Postal Services Bill

Lord Jones of Birmingham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I should, I suppose, confess to something of a wicked past. Back when I was a banker in the United States, part of my work was advising companies that were making purchases and selling off subsidiaries. If I was advising a potential buyer of Royal Mail, I would be hoping very much that this amendment would pass, because, frankly, nothing would give more leverage to a potential purchaser than what in effect is being described here as a drop-dead date.

We have seen government in the past sell assets at far below their appropriate value. I was very involved from the other side when I was on the board of Transport for London and the Government insisted on the Tube public/private partnership. TfL set itself internal deadlines. I do not believe that they were externally set, although I would have to check that. The ability to negotiate in effect collapsed in the final days as those deadlines approached and were very much exploited by the private partners and the banks on the other side, so I beg this House not to fall back into that trap.

The noble Lord discussed uncertainty, but what greater uncertainty could there be than the knowledge that the Government might find themselves coming back to this House at the time of a sunset clause for leave to continue with a sales programme. That maximises uncertainty for Royal Mail and for the other parts of the group that will, we hope, go on to their new future.

[Lord Jones of Birmingham]

My Lords, I concur with the noble Baroness. If this amendment was passed, there would be no activity whatever until about November 2012. As noble Lords will know, I spend a lot of my time in the corporate private sector, and I can tell the House that a lot of companies would just wait. There would then be a lot of activity in December 2012, and the Government would find themselves selling this at a price that none of us would want.

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, I must be the only person in this Committee, certainly in the House, who regrets not having spoken on this Bill at Second Reading. I did not do so because I was pursuing my day job as a director of a mail-order company. There is a temptation on these occasions to give a Second Reading speech, but I have no intention whatever of doing that. On this amendment, however, I agree with both my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that putting a final date into this legislation would make things even more difficult for the Post Office management. I have been advised that the point that I really want to make about Clause 1, and would have made on Clause 1 stand part, is deprecated by Standing Orders. Therefore, I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, but I will speak no more about my reactions to this amendment.

I bring to the House’s attention Clause 1(2), which is gratuitous. The nuts and bolts of this Bill are contained in Clauses 1 and 4. Clause 1(1) removes from the statute book Sections 65 and 67 of the Postal Services Act 2000, and Clause 4 replaces them with a new formulation. My contention is that it would be far better drafting of this legislation if those two clauses were combined and we therefore left out Clause 1(2).

Over many years, I have been interested in the size and length of the statute book. Anything we can do to reduce the number of words or even the number of pages we should certainly do. I do not expect an answer on this conundrum that I have set myself from the Minister today. She has already instructed officials to give me some sort of answer, which I do not find particularly convincing. I would be happy to have discussions with her and them between now and the next stage of the Bill.