced that the government commitment is there, but we are talking about a few years from now. What safeguards do we require? Subsections (3)(a) and (3)(b) of the amendment suggest that there should be consultation, which always goes back into the Secretary of State’s report—we know all that. We are not trying to take away a commercial responsibility from the company running the Post Office; rather, we seek to mix the commercial responsibility with preserving the intention of the Bill, particularly this part of it.
The amendment concerns—this has been said very eloquently by noble Lords all round the Committee—the importance of our post office network in terms not only of the business itself but of its great social importance to the community. That is where the many amendments to the Bill are headed. They all seek some form of safeguard while realising that a Government cannot safeguard something which will make the business—be it Royal Mail or Post Office Ltd—a commercially unviable proposition. I support the amendment, specifically subsections (3)(a) and (3)(b). I hope that the Minister will understand these concerns. This is a common theme; that is all I can say. I have listened very carefully to the speeches made today and their common theme is that of seeking safeguards.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, while the main focus of the Bill is to sell off Royal Mail, the plans for the Post Office in terms of separation, mutualisation and reorganisation over the next four years to get it into a position to be mutualised are significant for postal services and people throughout the UK.
Separation and mutualisation are provided for in the Bill, as has been discussed. While there is markedly little detail provided on how mutualisation is to take place or the form of mutual the Post Office may become, the transformation of the network—this is just as significant as the closure programmes which have been seen in recent years—to prepare for this is not covered at all in the Bill. There are no safeguards or parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals which will fundamentally alter the post office network, and it is unclear how Post Office Ltd plans to proceed. Furthermore, Consumer Focus, which has previously monitored closure programmes, is now to be abolished and it is highly uncertain that Citizens Advice, which is to take over its responsibilities, will have the expertise or resources properly to monitor the wide range of changes being planned for the Post Office.
Alongside this, the Bill also means that annual reports on the post office network will be compiled no longer by Postcomm, or Ofcom under the new regulatory regime, but by Post Office Ltd. It is not clear what impact this will have on the extent or quality of information produced. It should also be noted—other amendments deal with this point—that there is no requirement for this annual report actually to be published. In light of these changes, there is clearly cause for concern that the transformation will take place under the radar and without proper scrutiny. Yet it is clear that a fundamental programme of change is planned.
In the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills paper Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age, published in November last year, the Government outlined that, in the spring, Co-operatives UK would be tasked with reporting on the options for mutualisation, covering who the members of the mutual should be and their relationship to it. The paper comments on the transformation of the network. The reduction in the number of main post offices gives the greatest cause for concern, with about 2,000 sub-post offices being converted to the local model. That latter commitment worries us. The local model is also referred to as Post Office essentials. As we have said, “essentials” is used because it offers a slimmed down provision of services. These are likely to be offered on the counter of other shops, not through dedicated post offices.
For those reasons, we support the amendment. I will listen with interest to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, this is the final and possibly the most emotional and serious amendment that I have spoken to tonight, because I too come from a small village—St Mawes in Cornwall. We too have a post office, and local people are worried. The fact that the Bill is called the Postal Services Bill is, in a way, distracting, because it is very good news for post offices. The very good news is that, unlike in the past few years, during which there have been post office closures all over the country, this Government have made an absolute commitment that there will be no programme of closures for post offices, that 11,500 post offices will stay open and that £1.34 billion of investment will be made in them. We should say that loud and clear. Royal Mail is one thing, but the post offices around our country are completely different.
The amendment seeks to restrict Post Office Ltd’s ability to make changes to post office branches. It is an attempt to protect sub-postmasters or sub-postmistresses from having change imposed upon them by Post Office Ltd—the parent company that contracts with sub-postmasters. In particular, the amendment reflects concerns held by some noble Lords regarding the post office local model. The noble and gallant Lord who originally tabled the amendment has been to see me and my team at least three times to obtain clarification and understand what is actually going on here. That is what this is about. In order to ensure that I address these concerns and communicate the position fully, I apologise to your Lordships in advance for the length of my answer at this late hour.
For those noble Lords who are not familiar with this local model, let me explain. It is a new sub-post office model which Post Office Ltd has been testing over the past two years in more than 50 locations across the country. The model involves the establishment, at little cost, of a post office counter in an existing and viable outlet. It differs from what we might consider to be a typical sub-post office, because it does away with the impersonal, screened-off—in our case—“fortress” counter at the back of the post office, which requires separate staff and always has a long queue. Instead, it provides open-plan access to post office services alongside the retail till. That will mean that instead of staff having to close the shop for the few hours that the post office opens, the model that we are considering means that the hours when the shop is open are those during which you will be able to use the post office counter.
These changes provide a much more flexible lower-cost operating model for the retailer. The cost of setting up the office is limited to the inclusion of a new counter that is not required to be manned by separate staff. We envisage that this model is particularly suitable for the many smaller post offices across the country where sub-postmasters are struggling to make a living. We do not deny that this process will involve changes, but moving to more flexible models that focus on the customer is the only way to enable the post office network to thrive across the country.
Noble Lords on the opposite Benches may remember that this model was in fact first piloted under the previous Government in September 2008 under the name Post Office essentials. This amendment seeks to hamper the introduction of post office locals by placing an obligation on Post Office Ltd to consult employees, sub-postmasters, sub-postmistresses and consumer groups, and then report to the Secretary of State before any changes, including relatively minor ones, are made to private businesses. The amendment would result in Post Office Ltd having to consult and report before changes were made to increase opening hours, take on new services, or even change a post office till—let alone change the model. The amendment would also limit the Post Office’s ability to react quickly to developments in its highly competitive markets, and would subject even minor decision-making to government scrutiny.
We cannot just shut our eyes and hope for the best when it comes to the Post Office network. Instead, we must and will enable the Post Office to compete so that it can put its customers first and do well. Additional bureaucracy will damage our shared objective of ensuring that the network is maintained at its current size.
The local model is right for consumers and for sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. Customer satisfaction with the Post Office local pilots has been excellent.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I hesitate to intervene at this late hour, but there is an area that I would like the Minister to address. She said that this was right for sub-postmasters, but is there not a price to be paid? At the moment, they have a guaranteed income. Changing to the local model would mean that they would work on a commission-only basis. That is a significant factor, which is why a great deal of concern has been expressed by sub-postmasters. Because of the lateness of the hour, I will not go into the argument about the quality and types of service. With due respect to the Minister, who always addresses things fairly, she gave the worst-case scenario for a sub-post office. I would welcome some acknowledgement of the change in income stream for sub-post offices, and of the fact that we are talking about a commission-only basis for the essential/local model.
Baroness Wilcox
I will come to that. We are talking about a pilot scheme over a fairly long period, during which we will all learn.
Some noble Lords may be concerned that the model will not create real post offices or offer enough services. However, the model is not designed to replicate a main post office, or a Crown post office, where the entire suite of Post Office products is available. Just as a local or express supermarket offers only the essentials that you use on a day-to-day basis, so a local post office will offer a range of services that one frequently needs.
The local model that is being tested through pilot branches offers the vast majority of existing post office services, and 97 per cent of transactions by volume. One can post letters, pick up one’s pension and deposit and withdraw cash. Post Office Ltd is studying the results of the pilots to see how the model can be improved further and to determine on the locations where it will be most viable before it is introduced more widely. The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, expressed concern that changes in future would not be appropriately thought through. I reassure him that piloting will continue for the next two years, with the major rollout not starting until 2014. We expect that by 2015 around 2,000 out of the network of around 11,500 branches will have converted to the Post Office local model. This change will not be rushed through, but I believe that it is the best way of securing the future of the network.
I recently visited a Post Office local pilot and was very impressed. Mr and Mrs Patel in Dagenham told me that, although the inclusion of a post office counter in their convenience store had taken a bit of getting used to, they were now delighted with it. As a result of the post office services they now offer, they receive an extra 30 to 50 customers a day, who often purchase other items from their shop. Mr and Mrs Patel pointed out that one of the best features of the local model is that the opening hours are vastly extended compared with a typical post office. Their post office is open seven days a week, for 10.5 hours a day, except on Sundays, when it is open for three and a half hours. Many customers come in on their way to or from work, when a typical sub-post office would not be open. In all that time, the increased footfall boosts the sales of the other items they offer.
It is envisaged that the local model will play an important role primarily in urban areas. However, there is nothing to prevent a local model being established in an existing and viable rural retail outlet, should Post Office Ltd decide that this is the best way of serving its customers. Remote rural areas will continue to be served by traditional post offices or by outreach services, which will ensure that communities will still be able to access post office products and services where a traditional post office is not viable.
I hope that noble Lords will understand this Government's commitment to a vibrant future for the Post Office network, and will appreciate that subjecting to consultation even the most minor decisions that the Post Office has to make will simply prevent post offices from being free to operate on a competitive and commercial basis. I fear that the added bureaucracy of consultation and reporting obligations may achieve little except to distract Post Office Ltd and the sub-postmasters and sub-mistresses from the work that they need to do.
I therefore thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, and now the noble Lord, Lord Lea, for tabling and moving the amendment and giving me the opportunity to try to assuage some of the concerns around Post Office local. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Lea, to reflect on what I have said today and withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I hope that reflection can be mutual. Then, when we come to Report stage, we will see if there has been any degree of accommodation of what is widely felt in the Committee.
One of the problems of the relationship in the new model between the Post Office and what are currently called sub-postmasters is that there is currently little transparency over what that relationship is. My noble friend Lord Young put a question to which I may have missed the answer. Is it not the case that there is widespread talk that it will be based on a straight commission basis rather than a minimum for the year, which is a sort of salary? The sub-postmasters in thinly populated areas are not dinosaurs. Generally, their surname probably is Patel and they are fairly sharp businesspeople, but they do have these problems. They are the heart and soul of the community, along with the school, the church, the cricket ground and whatever. That is life.
I am glad that the noble Baroness has today started to tease out, I hope, the ambiguities of her repeated statement that “we have no programme of closures”. Well, of course we are not talking about a programme of closures of sub-post offices; it is not the Government who will do that. Let me put it as kindly as I can: that is not the answer to the question. We are trying to see the circumstances in which there could be any protection, against any criteria, when a community sees a post office about to close.
There are generalisations about the model, and how it will be wonderfully sparkling and new. There is a broadly continuous counter in the post office in the shop I go into. Two out of the four staff have the necessary “competences” to deal with the post office side, and will also sell you a lettuce or half a dozen eggs. I may sound like a dinosaur for a minute, but in what sense does that need to be modernised?
I am very grateful for the support that we have received from the Cross Benches, which suggests to me that the next step should be to see whether there can be something to reassure the many sub-postmasters. I know that they are a disparate group. Having been a trade union official for 35 years, I am not unfamiliar with that. We are trying to look at it from a local perspective, in the spirit of the big society; how about that as a conciliatory way to end?
On this occasion, therefore, I hope that there can be further consideration before Report. Unless there is, I predict that colleagues will wish to press the point further and, maybe, divide the House at that stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.