Baroness Burt of Solihull
Main Page: Baroness Burt of Solihull (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Postal Services Bill
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
I welcome the Bill, which largely represents the policy that the Liberal Democrats went into the general election with. There are differences. Under our policy, the Government would have retained a stake, but we understand the problem of making this a very attractive sale, so that part of it has gone. Under our policy, share ownership for employees would have been larger, but the measure still represents the largest share ownership ever on record, so we can live with that. Another difference is the potential to mutualise the Post Office. That is right up our street as Liberal Democrats; it is Liberal Democrat-plus, so we welcome that.
We have strongly maintained that the Post Office should never be sold and we hope that, under the new proposals, it will become stronger, thrive and even grow. The £1.34 billion announced today is extremely welcome.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
On that point, I echo the warm welcome that my hon. Friend has given to the Bill. In the remote rural part of the world that I represent, the postal network is the lifeblood of the community. Opposition Members’ response is really disappointing. They should be welcoming the commitment to no further network closures and the massive investment that will enable those post offices to come up with new services, such as financial service products for people on a low income who do not have ready access to banking—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This is not a speech; this is an intervention. It is supposed to be brief.
Lorely Burt
I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of my hon. Friend.
We know that mutualisation of the Post Office cannot occur straightaway, so I wonder whether my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could indicate what conditions need to be in place before mutualisation can take place. In his aptly titled report, “Modernise or decline”, Hooper strongly recommended private sector involvement in Royal Mail and that the Government should relieve Royal Mail of the burden of its pension scheme.
Michael Connarty
The hon. Lady is moving on from mutualisation of the post office network. I thought she might ask the Minister where the guarantees will be when the Post Office is mutualised or split off. I believe that we have to put in £270 million at the moment to keep the network alive. I can see no guarantee under the Bill that the Post Office will be supported. How could mutuals find that £270 million to keep the network intact?
Lorely Burt
We have already had the announcements of the Secretary of State, which have covered the point that the hon. Gentleman has made. The Secretary of State might wish to address that point in his summing up.
Lorely Burt
I cannot take any more interventions. I am sorry.
The point is that 90% of Royal Mail will become a private company. That necessitates close scrutiny to ensure that Royal Mail employees and customers and the taxpayer are protected.
Consumer Focus wants changes that protect consumers to be added to the Bill. It believes that Ofcom “must” impose a consumer protection condition on every postal operator—rather than “may”, which is the term currently used in the Bill. Please can we have “must” instead of “may”? Can we also add the requirement that Ofcom must impose the essential condition that every postal operator must guarantee the confidentiality, safety and security of mail?
I know that Opposition Members are concerned that the Bill’s provisions may be detrimental to customers in rural areas. Can we therefore insert into the Bill a definition of the minimum number of access points to the mail system—post offices and post boxes—and the criteria for geographic distribution, together with criteria under which exceptions could be sought? Can we also add a requirement on Ofcom to consult representatives of residential and small and medium-sized enterprise customers, and other particularly vulnerable customers, when conducting any review of the universal postal services order? SMEs often get left off the list, but it is important that they are consulted as well.
Customers need proper protections when things go wrong. Can we build into the Bill a requirement for postal operators to be members of an approved redress scheme to ensure complaints-handling standards can be monitored and independently investigated? Finally on the consumer front, can we build in a requirement that postal operators continue to provide appropriate information to the regulator and an appropriate consumer watchdog in order to enable independent monitoring of performance, quality of service, complaint handling and services provided to vulnerable consumers?
I want to make a few comments about the separation of Royal Mail and the Post Office. Key provisions in the Bill allow for the privatisation of Royal Mail and the formal separation of Royal Mail and the Post Office. Formal separation offers considerable advantages for the Post Office. For example, it would be managed by a board that could be more closely aligned to its own strategic objectives, and would no longer be a junior partner in group decision making. However, the Government have announced that they will seek a refreshed inter-business agreement between Royal Mail and the Post Office. Will subsequent contracts be subjected to a competitive tender process given that, as Opposition Members have pointed out, there would be no guarantees that the Post Office would retain its mail contract thereafter? I fully accept that there may be arguments against seeking to maintain the contractual relationship between the Post Office and Royal Mail in perpetuity as we cannot reasonably assume that consumer need will necessitate upholding the current access arrangements indefinitely. I also understand why, in light of future uncertainties, the Bill must not be too prescriptive, but might it include provision for the Secretary of State to seek a review of the access criteria at a future date, subject to parliamentary approval?
On the division of assets between the Post Office and Royal Mail, the Bill allows for the transfer of property or other assets between parts of Royal Mail Holdings plc. These provisions allow property transfers to be made directly by the Secretary of State or the holdings company. My worry is that the Post Office has frequently taken a minor role compared to Royal Mail, so when negotiating the property transfers, we need to ensure that the greater weight of Royal Mail is not used unfairly. Therefore, can the Government take steps now, in advance of measures contained in the Bill and the separation of the holdings company taking effect, to maintain the Post Office’s current assets?
Finally, there is speculation about who might buy Royal Mail. All the protections I have mentioned must be in place, but I would like whoever the purchaser might be to be given the best possible chance to make Royal Mail a world-beating postal service.
Lorely Burt
No, sorry.
Royal Mail is currently hamstrung by regulations that make it uncompetitive against outside competitors, so can we examine those seriously? We want to make Royal Mail a much more attractive proposition for a prospective purchaser and ensure that the staff and new management, together, can make it the full and profitable service that it deserves to be.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I declare an interest, as I have worked with the Scottish branch of the National Federation of SubPostmasters over a number of years to oppose the closure of post offices introduced by the last Government, and I will continue to oppose closures. I have also worked with the Communication Workers Union, while my predecessor Harry Ewing—now, sadly, deceased—was a postman and eventually a Minister. I am deeply involved in this, and I am secretary of the liaison group for the Communication Workers Union in this Parliament.
The Bill does not provide a logical or necessary solution to the problems of Royal Mail, and it is not the only response to the Hooper report. It is, indeed, another Liberal Democrat betrayal. It is not part-privatisation, but a political decision by the Liberal Democrats to join in the carnage in the public sector.
Michael Connarty
I will take no interventions, as many Members wish to speak and I want to take just six minutes.
This is not about a part-share sale, which was the policy on which the Liberal Democrats were elected, but, to quote from the Bill, it is about allowing
“for an unrestricted sale of shares in Royal Mail”.
The Bill returns to the 1992 plan to break the link between Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail, with all the duplication of management and logistic structures that it will require, which will eat massively into the £1.2 billion set aside to set up a separate Post Office Ltd. It will tear up the operating synergies, which provide a third of Post Office Ltd revenues from services provided for Royal Mail, and there is no guarantee that these will continue. The current subsidy is £180 million a year; it will have to rise £270 million a year to sustain the post office network in future.
The problem is that there is no guarantee that the subsidies will be provided. Clauses 11 demands only an annual report and says nothing about what the Government will do to guarantee the post office network that sends the report. The sub-post offices’ postal and Royal Mail services that are vital to the commercial survival of villages and the sub-post offices in rural and urban areas will be jeopardised.
The Hooper report called for a number of things, none of which required the privatisation of the Post Office. The final report specifies three necessary elements: private sector investment, the Government taking on pensions, and changing the regulations, as the Bill does—in fact, in that respect, it is exactly the same as the previous Labour Bill. Hooper 1 recommended new management, and we have it, from a noted organisation that has been associated with high-quality services; Moya Greene has come from Canada Post to run Royal Mail. All parts of Royal Mail, including Post Office Ltd, are profitable at this moment. There is no need for a subsidy.
On the recommendation on pensions, let us look at what happened with BT’s pension deficit. The Government thought that they had taken on a liability of £7 billion, but the High Court has just ruled that the liability is an exposure of £24 billion, because it must include everyone who joined BT after its privatisation. There are no guarantees that the same will not happen with this privatisation. The clear and simple way to deal with the matter is to accept that we must nationalise the debt. If we did that now, Royal Mail would not have to pay £291 million a year to service its deficit. The changes involving Ofcom would bring in another £120 million of income, which would make £411 million available to Royal Mail to complete its modernisation.
Increased efficiency was the basis of the other recommendation in Hooper 1. In a vote in March 2010, there was two-to-one support among CWU members for the new modernisation programme. That was one of the first Hooper 1 criteria. Many opportunities were missed between 2000, the passing of the Postal Services Act and the granting of commercial freedom and the 2010 decision. Loans were given, but the management failed to deal with distribution or with sorting office networks. Sorting machines were bought from France and left uninstalled by the management. Bullying was used to downsize the number of staff in the distribution and delivery centres. The management’s actions were based not on efficiency, but simply on a desire to keep people out when they left the service. The chief executive who failed in that regard was given a £2.8 million bonus for his trouble.
The fully funded modernisation scheme based on the business transformation agreement that was reached in March is a great leap forward, but, as has been said, it will be massively painful. There will be substantial job losses. The whole thing could be handled by means of a change to allow Royal Mail to raise finance directly, without the need for privatisation or the sale of shares.
Let us examine the myth of “necessary privatisation”. Share sales do not guarantee investment; they merely move the ownership of shares to another body. Following Hooper 1, it was impossible to find any organisation, even TNT, that would take an interest in buying shares in Royal Mail. The failure came about not because those organisations feared that they would not gain enough control, but because they realised that there was not enough money to be made from the delivery of mail under the present universal service delivery obligation.
So what will happen? A private equity company will buy into Royal Mail. It will probably borrow money, and then load the debt on to Royal Mail. The Business Secretary will deliver a lot of money to the Treasury rather than to Royal Mail. It is likely that the service will then be split between the part that makes money by picking up and sorting the mail and the part that deals with delivery, which will be dumped on regional sub-contractors who will fail both financially and in terms of delivery. The whole service will then collapse.