Parcel Delivery Services
(2 days, 15 hours ago)
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Lord Pack
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the quality and reliability of parcel delivery services, particularly in relation to their impact on small businesses and vulnerable consumers.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I particularly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Sarwar, whose maiden speech I look forward to hearing in this debate. I hope that a short Lib Dem-initiated debate about parcels, if not perhaps the realisation of a long-standing dream item on the noble Lord’s bucket list, will at least provide a congenial forum for his debut. I am sure he will rise admirably to the challenge of the very rapid turnaround between his introduction and maiden speech.
Parcel deliveries are a central part of modern life. They can bring fun and joy to our lives, such as with a well-timed gift. But they are also essential for our economy, both for sales and for supply chains. They are essential for health too, with many being dependent on parcel deliveries to receive medicines and other health assistance. They give a vital lifeline to the wider world for those who are greatly restricted in their mobility. Yet, the state of the parcel delivery sector is, in some key respects, far from happy. Citizens Advice estimates that 15 million people suffered a problem with their most recent parcel delivery.
The 2025 Parcel Theft Report estimates that nearly five million homes were affected in a year by parcel theft, with over £650 million-worth of goods being stolen. I recently found one such stolen package dumped near my own home, presumably because the thieves had discovered that it contained a very large bottle of vinegar and nothing else. I was able to reunite the vinegar with its owner, but of course most victims of theft are not nearly so lucky. What is more, these problems have all the greater impact on those who are less mobile, who are therefore all the more dependent on parcels arriving on time and in the right place.
So up against all this, what is Ofcom, the regulator, doing? Not enough. What have the Government done in their recently signed-off statement of strategic priorities for Ofcom? Again, not enough. Unfortunately, prior to the summer, the Government did not find time to debate my regret Motion on that Ofcom strategy. I hope today’s debate will re-focus attention on it, particularly as Ofcom’s own data shows that, of those who contacted a delivery company about an issue, only 45%—less than half—were satisfied with the outcome. Of course, not everyone will be happy in such cases, but the Institute of Customer Service finds that, on average, 63% of people are satisfied with complaint-handling. So, with all due caution about definitions in each case not being exactly the same, it is fair to say that not only do you have less than a 50:50 chance of coming out satisfied if you raise an issue with a delivery firm, but the sector’s overall performance is well below that of other sectors.
Ofcom’s data does show that the 45% figure is up one percentage point on the previous year, but that pace of improvement means it would take 18 years for the sector merely to get to the average. Despite being 18 years off merely getting to average, Ofcom’s own commentary, published alongside this data, imparts no real sense of concern or urgency. The Government’s strategy statement merely gives a “welcome” to Ofcom’s approach, along with the suggestion that Ofcom
“should take enforcement action where it considers it appropriate”.
Given that we are never going to call for inappropriate enforcement, that is about as tepid a form of words as we can get.
There is a further reason why Ofcom’s approach is problematic: its requirements for complaints processes are poorly specified and, judging by people’s experiences, not properly followed by parcel delivery firms themselves. The specification problem is that Ofcom requires complaints processes for the sender and the addressee, yet you are neither if you have someone else’s parcel dumped on you. You are neither if you see bad driving or atrocious parking from one of the parcel delivery firms. In fact, these problems will get worse. The Government’s strategy for Ofcom rightly encourages experiments with drones and robot delivery of parcels. But what if a robot heading to someone else’s home crashes into you on the pavement? What if a drone, flying to deliver a parcel somewhere else, crashes into your garden? You are neither the sender nor the addressee, so Ofcom says that there is no need for an adequate complaints process that you can have recourse to.
Now, you might think that delivery firms are happy to accept complaints anyway in such circumstances, but outside of Royal Mail, which has its own regulatory structure, that is not my experience, nor that of many people I have spoken to. Worse, there is also the widespread experience that, even if you are the addressee, but you have, say, bought something from an online shop and are therefore not the parcel delivery firm’s customer—the online shop is the customer—the parcel delivery firms will say, “No, you can’t complain to us”, even though Ofcom’s rules say you should be able to.
Perhaps most strikingly, the website for InPost—one of the largest delivery firms—which I checked again last night, explicitly says:
“Where you have ordered our Services through a retailer or other third party, all queries and complaints should be raised with them directly. Their complaints process will apply.”
But that is not what Ofcom’s rules say it is allowed to do. So the complaints process is broken: the regulators’ rules are too narrow and do not appear to be being properly enforced. Moreover, when the Government signed off the strategy for Ofcom—admittedly, before the Minister took up his post—they did not say that things need to get better.
Nor are market forces the remedy here, unfortunately, because the operation of market forces is hindered by obscurity. You may have a delivery firm that you particularly wish to avoid—I certainly have my own shortlist. You may have one that you are particularly keen to reward with your business; perhaps you are a great fan of Royal Mail, for example. However, there are no transparency requirements—there is no transparency good practice—for the firm you order from to tell you who it will use to deliver your goods to you. The potential of consumer power is deliberately hindered by obscurity. Again, the reaction from both Ofcom and the Government in their strategy statement has been to say, in effect, “We are happy with the status quo”, rather than to push for transparency and change.
In conclusion, we have the problems for the victims of widespread crime; the problems for businesses having to shoulder the costs of those crimes; the problems of a complaints system 18 years away from even getting to average; and the problems of a complaints system that is flawed by design and implementation. It is fair to say that the Ofcom strategy statement was a missed opportunity for the Government to be tough on crime, to promote growth and to help people. Perhaps, however, the cavalry has arrived. A new Minister certainly has arrived, and a maiden speech is about to arrive. Of course, I acknowledge that some of the detail I have raised may best be addressed in a follow-up meeting or correspondence. I hope too, perhaps, that we will hear from the Minister a commitment to have a renewed look at these issues, because they certainly need looking at again.
Lord Mott (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for securing this debate. I also welcome the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Sarwar, and congratulate him on being introduced to your Lordships’ House today and on making his maiden speech from the Dispatch Box. I know what that feels like. The Chief Whip gave me a week between my introduction and having to make my maiden speech from the Dispatch Box. I noticed that today, the Government Chief Whip has simply given the noble Lord a slightly longer lunch break to prepare. I look forward to hearing his speech and wish him a long career in government.
I was slightly unsure today what I would talk about in this debate, and I decided to do a little bit of research at home in preparation. I used my wife and my eldest daughter to get a sense of how effective parcel delivery services are in this country. I must say that, in west London, they are incredibly effective. Parcels regularly arrive on time, and there are very few problems. Later in my speech I will come on to digital tech and how that interacts with people. I also want to pay tribute to the Passport Office, which I recently had to use to renew my passport. All the way through that process, the tech, the parcel delivery and the communication between the office and me was really quite extraordinary.
I declare at this stage that I am a member of the Public Services Select Committee. Three years ago, the committee carried out an inquiry into homecare medicine. It was an extraordinary inquiry, which started quite small but began to uncover real differences across the whole of the United Kingdom in the delivery of medicines. That is why we need to focus on this and work incredibly hard.
Parcel delivery has become an essential part of how we live and how business operates. For many small businesses, the parcel is not simply the final step in a transaction; it is the transaction. Reliability matters enormously, and the evidence suggests that there is still considerable room for improvement. Ofcom found that, while 78% of consumers were genuinely satisfied with parcel services, 68% had experienced a delivery problem in the previous six months.
When something does go wrong, resolving it can be almost as frustrating. Some 47% of those who experienced a delivery problem then encountered further difficulties trying to resolve it. For small businesses, that can mean additional costs, lost time and potentially a lost customer. For vulnerable customers, it could mean a lost medicine that is essential to that individual’s health. The evidence shows that those with an impacting or limiting condition are more likely to experience problems with deliveries. Accessibility remains one of the weaker parts of the customer experience.
We should be careful about assuming that a more digital service is necessarily a more accessible one. Technology should make services easier to use, as in the example I gave at the beginning of my speech of the Passport Office. It should not create another barrier when something goes wrong. Therefore, when we assess whether the system is working, we should be looking not only at overall delivery performance but at whether it is working for those customers who have fewer alternatives when it fails.
I believe in a vibrant private sector, so the Government should not be dictating a business’s operations for it, but they do have a role in protecting consumers, setting standards and ensuring accountability. We already have substantial data, an independent regulator, enforcement powers and improvement plans, as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, highlighted in his opening remarks. I would like to see a clearer test of whether those interventions are working. I therefore ask the Government to set out a clear timetable for assessing the effectiveness of Ofcom’s current approach, including how it will compare performance and customer outcomes across all providers, and a commitment to review the regulatory framework if it is not delivering sustained improvement.
Royal Mail provides a particularly clear test, given its specific quality of service obligations and the improvement plan now in place. However, the principle should apply across the wider parcel market. That would not mean imposing identical obligations on every operator; it would mean making sure that we can identify where intervention is working, where it is not and changing course when the evidence demands it.
In responding to the debate, will the Minister set out how the Government intend to assess whether Ofcom’s current approach is delivering sustained improvement across the parcel market? Given the Business and Trade Committee’s recommendation for a regulatory reset, will he set out what would cause the Government to conclude that the existing regulatory approach is no longer delivering the improvement that consumers and businesses reasonably expect? Competition is valuable, but precisely because it should deliver better services, innovation and choice. For the small businesses waiting for their goods to arrive and for the vulnerable customer who needs to know that their needs will be understood, the test is ultimately very simple: can they trust the system to work?
Lord Redwood (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to intervene in this debate, owing to the general lack of interest, but it is a pity because this is an important subject. I agree with the two former speakers that, when the service lets people down, it can be very damaging to their businesses or lives. If drugs do not arrive on time or a company needs an urgent supply for its production process and it does not arrive, these are very disruptive events.
I welcome the new Minister to his post. It is in all our interests that Ministers feel happy in their job and are positive about what they can do. He will be relieved to know that I will not blame him for anything today because he needs the opportunity to read his way in. However, I will raise one or two more general points in relation to postal services and other public services, as we on this side of the House try to get used to a Government under new leadership. We have read or listened to the Prime Minister’s speeches very carefully and we wonder whether there is going to be change for the good as a result of the new devices that the Prime Minister is introducing.
The postal services market is competitive, and I am pleased to say that my own personal experience has been extremely good. Deliveries have been swift, prompt and accurate, and I am very grateful to the variety of carriers that have made that possible.
I hear in the criticisms that there is a very serious worry about theft. This is of course a matter for criminal law enforcement, where the Government, through the Home Office, police forces, police commissioners and local government, can have a role. It would obviously be good if there was a way to ensure that fewer of those parcels were lifted from doorsteps.
However, it is also the case that all of us customers can do things to help ourselves. Obviously those of us who are busy may not be at home to receive the parcel when it arrives, although the safest thing is to be at home to receive the parcel yourself. It is probably a good idea to have an alternative safe place where you can ask them to put the parcel, and most online services now give you the right to specify some place out of sight, or even under lock and key, where you could receive the parcel to avoid theft. Those who do not have that kind of equipment or money may well have a friendly neighbour who would be in to take the parcel, so you can volunteer their address. In that way some self-help could supplement the competitive market, which is clearly driving prices down for quite a lot of carriage and, on the whole, for people like me and many others here, is delivering a pretty good service.
However, what fascinates me about the changes that the new leadership of the Government are introducing are matters of process—the theory that areas of service in a competitive market such as postal services may not be good enough and that a bigger government involvement would in some way be helpful to achieve those higher standards.
As we hear, the Prime Minister thinks he has at least two major options in his toolkit. There is full nationalisation, which he seems to favour, where he thinks a nationalised service would be better than a private competitive market. That is not my experience, and certainly there were lots of troubles when the postal side of the Post Office, as it was then, was fully nationalised, and of course it was only the Royal Mail services which were privatised. Therefore we can contrast the experience of the privatised mail services with the results of the nationalised industry, the Post Office.
Is that my time limit? Then I complete my remarks.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for securing this important debate and I look forward with great interest to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sarwar. It is right that we reflect on the mounting issues within this country’s national postal service and highlight the potential solutions. I will be brief, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak in the gap.
Royal Mail has been hit hard by the impact of the Government’s tax increases. Earlier this year, it warned that the increase in employer national insurance contributions announced in the Budget would cost the business some £120 million. For a company that is expected to balance the books while providing a complex, expensive and reliable weekly service, that is not a trivial sum. It is yet another burden placed upon a business whose quality of service was regrettably already in decline.
Royal Mail has missed its first-class and second-class delivery targets for the Government’s first two years in office. Additional national insurance tax could otherwise have gone towards these delivery targets but, instead, the public are feeling the effects of a worse service caused partly by taxes that they are having to subsidise.
Now the bill is being passed on again. From 5 October, Royal Mail wholesale prices—the mail that carries marketing communications, household bills and medical appointment notices—will rise by an average of 25%. To put that in context, the NHS alone spent over £100 million posting letters last year. A rise of this scale will land squarely on public services and ordinary households alike.
We should not impose new costs and taxes on essential providers with one hand, while expressing dismay at declining service and rising prices with the other. What assessment has the Treasury made of the impact of the national insurance rise on these universal service providers? What discussions has the department had with Ofcom about protecting consumers, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, from these compounding pressures?
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister. He has entered the House today. I cannot recall a moment when a noble Lord—particularly a Minister—has made a maiden speech on the very day of entry. We can hardly bear the wait. Who is going to pay tribute on this wonderful occasion? I hope the Chief Whip will find some way of ensuring that happens.
The noble Lord’s transition from the leadership role that he held in Scotland to the Front Bench here serves as a reminder of the great value of the union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. As a Liverpudlian, I welcome this one-way traffic down the M1. In many ways, the noble Lord shares a lot with our new Prime Minister. They were both Members of the House of Commons. They both held prominent positions as leaders of the north. They are both now back in Parliament. I wish the noble Lord well in his role.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pack, for this great opportunity to debate the question of a reliable postal and parcel service. As the noble Lord said, it is a vital lifeline. These services remain essential to households and businesses across the country. As several of my colleagues have just pointed out, since taking office the Government have placed substantial additional costs on Royal Mail, as they have on all businesses across the UK. As my noble friend Lord Effingham pointed out, Royal Mail has estimated that it will face an additional tax burden of approximately £120 million every year from 2025-26 as a result of the Government’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions. Royal Mail warned that these increased costs impinge on its ability to deliver change. This £120 million has to be found from the same business that needs urgently to invest in its network, improve pay and conditions, recruit and retain its workforce, improve productivity and ultimately deliver a faster and more reliable service to its customers.
As my noble friend Lord Redwood pointed out, industrial relations is another part of the same picture. Royal Mail, sadly, has a long and difficult history of industrial disputes. Of course, the major national industrial action of recent years pre-dated this Government. Surely, the lesson from that experience should have been that we needed a sensible balance between the rights of trade unions and the ability of employers to continue operating and restructuring their businesses. Instead, through the Employment Rights Act 2025, the Government have moved substantially in the opposite direction. They have legislated to abolish the 50% turnout requirement for industrial action ballots. They have reduced the notice that unions must give employers before industrial action from 14 days to 10 and doubled the duration of an industrial action mandate from six to 12 months.
Taken together, these measures all serve to constrain employers precisely when the Royal Mail needs flexibility to transform its operations—which brings me to the universal service obligation. In July 2025, Ofcom gave Royal Mail greater flexibility, including allowing second-class letters to be delivered on alternate weekdays. However, those changes could simply not be put into practice because implementation of Royal Mail’s new operational model became caught up in its industrial dispute with the CWU. Ofcom itself subsequently said that progress had been constrained by the ongoing industrial dispute, and agreement was not reached until April this year. Against that background, I question whether the Government’s decision to remove still more safeguards around industrial action will make future transformation easier or harder.
Then there is the approach taken by Ofcom, which the noble Lord referred to. Royal Mail was fined £10.5 million in December 2024 for its previous performance. It was then fined a further £21 million in October 2025. Together, that is £31.5 million in penalties imposed since this Government took office, and more than £37 million in recent years. These fines do not go towards recruiting more postmen and women; they do not finance better sorting equipment; they do not fund new vehicles, technology or improved delivery offices—they are paid into the Consolidated Fund. At some point, surely, we must question whether the crude act of simply imposing larger and larger fines on a business already struggling with mounting costs is creating the right incentives and improving matters in any way at all.
What evidence do the Government have that this repeated cycle of financial penalties is actually producing better outcomes for customers? What discussions are the Government having with Ofcom about whether its regulatory approach is actually working? Also, what assessment have Ministers and Ofcom made of the underlying productivity problem within Royal Mail?
The measure of successful regulation should not be how much money Ofcom can extract from Royal Mail. My noble friend Lord Mott pointed out the advantages of new technology. Let us make sure we take every opportunity to take advantage of this new technology. It should all be about whether letters and parcels arrive reliably, whether productivity improves and whether we retain a financially sustainable universal postal service for the future, a system of which we can rightly be proud.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (Lord Sarwar) (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, thank you first of all for the very kind comments. I am pleased to respond to this Question for Short Debate as part of my maiden speech. I thank the noble Lord for bringing forward this important debate. I also start with an apology that it will not get the full and detailed response it deserves, given that it is a maiden speech. But I make both a firm commitment to meet the noble Lord and the commitment he asked for to look at all the issues so that we give the people of this country the postal service they need and deserve.
With noble Lords’ permission, I want to share some reflections before responding directly to the issues raised. I cannot help but think about the journey that got me to this place and the many, many people who have supported me along the way. It feels pretty surreal standing to make my third career maiden speech in a third Chamber. My first was in the House of Commons 16 years ago, my second in the Scottish Parliament 10 years ago, and today in the House of Lords. At 43 years old, it feels like I am living my life in fast forward.
There is nothing I could have done in my life if it was not for the great people of Glasgow. It is a city that raised me, that shaped me, that taught me my values and gave me my passion for social justice. But it is also a city that taught me not to be afraid to do difficult things: as a teenager, campaigning to save the Govan shipyard; as a young adult, being an NHS dentist in the area with the poorest dental health record in western Europe; as a relatively new Member of Parliament, becoming the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party and helping lead the campaign for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom; throughout my time in the Commons, campaigning for the recognition of a Palestinian state, a proud achievement of this Labour Government; and as shadow Health Secretary in Scotland, working with whistleblowers and grieving families to expose the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal. I repeat a promise that I made to all those families: I may have moved to a different Chamber, but I will continue to stand with them until they get the truth and the justice they deserve.
In 2021, I had the honour of being elected to lead my party in Scotland with just 10 weeks to go before an election. Hollowed out, divided, skint—a Scottish term, for those who do not know it—and with just one MP, we were viewed as the drag on the UK Labour Party’s chances of winning an election. I will be for ever proud that three years later Scotland led the way in changing the Government and electing a UK Labour Government, going from one MP to 37 MPs.
There have no doubt been many achievements in the first two years of this Labour Government, but we must be honest that, for many, we did not live up to their early expectations, and they were keen to deliver that message in May. I remain heartsore at the outcome of the Scottish elections, not because of what it meant for me—you learn to develop a thick skin in the Scottish Labour Party—but because of what it means for my fellow Scots. Scotland needs a new Government and new politicians who are willing to confront the big challenges. It needs an NHS that is there when you need it, an education and skills system that guarantees opportunities for every young person, an economy that backs innovation and entrepreneurship and a politics that puts place before parties so that every part of our great country can flourish. To my colleagues and friends in the Scottish Labour Party, note that I will always be cheering you on and working for your success. To whoever my successor is, know that you will always have my unequivocal support in public and, as a former leader, my advice in private.
I have been fortunate to have so many political friends and supporters over the years—they are too many to name individually, but they know who they are and I thank them dearly. But every politician also knows that you can do nothing without your staff team. Over the years, I have been supported by so many hard-working, committed and incredible people, not least the brilliant Kate Watson. She, and they, will always be family.
Speaking of family, I could not do it without mine. I thank them for their love, patience and understanding and, most of all, for making sure that my feet are, and always will be, firmly on the ground. I hope that I have done you a little proud. I am certainly proud of each and every single one of you.
I am joined in the Gallery today by my mother and father, faces that I know are well known to many noble Lords, because, yes, I may have been the first person of Muslim heritage to lead a major political party in the UK, but I was certainly not its first Muslim MP. That achievement belongs to my father. Almost 30 years after his election as the Labour MP for Glasgow Govan, it is truly humbling for me to be standing here addressing what he would call the other place. I imagine that in some ways this will feel like a bit of a homecoming for him. Many noble Lords served with him and so have known me from a very young age, but let me reassure them that, while I have aged, they have not.
I look around the Chamber and see many who have supported, encouraged, advised, consoled and even, on rare occasions, rebuked me over the years. I am sure that will continue. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for remembering one person in particular, Baroness Meta Ramsey, who remains in our hearts today.
That brings me to the here and now and why I answered the call to serve. I played my part in helping the Labour Party succeed at the last general election, but our new Prime Minister must succeed, this Government must succeed and, most importantly of all, our country must succeed. I am determined to play my part in making that happen. As the late, great John Smith once said:
“The opportunity to serve … is all we ask”.
I could not turn that opportunity down.
But there is also, in my view, a bigger fight that cannot I walk away from and which I am determined to play my part in. That is the fight for the heart and soul of our nation. It is about who we are as a people and as a country. For me, that goes beyond the usual mainstream political divide. Who are we as a country? Do we continue to look out for and love our neighbour or do we treat them with suspicion? Are we a country that succumbs to the politics of division and hate or are we going to make sure that we have a country and a politics that believes in unity and hope? That is the generational challenge for all of us and one that I hope we overcome.
It is no secret that I have expressed public views on this place before. I, alongside a certain former Mayor of Greater Manchester, now the Prime Minister, advocated for reform of this institution. I reassure noble Lords that I did so questioning the principle, not the purpose or the people. I continue to support a more democratic and representative upper Chamber, a senate of the nations and regions.
I am deeply honoured to have been asked by the Prime Minister to serve as the UK’s Minister of State for Trade, with a clear mission and objective to make the UK the most connected economy in the world. That will be measured in maximising exports going out of the UK and investments coming into the UK and in making sure that good growth is felt in every postcode, every region and every nation.
In the closing moments, let me make sure that I also address some of the challenges raised in the Question. We have greater economic insecurity than perhaps ever before, and I think this country has to demonstrate trade and economic leadership. That means building more partnerships and embracing a more interconnected world rather than having over-protectionism in this country or, indeed, across the globe. We can see many of the challenges of the new economy in our postal delivery service. Our economy is changing, and habits are changing. We are now sending fewer letters than ever before, but we are sending and receiving more parcels than ever before, with 4.2 billion items sent in the last year alone. We have the rise of new online giants such as Amazon, eBay and AO, to name a few. That is putting more pressure on our SMEs and businesses, and how do they compete?
People have a lot more demands of what they expect from a quality service in postal deliveries. Yes, satisfaction is relatively high, but noble Lords are right to say that the consistency of that service and its handling of complaints is nowhere near good enough. The Minister in the other place has met Ofcom and businesses to make known to them that she is not content with that performance so far. I say again that I am happy to meet individually any noble Lord who has a care about this issue and I am happy to robustly challenge Ofcom and the businesses related to postal delivery services to make sure that they live up to people’s expectation.
In closing, it is an honour to be here. I thank the Whips for making sure I get to work here straightaway, and I look forward to working with all noble Lords to deliver for all the great people of this great country.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Sarwar on a truly excellent maiden speech. Delivering your first speech from the Government Dispatch Box is not easy. That was an outstanding, articulate, fantastic speech. We are so lucky to have my noble friend in our House. We look forward to hearing him many more times. My noble friend brings many years of experience, having served in the other place and the Scottish Parliament. He has a distinguished record of public service. We all look forward to having him here with us and to hearing more contributions from him. I believe he is on his feet in this House again tomorrow, so we are keeping him busy right from the start. We have had a fantastic speech, and we are so lucky to have him here.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the Captain of the Gentleman-at-Arms has made a rather irregular intervention, which I thoroughly approve of. Since, by accident, I happen to be here as Leader of the Opposition, on behalf of these Benches I also congratulate the noble Lord, as I know any of our colleagues who might have spoken after him would have done, on a most distinguished maiden speech. We greatly enjoyed it. It was delivered with fluency and charm, and he already demonstrates the civility that is the great thing about this House. We do not shout at each other, at least not inside the Chamber. I recognised what the noble Lord said about sometimes needing a thick skin in Scottish Labour politics. I have to tell him that sometimes you have needed a thick skin in English Conservative politics. I congratulate the noble Lord, and we look forward to hearing him on many future occasions.