Performance of Royal Mail

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned about the performance of Royal Mail; and urges the Government to work with Royal Mail to improve its performance levels.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the debate and the more than 100 hon. Members from across the House who put their names to the application. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who applied for the debate alongside me. May I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a member of the executive of the trade union group of Labour MPs?

Today’s debate is not an attack on our posties, the men and women trying to deliver a quality service with their hands tied behind their backs; it is about holding Royal Mail and Ofcom to account until the service that my constituents receive is the one they pay for. I called for the debate because in Redditch and the villages, the post—or the lack of it—is now one of the most common reasons that people write to me as their Member of Parliament. My constituency is a mix of urban, suburban and rural, from Batchley and Church Hill in the town itself to Inkberrow, Feckenham and Wychbold in the villages. The difference between postcodes can be stark.

Let me begin with the ordinary complaints from my casework, with the Radio Times arriving a week late, first-class birthday cards taking five days to cross Redditch, and Christmas cards arriving on 23 January. One Feckenham family always receives birthday cards due on 12 January five days late; it would be funny if it was not so sad. Some receive no post for days and then one bundle tied with the obligatory rubber band. One received nothing between 3 and 20 January. Another in Wychbold gets deliveries once every 12 days.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member. Just last week we had a debate in Westminster Hall, and today hon. Members have a chance to ask the very same questions. What is happening to independent traders in my constituency, in Newtownards, Comber and the Ards peninsula? Delays are choking cash flow, ruining customer relationships and threatening their very survival. Royal Mail has got to grasp the nettle and get it right—now, not later.

[Chris Bloore]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. I will get to the impact on businesses later in my speech.

A letter from my own office sent on 11 June arrived on 25 August. Bills arrive overdue while people struggle to reach complaint lines or their local sorting office. The consequences can be far more serious: one constituent received a hospital letter on 6 October about an appointment on 17 September.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous. This is such an important debate. I have a constituent who had exactly that problem—they received delayed post for scans and cancer treatment plans. That is unacceptable and distressing. Does he agree that this is the worst type of post to be delayed?

[Chris Bloore]

I completely agree. Another resident of mine, whose husband has cancer, has had to wait anxiously for medical correspondence about a diagnosis.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Chris Bloore]

Could I make a little progress? I am conscious that many hon. Members wish to speak, but I need to get through some of my speech.

A council letter about a husband in a nursing home took from 14 November until 3 March to arrive. His family had six months to appeal and almost four months had already passed. A Department for Work and Pensions letter dated 5 January required a response by the 14th, but it arrived on the 20th. My constituent’s benefits were withheld. She had done nothing wrong; her letter was late. Benefits withheld, appointments missed and appeal deadlines lost—all because the post failed. If my office cannot trust Royal Mail to deliver a letter, how can I assure constituents that their hospital correspondence will arrive in time?

One more thing struck me with this casework. Almost every constituent says that their parcels arrive on time; it is the letters that do not. Is that a coincidence, or is that what happens when a company chases the parcels market and treats letters as an afterthought while holding a monopoly on them?

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way on that point?

[Chris Bloore]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) as she asked first.

[Carla Lockhart]

I thank the hon. Member; he is making a powerful speech to which we can all relate. On hospital appointments, there was discussion that Royal Mail would engage with each of the different hospital trusts. Does he agree that that needs to progress and that there needs to be some screening process to ensure that hospital appointment letters are delivered on time?

[Chris Bloore]

The hon. Lady is completely correct, and I will touch on that issue.

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being very generous with his time. Earlier today, I opened the new Friends of Harrogate Hospital garden at the hospital. I spoke with the chief executive, who made the point that Royal Mail has told them that NHS appointments are meant to be prioritised, but the reality that we are all experiencing clearly shows that that is not the case. Does he agree that Royal Mail needs to pull its finger out, so that lives are not lost as a result of its negligence?

[Chris Bloore]

I agree.

The Government’s response to the Business and Trade Committee makes the point well: a lack of capacity that forces a company to prioritise some items over others is no justification for failing to deliver the expected service. Royal Mail must deliver 90% of its first-class letters the next working day. It is managing 85%. Against the target of completing 99.9% of delivery routes each day, it is completing just 70%. Those targets have been missed for five years running, while the price of a first-class stamp has risen by 137% to £1.80 and the price of a first-class medium parcel, where Royal Mail competes, has fallen by half. Where there is competition, prices fall; where there is monopoly, prices rise and services continue to fall.

What has the regulator done, really? Since 2015, Ofcom has investigated Royal Mail seven times and fined it four times. Last year, Ofcom lowered the very targets Royal Mail was missing and cut second-class delivery days, saving the company up to £425 million—“rewarding failure”, as Citizens Advice put it. More fines will not fix this, yet Ofcom has never come to this House seeking the powers it needs to hold Royal Mail to account. A regulator that can punish failure but cannot compel improvement must answer a fundamental question: what is it for? If Ofcom cannot do its job, a new regulator, with real teeth, must be considered.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being so generous with his time. I echo what he said about my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who has led this campaign so strongly in Parliament. In Stroud, our Cotswold Vale Talking Newspaper puts news and music on USB sticks and sends them out to blind and print-disabled listeners in Dursley; the chairman says that those now take six weeks to arrive and that many subscriptions are being cancelled. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to take Royal Mail back into public ownership?

[Chris Bloore]

That is a cheeky question, and I might get back to it.

In May, the Business and Trade Committee called the service unacceptable and called Ofcom’s regulation into question. It demanded a road map to improvement. We are still waiting. Meanwhile, last Christmas, 16 million people experienced delayed letters, 5.7 million missed a vital letter and 19 million received bundled deliveries. Behind every statistic is someone let down by a service they have paid for and have every right to expect.

Royal Mail points to £500 million of investment and a promise to meet targets by April 2027. I welcome the investment, but a voluntary plan and relaxed targets are no substitute for accountability. No future promise can undo a missed hospital appointment or restore the time lost fighting for a loved one. That is why I joined my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield and for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron) in writing to Royal Mail’s chief executive, Alistair Cochrane, asking him to meet affected MPs in Parliament. Our constituents deserve more than a briefing from a distance.

However, we must also confront uncomfortable questions. When Royal Mail was privatised, we were promised flexibility, investment and competition. Instead, the taxpayer lost hundreds of millions of pounds through an undervalued sale, and performance levels fell. If privatisation was supposed to secure Royal Mail’s future, why are we now facing these challenges, and what needs to change to put the service back on a sustainable footing?

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the passionate speech he is making. I have heard similar issues from my constituents about delays from Royal Mail. One elderly lady, who is 96 years old, has been waiting for three weeks to get a replacement PIN from her bank. These are stories of real people across the country who are being let down by Royal Mail. Does he agree that its representatives need to come to Parliament and answer questions from MPs?

[Chris Bloore]

Yes. We are not going there; they should be coming here.

I understand that the world has changed. Letter volumes have fallen from around 20 billion at their peak to 5.6 billion, while Royal Mail must serve 4 million more addresses. The economics of the universal service do not shrink with the volumes. A postie still walks the same streets for 10 letters as they do for one. Around 1,000 delivery offices are changing how they operate in a compressed period. The answer cannot be another round of job cuts, which put more pressure on the very service we want improved. Other European countries subsidise their postal services. We must be prepared to have an open debate about whether further Government support is needed to protect the universal service and whether a new operational model is required

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is being kind in giving way. Does he recognise that the point about subsidies is really important in constituencies like Frome and East Somerset? We have fantastic, hard-working and very overstretched posties who are each trying to cover a large area. We also have people who may not have access to broadband, and who rely even more on the post that they are not getting.

[Chris Bloore]

I agree. That is incredibly frustrating and impacts so many different areas.

I am going to make some progress and finish. Recognising the need for change does not mean accepting the unacceptable. Before I turn to what must change, let me deal with the tired old narrative that we must pick a side between consumers and workers—the customer who wants their post and the postie who wants decent pay. That is a false choice, and the evidence contradicts it. Citizens Advice, the statutory champion of postal consumers, and the Communication Workers Union, the voice of postal workers, have reached almost the same conclusions from opposite ends. Both want a regulator that protects the universal service, the same rules for competitors and an end to bogus self-employment. A fairly paid, properly employed postie is how a customer gets their letter.

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bloore]

I am sorry; I have to make some progress.

When workers are squeezed, consumers pay the price—and squeezed they are. I do not blame the posties. I have spoken to a postal worker with 36 years of service, who told me that morale is at an all-time low. Staff are told to complete half a delivery one day and scramble to catch up the next. Overtime is restricted, yet posties work extra hours unpaid just to keep the show on the road. Royal Mail runs a two-tier workforce: new starters on £13.68 an hour against £15.50 for long-standing colleagues. Is it any wonder that the company cannot recruit or retain? All the while, parcel competitors undercut Royal Mail with bogus self-employment—paying nothing in employer national insurance, while Royal Mail pays £650 million a year—and cherry-pick the profitable addresses while passing difficult ones back to the national network to which they never contribute. That matters for Redditch’s small businesses, too. They rely on the post for invoices, cheques and supplies. For them, a late letter is not an inconvenience; it is a cash flow problem.

I have four clear asks of the Minister. First, I ask her to strengthen regulation: to ask Ofcom what powers it needs to hold Royal Mail to account, to tie above-inflation stamp prices to meeting service targets and to require transparent reporting of efficiencies to Parliament. If Ofcom cannot regulate effectively, we must question whether it remains fit for purpose. Secondly, I ask her to level the playing field: to tackle bogus self-employment through the employment status reforms, to extend minimum service and consumer protection standards to competitors, and to examine the case for a levy on operators that profit from the universal postal network. Thirdly, I ask the Minister to protect the workforce: to address pay inequalities, to work constructively with the CWU on the new delivery model and to build workloads a human being can actually complete. Finally, I ask her to convene an emergency national summit, bringing together the Government, Ofcom, Royal Mail and the unions to agree a sustainable future for this vital service.

We must acknowledge that the postal market has changed, and have an honest conversation about service standards and funding, but change cannot be an excuse for declining standards or intolerable pressures on our workforce. This House has not always got it right when making historic decisions about Royal Mail’s ownership, but we must learn from those mistakes. What matters now is that we act decisively to secure Royal Mail’s future, protect its workforce and safeguard the communities that depend on this vital national service.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Dame Harriett Baldwin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bloore]

I have already had the best part of 20 minutes, so I probably will not be long.

I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. I also thank the many right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for taking part in today’s Backbench Business debate. I have learned things about the service that I did not think I would ever learn, whether that is the infidelity of a former Prime Minister—I do not know if I am letting the cat out of the bag here—or the Jane Austen quotes that we have heard.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) talked about the direction of travel and what is likely to happen if we do not take action. Despite the light-hearted and more serious stories that we have shared today, we are in a position where we could lose universal services if we in this House do not take action. While I may not have set out the same plan as my right hon. Friend in his speech, I really do think we have to understand that we are at a point of no return if we do not take strong and positive action. Our constituents will not forgive us if that universal service disappears, and it will cost us a lot more to try to rebuild it in the future.

Once again, I thank everyone for taking part today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House is concerned about the performance of Royal Mail; and urges the Government to work with Royal Mail to improve its performance levels.