Postal Services Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I understand why the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, should be concerned about the uncertainty, but the one thing we know is that whoever buys this company will know perfectly well—it will be on the face of the Bill—that 10 per cent of the shares will be owned by the employees. That is definite, and similarly—I will be speaking later in subsequent amendments about how this might be handled—if a trust fund is established, the most appropriate way in which that would be contained within the new structure of the company would be to put an employee representing the trust directly on the board.

I see no great difficulty in drafting words to that effect, which should be considered in the light of previous experience. When we dealt with the campaign against NATS being formed back in 2001—I will also speak about that later—it would have been highly advantageous and beneficial had there been more on the face of the Bill than proved to be the case at that time. I am sure that would have convinced many of the employees about what was going to happen and the way things would go.

The success or failure of this venture, whoever buys it, is going to depend primarily on the employees’ contribution to the way the company will operate—and, yes, on capital too. That means that the new owners will have to manage the company in a way that, up to the last two years, we have not seen for a good many years within the Royal Mail. They will know broadly what they are taking on board, and I am sure that they would be very anxious to motivate and involve the employees as far as they can. Therefore, I do not see any great problem in finding a form of words to ensure that we have at least one representative.

Times are a-changing and I am surprised that there is a lack of radical approach, particularly from my noble friends on the Lib Dem Benches, on these issues. We have a recently commissioned report from my noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch about the desperate need for more women non-executive directors on boards. There is also a desperate need to have the workforce better represented in many companies than we currently have, particularly people who are low paid by comparison with those on the board with substantial incomes accruing from companies. These changes will come as night follows day, so I hope that the Government will be bold and will be prepared to look at this proposal very favourably.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

Having listened to all the debate on this issue, I must admit that I have a great deal of sympathy with what is behind the amendment. I also think that times have changed considerably. The atmosphere for putting workers of both sexes on a board was rather different and there was total hostility. I understand the Government’s difficulty about putting this in the Bill, but it would be helpful if the Minister would go away and think about a possible wording that would reassure everyone on this matter. For the well-being of those who are involved, it is important that they are represented—whatever the form, or in whosever hands, the Royal Mail ends up in.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for moving his amendment and all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. While the idea of an employee share scheme representative on the board may well have merits, it is for Royal Mail and its shareholders to decide how it will structure its board, just like any other company would. Thanks to this Bill, Royal Mail’s shareholders will include its employees in the future.

The noble Lord, Lord Clarke, spoke from his experience of the vital importance of effective employee engagement and communication. The Government wholeheartedly agree with him on that. The employee’s shareholding is not the only way to create that engagement. I understand that there are a number of initiatives that Royal Mail is following at the moment which also contribute helpfully to that—for example, the world class mail initiative.

As we have already discussed, in the debate on Amendment 4 on Monday, we ask noble Lords to accept that it is not appropriate to impose the composition of a company’s board through legislation. In fact, I am not aware of a single precedent where such an imposition has been made by statute. Furthermore, if this amendment were passed, it would mean that in the future a fully independent Royal Mail, which had no government shareholding, would be obliged to request new legislation if the company or the employee share scheme were ever to want to change the way its views were represented to the board.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her recognition that the scheme will enhance the modernisation agreement concepts regarding fostering better relations between the company and its employees. She raised the fact of employee representation on the boards of some European companies. Of course, my noble friend Lady Kramer is absolutely right that their corporate structures are very different to the typical United Kingdom board structure. The noble Baroness also gently questioned the Government’s commitment to the concept. Perhaps I may tactfully say to her that, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, admitted in the debate on the previous amendment, the previous Government had to be pushed quite hard even to agree to contemplate an employee share scheme in the 2009 Bill; we are embracing this concept wholeheartedly.

Richard Hooper’s reports for both this and the previous Government stated clearly that Royal Mail must be freed of the “spectre of political intervention”. I ask noble Lords to accept that specifying the composition of the board in statute will not help with achieving this objective. I would therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Razzall]

The noble Lords, Lord Whitty, Lord Cameron and Lord Young, have raised some extremely relevant and interesting points on this important issue, and I find myself very split. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, confined his remarks primarily to Amendment 21A, and I find that difficult to accept as somebody who, as the noble Baroness will be aware, has argued strongly for the mutualisation of the Post Office. I am concerned that we should put in the Bill—it is exactly the same argument we had on the previous provisions—restrictions that would be likely to slow down the mutualisation of the Post Office. I am sure the noble Baroness will deal with that in her remarks.

Everything that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, says is entirely correct. I know, as does the noble Baroness, that the Ministers in her department are convinced that they will have a package that will provide financial security for the Post Office. Whether there is a constraint of coming out with detail before the Budget or before it is finalised I do not know, but I think that before this Bill is passed, it would be extremely helpful if noble Lords could be made aware in more detail of the exact package that the Minister’s colleagues in the department are confident could secure the future of the Post Office.

I hope that the Minister will reflect on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Young, because these are extremely important issues. Having made the point endlessly in debates on Bills in opposition about the importance of Parliament sanctioning important decisions, I think the principle is important that, before any significant mutualisation of the Post Office takes place, Parliament needs to have a final say. I hope the noble Baroness will take that point back for consideration.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I sympathise with these amendments. They reflect a number of concerns that those of us who spoke at Second Reading raised. I was certainly one of those as far as mutualisation was concerned. I had a great deal of sympathy, too, for the concept of banking in local post offices, but that has clearly been firmly ruled out by the Government. That does not mean, however, that they should not be thinking of ways in which they could satisfy the concerns. There should be some return to Parliament for an assurance that the route down which the Government are going will be in the best interests of those concerned. I thought the comments made by my noble friend Lord Cameron about rural areas were extremely important. The post offices are important for the sustainability of those local areas.

I hope that when the Minister replies she will feel able to give more assurance than we have had so far on this issue. I commend the amount of money available and the way in which the Government have thought through this Bill in order for it to be sustainable for the future. However, despite all the money—we will no doubt hear details after the Budget of other ways in which the Post Office and postal services will be helped—it would be in everyone’s interest if the Minister could say that there will be a hard look at reassurance on some of the many important points that have been made in this group of amendments.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, under Amendment 21A, one of the greatest regrets about the manufacturing base of this country is that companies in the public interest were disposed of without the kind of assurance that is being asked for here. If we look at steel, coal-mining and our car manufacturing bases, public interest in those companies was disposed of in the hope that the people who took them on would make them more viable, but when they took them over they explained that these businesses were not viable. Before we knew where we were our car manufacturing base and our steel industry were not about any more.

It worries me that if you get rid of any public interest—in the case of the Post Office, it is the Crown’s interest—before you are quite certain that whatever company is created will be viable at least through some financial times, you will be in real difficulty. It would be very easy for whoever takes these organisations on to say “By the way, when we looked at the books, they were not what we thought they were”. Then someone else buys it and takes it on, and before you know where you are the Royal Mail and those other places are not about.

Although it is difficult to put it in the Bill, the assurance that this amendment seeks is absolutely necessary. As long as there still is Crown interest in the Post Office, there is a chance that we may do it properly. As soon as that goes—before there is the assurance sought in this amendment—I am afraid that we may end up with what happened to British Steel, coal-mining and the car industry.