Baroness Wilcox
Main Page: Baroness Wilcox (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I want to come in now on this conversation. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, talked about an elephant in the room and then dismissed the EU state aid issue. Many Members of this House have been following the debate from the beginning—some have come in perhaps a little later, but many have been engaged from the beginning—and have heard directly from Moya Greene, the current chief executive of Royal Mail, that she would wish for the longest possible agreement that she could achieve within the law for an inter-business relationship with the Post Office. Many will also have heard the same from Paula Vennells, the managing director of the Post Office part of the current Royal Mail Group whom I think we may regard as the chief executive presumptive of the Post Office when it becomes a completely separate entity. They have also heard the Government say, on many occasions, that they would wish for, and would try to achieve, the longest possible agreement that could be done legally.
The issue of European state aid rules is absolutely critical. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will have looked at the financial condition of Royal Mail Group and will understand that it is urgent that new investment comes in, in a very timely manner, if the group is to be preserved. The Post Office side also needs the injection of £1.34 billion that the Government are committed to putting into it, which would come through this legislation and the new structures. That is what will guarantee its future.
However, all of that would be jeopardised when—one could say “if”, but I suspect that if we go back to the lawyers and ask the Government it would be “when”—the state aid rules were tripped by one of these two amendments. I am rather under the impression that the Government have done everything they can to find language that would not trigger European state aid rules and cannot find it. The language proposed today by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Rogan, trips the European state aid rules. That would mean 24 months of constant wrangling, in which it is impossible to go out and bring in a new investor. All investors require some degree of certainty about what is happening to the organisation they are meant to examine and on which they are meant then to make an offer. It would also mean 24 months of uncertainty for the public. If this was two or three years ago, the luxury of including a clause like this and being resigned to spending two years fighting through state aid issues might have been possible. I suggest that we do not have that luxury at the moment.
We have two key organisations which matter to all our communities. We have people who work for Royal Mail—the regular staff who do incredibly hard work and need certainty about their jobs—and we have communities that rely on the Post Office. If we inject something like 24 months of further uncertainty, and who knows what comes out of the state aid negotiations, we jeopardise everything we have been trying to achieve—for weeks now in this House and in the other place—which is to make sure there is a secure future for the Royal Mail Group and that both the Royal Mail and Post Office parts of it can thrive. I understand that people have suspicions and concerns and will not take government assurances because they do not like to take them and perhaps do not quite believe Moya Greene or do not quite take the word of Paula Vennells. I understand all that, but there is an overriding issue and it has not been addressed by those who moved this amendment. The language triggers state aid provisions—we cannot afford the consequences of having that in the Bill.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank very much indeed noble Lords who have spoken before me. I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Kramer for the exposition that she has just given to sum up with. I shall leave as many of those comments aside because they speak well for what I would like to say. I shall address some of the comments from the Opposition and the Cross-Benchers who moved the amendments.
The issue of the inter-business agreement between Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd is one of the issues which has stimulated the most debate throughout the passage of this Bill, both in this House and in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, summed up in his words the fact that all of us who have taken part in these discussions wish to see the same thing—this body established within the nation’s life to be continued in the best way possible. But we are going to do it in the way that we think will be effective; we have watched the Opposition try to do it in a different way and it was not effective. We are right to want to ensure the best possible future for the Post Office, which, as many noble Lords have pointed out, is a national institution highly valued by communities up and down our country.
Before I turn to the substance of the amendments, I would like to respond to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on the 400 long-term temporary closures. There are inevitably changes in the total number of post offices from month to month, as some offices close and others are reopened. In fact, there has been a net reduction of only 58 offices in the last nine months—and this is, of course, constantly in flux. The Government have committed to no new programme of post office closures, as noble Lords have kindly noted.
Your Lordships are of course well aware of the fact that Royal Mail’s business is extremely important to the Post Office. This fact has not escaped us in government either, or the two companies themselves, as you have heard many times in our discussions. As your Lordships will by now be well aware, the chief executive and chairman of Royal Mail have pledged to ensure that the longest contract legally permissible will be in place before any sale. Edward Davey, the Minister in another place, and I have committed to both Houses that we will ensure that this pledge is upheld, and your Lordships have approved an amendment to the Bill to ensure that the report on the disposal of shares in Royal Mail will include details of the ongoing relationship between the two companies.
The new contract between Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd is not yet finalised, and, as I have said before, it serves little purpose to focus on the duration of the contract alone. The contract, which we hope to be ready to be signed next spring, will contain far more complex details, such as pricing and service level agreements, volume commitments and exclusivity agreements. The final nature of all of those details will have a bearing on the longest legally permissible duration of the contract. These details should not be presided over by government, but must be agreed by the two companies and their advisers. They are the experts, they know the businesses best, and it is they, not we in Parliament, who should fine-tune the details of this contract.
When this amendment was debated in Committee in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Young, posed various questions regarding what the longest legally permissible contract actually meant. I wrote to him following that exchange and, as I said in that letter, because the contract will focus on many other factors as well as duration, it is difficult to speculate on how long the longest permissible contract would be. We hope that the contract’s duration could be for as long as 10 years, or even more, but this cannot be finalised until all of the detailed negotiations are complete. The Government could not accept any contract between Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd which might be liable to legal challenge. Without a robust long-term contract between them, both companies would suffer commercially precisely the circumstances that noble Lords are seeking to avoid through their amendments. The Government could also not accept a legislative obligation which might lead to that very situation. As I have said repeatedly, the terms of this contract must be negotiated between those who know the businesses best.
In response to the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about the impact that a potential bidder for Royal Mail could have on the terms of the inter-business agreement, I would like to reassure noble Lords that any investor will have no input into these terms. As the chair and chief executive of the Royal Mail has stated, the longest legally permissible contract will be put in place before any investment into the Royal Mail. We will of course ensure that that happens. As I have said previously, what the Secretary of State, and indeed the Government, can and will help to do is to ensure that there is a contract in place between the two businesses before separation, and its duration will be for as long as is legally permissible. But most importantly, government must also help to create the conditions in which both businesses will flourish in partnership with one another.
Let me reassure this House that the separation of Post Office Ltd and Royal Mail will not lead to dangers for the post office network. As my noble friend Lord Razzall, emphasised, operationally, these companies are reliant on one another. Post offices carried out over 3 billion transactions for Royal Mail in 2009, and they will continue to be partners because there will remain an overwhelming commercial imperative for the two businesses to work together. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, noted that there are no international precedents for splitting a mail provider and retail arm. The Government are not aware of any international comparisons for the Post Office, which has such a vast branch network, offering a broad range of government, financial and mail services in the heart of communities. Separation from Royal Mail will give the Post Office the chance to focus on growing its revenue and getting the most out of its branch network. It will ensure that each organisation is able to focus more effectively on its own challenges and help to secure a sustainable network. The separation of Post Office Ltd from Royal Mail was welcomed during the Public Bill Committee evidence sessions in the other place by the consumer group Consumer Focus, the current regulator Postcomm, and the independent expert Richard Hooper.
It is of course important too that the Post Office continues to offer the very best possible service to Royal Mail, as well as to other current and potential clients. Our £1.34 billion funding package to the Post Office over the spending review period will ensure that the service provided by post offices is modernised and improved, to ensure that people continue to see their local post offices as the natural and convenient place to access Royal Mail products and that the Royal Mail management continues to see the Post Office as its retail partner of choice. This Government have not given Post Office Ltd such a considerable sum of money for nothing. We will do all we can to ensure that Post Office Ltd has a vibrant future, and continues its valued relationship with Royal Mail. As I have said before, it is primarily by attracting customers for all types of services that the Post Office will ensure its future success. With this Government’s funding and support, I believe that is precisely what it will achieve. As such, I would ask the noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Rogan
I thank the Minister for her reply. However, I feel that she could have gone further. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I can confirm that the very purpose of the Bill is to protect the universal service. I should like to put the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Young, at rest on that before I go any further. I hope, too, that I can satisfy my noble friend Lady Kramer in my response. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Low, has spoken to the Minister in another place, Edward Davey. I hope I can reassure the noble Lord on the points he was most worried about.
The Bill requires Ofcom to secure the provision of the universal service and to ensure that it meets the reasonable needs of users. That latter point is a requirement not just of the Bill but of the European postal services directive. On Amendment 64, Clause 32(2)(b) retains the ability for the regulator to make exceptions where the minimum requirements for delivery and collection in Clause 30 need not apply. These are for exceptional circumstances or geographical conditions. Amendment 64 seeks to change the wording to “highly exceptional”. The wording of the clause directly replicates Section 4(1)(a) of the Postal Services Act 2000. It also exactly replicates a provision from the Opposition’s 2009 Bill. It flows from Article 3(3) of the European directive, which states that member states must take steps to ensure the universal service,
“save in circumstances or geographical conditions deemed exceptional”.
The kind of situation that constitutes an exception would be an address on a remote island, where there is a single ferry service a week. It would be unreasonable to expect Royal Mail to deliver every day to such an address, as it would require it to charter its own boat. Another example would be where dangerous dogs at an address pose a genuine threat to postmen or postwomen. Currently this allows Postcomm to permit Royal Mail not to make daily deliveries to some addresses in extreme circumstances. Present exceptions apply to only 0.01 per cent of the approximately 28 million United Kingdom addresses. We agree with the intention behind this amendment—that the number of exceptions must be kept a minimum. However, I must confess to your Lordships that I am not sure precisely what effect saying “highly exceptional”, as opposed to “exceptional”, would have. It would appear to raise the bar, although to what height is unclear. We must recognise that raising the bar is likely to have two effects. First, it will probably result in more risks for hard-working postmen and postwomen, who will be asked to go to a large number of unsafe addresses. Secondly, it will probably put a greater burden on the universal service provider. I have to say to your Lordships that on both counts I am uneasy.
The question I ask your Lordships is whether the current situation is unacceptable. My view is that there is no evidence of a need to move away from what we now have. Indeed, that was the view of the Opposition two years ago. Unless noble Lords opposite can provide us with a rationale for this change, the Government cannot support it. I therefore ask them to consider withdrawing this amendment.
Amendment 65, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Young, Lord Stevenson and Lord Tunnicliffe, seeks to prevent a review of the minimum requirements for a period of five years from when this part of the Bill comes into force. Similarly, Amendment 65A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Low, seeks to prevent the Secretary of State reducing the minimum requirements—again for a period of five years from when this part of the Bill comes into force. The whole issue of the minimum requirements is something we considered during our deliberations in Committee, and I am sorry that noble Lords were not convinced by my contribution to that debate. As I have said, the power in Clause 33 enhances the safeguards against changes to the universal service minimum requirements. Clause 30 enshrines the current minimum requirements for the universal service, with the important addition of free services for the blind or partially sighted. These requirements gold-plate our European obligations, but it is gold-plating of which we are rightly proud.
As I said during Committee, and as my colleague the Minister for Postal Affairs has said in the other place, the Government have no intention of reducing the minimum requirements of the universal service during this Parliament. As things stand now, and as they would have stood under the 2009 Bill, a future Government could reduce those minimum requirements to the level required by the European directive through a negative resolution procedure using powers under the European Communities Act 1972. This means that, until this legislation is passed, Saturday deliveries could be dropped, and different prices could be charged for sending letters to different parts of the country. We do not believe that that is acceptable, and that is why we have introduced Clause 33. Clause 33 puts in place a clear procedure to be followed before the minimum requirements could be altered. Through this procedure, it offers vital new protections for us all. The protections are threefold, and I think it is important that I set this out again for your Lordships. First, there can be no changes to the minimum requirements unless Ofcom has conducted a review of the needs of users, which would, of course, inform any subsequent Secretary of State’s decision. Secondly, the clause guarantees that no change can result in a different minimum level of service to different parts of the country, so we could never have a five-day-a-week letter delivery requirement in Cornwall, but a six-day-a-week requirement in Birmingham, and services must always be priced uniformly. Thirdly, any proposal for change would be subject to the affirmative procedure in both Houses.
Given these enhanced protections, I am afraid that I do not believe it would be helpful to tie the hands of the regulator or the Secretary of State in the way proposed by these amendments, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Eccles. Ofcom will be responsible for regulating the postal services market and should be able to review the market and user needs where it feels it is appropriate. Let us not forget that Ofcom’s primary duty will be to secure the universal service. It will need to be able to gather information on customer and market needs if it is to fulfil this obligation. That would include vital information about the needs of vulnerable consumers. This is an important point as one of the general duties of Ofcom under Section 3 of the Communications Act 2003 is a requirement to have regard to the needs of persons with disabilities, the elderly and those on low incomes.
Furthermore, it has been made absolutely clear by both myself and the Minister for Postal Affairs that the Government have no intention of reducing the minimum requirements of the universal service. Even if a future Government believed that changes should be made, the Bill guarantees that no change can result in a different minimum level of service to different parts of the country, and guarantees that services must always be priced uniformly. Critically, any proposal to change the minimum requirements would have to come before this House and the other place and be subject to the affirmative procedure in both Houses.
It has been put to me that the first thing an investor in Royal Mail would do is lobby the Government, Ofcom and Parliament to reduce the minimum requirements of the universal service. Let me be clear to this House: any investor in Royal Mail will know our position on the minimum requirements. They will be fully aware of the strong protections that we have built around them, and they will therefore invest in the full knowledge of these protections. Of course, we cannot stop them lobbying, but I can reassure this House that they will not find it straightforward.
Finally, while I hope I have made clear that this Government have no intention of changing the minimum requirements, I am happy to put on the record again, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, has requested, that that assurance applies for the rest of this Parliament, which is almost four years. However, I should also point out that the European Union directive requires that the universal service must respond to the needs of its users. A five-year legislative ban on any changes could therefore amount to non-compliance with our European Union obligations.
Given the reassurances I have made on the protections for the minimum requirements, I would hope that the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Low, will feel able not to press their amendments.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, before I respond to what the Minister has said, I reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories—
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I apologise as I do not think that I have spoken to Amendment 66. I know that I have taken rather a long time to reply to this group of amendments, but it contains some very important points, particularly in relation to the matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Low.
Amendment 66 is similar to an amendment tabled in Committee, although that was to Clause 35. As with that amendment, I agree wholeheartedly with the intention behind it. However, I am delighted to assure the noble Lord, Lord Young, that it is simply not needed. It is the Government’s intention to ensure that the one-price-goes-anywhere service is protected and that the minimum requirements of the universal service cannot vary across the United Kingdom. We are absolutely clear that the wording of the Bill as it stands—specifically requirement 3 in Clause 30—fulfils that intention. There is no cause for doubt. Furthermore, in Clause 33 we are putting in place new safeguards that explicitly prevent any changes to the minimum requirements that would result in non-uniform pricing, so the one-price-goes-anywhere service is protected now and in the future.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked about the interplay between uniformity and the requirement in Clause 35 that if a designated universal service condition makes provisions for the tariffs to be used for determining prices for universal services, Ofcom must take into account the costs of providing the service or part of the service. There is no contradiction between this and the need for uniform pricing. It simply means that the uniform price should take account of the total costs. Uniformity is a defining feature of our universal service and the Government are committed to maintaining it as such. I do not think that I can be any clearer than this. The provisions in Clause 30 and Clause 33 already guarantee a one-price-goes-anywhere service. I hope that the noble Lord will, at the appropriate time, not press the amendment.
Baroness Wilcox
“Notification condition
(1) OFCOM may impose a notification condition on—
(a) every person providing, or intending to provide, a service within the scope of the universal postal service, or(b) every person providing, or intending to provide, a service within the scope of the universal postal service of a specified description.(2) A notification condition is a condition requiring the person to give OFCOM—
(a) advance notice of the person’s intention to provide a letters business on a specified scale (whether or not the person is currently providing a letters business or any other postal service), and(b) where the person is already providing a letters business on a specified scale, advance notice of the person’s intention to expand the business by a specified extent.(3) A specified scale or extent may be determined by reference to any specified factor.
(4) The Secretary of State may at any time direct OFCOM to impose a notification condition.
(5) The direction may (but need not) specify some or all of the provision to be contained in the condition.
(6) Where a notification condition applies to a person at a time when the person is not providing a postal service—
(a) Schedule 7 (enforcement of regulatory conditions) is to have effect as if paragraph 7(2) and (3) were omitted and as if, for the purposes of paragraph 11, the person were providing a postal service, and(b) Schedule 8 (information provisions) is to have effect as if the person were a person falling within paragraph 1(2) and as if, for the purposes of paragraph 8, the person were providing a postal service.(7) In this section—
“advance notice” means written notice given at least a specified period of time before the person intends to do as mentioned in subsection (2)(a) or (b),
“a letters business” means a postal service which consists in the delivery of letters, and
“specified” mean specified in the notification condition.”
Baroness Wilcox
Baroness Wilcox
“( ) A direction under subsection (12) may not require OFCOM to make a procurement determination at any time in the period of 10 years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force unless the universal service provider has agreed to the making of the determination.”
Baroness Wilcox
Baroness Wilcox
““notification condition” has the meaning given by section (Notification condition),”