Postal Services Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, if the Royal Mail had gone bankrupt as so many people predicted it would, a value would ultimately be placed on it. Administration would see to that, and we would all know what it was worth at the end of the day. I believe that the government shareholder executive, which holds the shares for Royal Mail, will broadly have some idea of what Royal Mail is worth at the moment and of what it would be likely to fetch if it went, for example, to another mail company, such as TNT. If it went to private equity, it could be a different basis entirely because its approach to running the business would be quite different. It is not easy. I freely concede to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that having this out in the public domain is not simple and straightforward. We all speak with one voice when we say that we want to ensure that the British public are not taken for the usual ride that arises on privatisation but get value for money.

I believe that the Liberal Democrat party had the solution to the problem, and so did we. We wanted to retain a stake in Royal Mail so that, regardless of the final valuation when the deal was done, the British public would know what it was, would continue to have a stake in it and would be able to redeem that, if they so chose, at the appropriate time. The Liberal Democrat party went for 49 per cent in its manifesto, which it has now abandoned for reasons that have not been explained, although it recognises that there is a problem, and no easy solution on the way forward is forthcoming from that part of the Government. We presented an amendment today that I freely recognise has some difficulties with it, but I believe that, for reasons that I just described, there are ways in which valuations in a broad sense can be made of government assets. I also believe, in the light of our previous experience, that an attempt should be made this time around, notwithstanding the obstacles to be overcome, and that that should be reported to Parliament.

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[Lord Cotter]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, and others for raising an issue whose importance I am aware of from my own experience. I was managing director of a small plastics manufacturing company. It had only 30 employees, but it was important to me to bring those employees with me. Our discussion today is an important part of that approach. That employees will have shareholdings in Royal Mail is to be welcomed. It is disappointing that many other companies, of all sizes, do not recognise the importance of involving their workforce. As the noble Baroness and others said, a welcome improvement in labour relations has been seen within Royal Mail. I know that the Minister will take this issue very seriously and I am sure that she will give adequate answers to the points that have been raised. It is crucial that employees have not only shares but a real voice in one way or the other. Without that, so many companies fail. We want the new conglomerate to succeed, to go forward and to bring its employees with it, as opposed to management and employees being at each other’s throats as has sometimes been the case in the past.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I, too, support the amendment and agree with the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. As the Minister knows I was a partnership director of NATS, where, when the PPP was created, 5 per cent of the shares were allocated to the employees. I acted as the director responsible for that element of the share distribution and had conversations with the staff about it. However, it was not entirely satisfactory; I was still at a distance from them because I was also involved in the management side of the business. While anyone who went on to a board would have to be involved in the management side too, if the Government were to accept the amendment there would certainly be someone there who was better able to speak directly for the feelings of the workforce than someone doing so one removed, in the way that I did.

I have been to a number of meetings recently at which coalition government Ministers have spoken about employee ownership and share involvement and extending it over a wider front. Many have spoken about providing greater opportunities for the workforce to be more directly involved with management of companies, particularly where they have a stake in the shares.

The amendment presents a modest proposal—I would have preferred it to suggest that two places should be allocated—but I am reasonably content today to go along with opening the door through one seat being made available for the employees. I hope there will now be an opportunity for the Minister to display, not only to her noble friend Lord Cotter but to a variety of Ministers who have spoken recently on this at meetings, that extending employee ownership will be put into practice when the opportunity is immediately before the Government.

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, I add my support to the amendment and endorse the views expressed by my noble friend Lord Brooke and the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on the Liberal Democrat Benches.

There are two issues involved here. First, in a conventional private sector situation where another company or body of investors has a large shareholding, it is quite customary for it to seek board representation, recognising that when it sits on the board it shares the responsibilities of other directors to the company as a unitary board. I note the presence of the noble Lord, Lord St John of Fawsley, in his place on the government Benches and it immediately reminds me that News International, as a particularly large shareholder, has always had its interests represented on the board of BSkyB. It is entirely logical and consistent with good private sector practice for the workers in the Post Office to have such representation on the board of directors until such time as they cease to be significant shareholders.

However, on my second point, I have regard to the fact that the Minister not only brings considerable business experience to her position but also speaks on issues of corporate governance. There is a bigger issue at heart here: the shareholders in a privatised Post Office—whether it is a large corporation, perhaps based overseas, or is floated on the stock market with a large number of investors—will nevertheless individually have a very modest interest in the company. If it is bought by a Dutch company and that company is floated, the ultimate shareholders will be institutions spread across the world, few of whom will own more than 1 per cent of the company; they will have diversified their risk through portfolio construction. The employees cannot do that; they will have what investors would call a high-conviction portfolio, with all their money invested in a single share and all their employment in one place of work. It is surely right that people who exhibit such a high conviction to a company should have some voice in the leadership and management of the business. Some of the malfunctioning of companies over recent years might not have happened had there been a voice around the board table reflecting the views, knowledge and insights of the employees of the company, as opposed to executives who sit in executive suites at the top of the tower building or non-executives who turn up for two or three hours a month. There is a broader issue here and I hope that the Minister, given her responsibilities for corporate governance, will speak to that broader issue in addition to giving us some welcoming encouragement on this amendment.