Postal Services Bill
Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Brookman
Baroness Kramer
I fully understand what the noble Lord is saying. In the past, privatisations have been naive. We have to use pressure to make sure that the Government do not go through that naive process once again. I suggest that the remedy being proposed here—that the value is discussed in detail out in the public arena—does not achieve the purpose. It simply has the effect of making sure that in the end there is a cap on the sale price and creates another set of problems without necessarily disposing of the first set. We need to be pressing to make sure that the internal work is up to standard, but to my mind—and that is one person’s opinion—bringing it into the public arena does not achieve that.
Lord Brookman
My Lords, I had no intention of making a contribution in this debate but as someone who was involved in going from public to private in the steel industry I shall make one point. Who owns things is quite important. When the British Steel Corporation was formed when I was a young man, it had 267,000 employees. Tata Steel, formerly Corus, now employs between 15,000 and 20,000 people. Put that aside. We are a country that used to take pride in what we had and what we owned. I want to be reassured that if the Post Office or any other publicly owned business is hived off to foreign competition the interest of the British people is safeguarded. I just wanted to make that point.