Performance of Royal Mail
Debate between Chris Bloore and Tom Gordon(1 week, 2 days ago)
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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.
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.
Adoption Breakdown
Debate between Chris Bloore and Tom Gordon(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Tom Gordon
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. He makes a good point. We have ended up in a situation where local authorities are trying to recruit anyone to adopt, and it is often a scramble to find any place, so places do not necessarily always meet the needs of or provide the best option for those children. I think that is the nature of the situation we find ourselves in, with the service at a crisis point.
Many families that have been in touch have also said that support for adoptive families is often limited to the adoption and special guardianship support fund. This fund seems to have become a bit of a sticking plaster to allow local authorities to claim that they are supporting families with adopted children. While the fund is massively helpful, it is often the only resource that people can turn to.
As the Minister mentioned a number of times during Tuesday’s urgent question, local authorities have a legal obligation to support families who have adopted. However, this fund is often inadequate, and it is the extent of support in many areas. It is not an instant fix, and it is often only available to families once they have reached crisis point. As the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, families often report waiting for months—six months and upwards—to access funds and support due to delays by local authorities. During this waiting period, crises can escalate, and families are pushed closer and closer to breakdown.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for securing such an important debate. During the process of putting together his speech, I am sure he read the local government and social care ombudsman report from last November, which details a litany of failures across England in supporting adoptive parents. For me, the most heartbreaking element of reading the report and its recommendations was the number of families who said that they were put off the process, or driven out of it, by the bureaucratic failures and the lack of support on offer.
Tom Gordon
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and that is one of the key points. I will turn to examples of where people try to access that fund, but many people do give up, which is such a shame for the children involved.