Performance of Royal Mail

Claire Young Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Like other Members, I want to recognise the hard work of postal workers in my constituency. They are not to blame for management’s continued ineptitude and poor delivery of changes. Many are quitting, as fed up with the Royal Mail as we are.

Hundreds of my constituents in Thornbury and Yate have written to me about Royal Mail’s failures. One posted something to Australia and it ended up arriving at a neighbour’s house. Bundles of letters appear at their doors at once—weeks’ worth of magazines, NHS letters and post from friends and family. Mail is an essential service for some, particularly the digitally excluded, who rely on it for important correspondence like letters about their NHS appointments. One Thornbury constituent told me only this weekend that he got a hospital appointment letter the day after the appointment. The Government themselves depend on Royal Mail for sending out passports, driving licences and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs correspondence. Our own offices use Royal Mail.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

The point my hon. Friend makes about passports and other valuable documents is a good one. I attended a meeting in the Polden Hills, where the posties are brilliant but the post is absolutely rubbish, arriving every three weeks or longer. The thing that really shocked me was that Royal Mail is advertising for more posties but applicants do not even need to provide a CV. These people would be expected to deliver documents of prime importance—very often personal things like bank cards. It seems pretty shocking that Royal Mail has decided it does not need to have somebody’s CV before employing them. Does she agree that is really poor practice?

[Claire Young]

I absolutely agree that is poor practice. I think it is a sign of the desperation Royal Mail finds itself in, with so many people quitting its employment.

Royal Mail’s response has not been good enough. It has moved the goalposts, decreased delivery times, and fiddled around with its staff numbers, but none of that has helped. Reports suggest that it is axing its head office numbers, and posties are quitting in droves. Clearly, that is not sustainable. When I raised my constituents’ concerns with Royal Mail directly, the right people did not even attend the first meeting, and subsequent ones have been little more productive. I am told that the Royal Mail complaints forms have been removed from the building it shares with Yate post office. That is not the behaviour of a business that cares about its customers.

That brings me to the regulator. I want to use this debate to call again for Ofcom to properly regulate the Royal Mail or be replaced. In correspondence, Ministers have confirmed to me that currently Ofcom cannot investigate local failures. As a result, when Royal Mail does not deliver and its complaints team cannot provide an adequate resolution, my constituents have no one else to turn to but me. In essence, the public look to Members of this House to be the regulators, but we do not have the powers of a regulator. Too often, our complaints are met with dismissive template letters asserting that the service is improving when it blatantly is not. Where is Ofcom? What does a fine here and there really do to a failing business?

I wrote to the previous Minister a few months ago, after I raised these issues in the Chamber. I asked what he had done to review Ofcom’s powers and why Ofcom cannot properly regulate at a local level. Disappointingly, he answered that Royal Mail is a private business and Ofcom is an independent regulator, so there is nothing really that the Government can do. I am not sure that is quite how regulation works.

This is simply not good enough. In answer to my written questions, the Government stated that they have not assessed moving responsibility for postal regulation away from Ofcom to a new regulator. Why? Surely even Ministers agree that Royal Mail has been failing to deliver for years now and Ofcom has not changed that. Either Ofcom needs more powers to investigate locally and tackle the issue, or we should remove its power altogether and give the responsibility of postal regulator to a whole new independent body that will focus on the issues properly. Why is Ofcom not performing its duties with vigour?

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

The hon. Member has laid out a couple of options on the table. What does she make of the assessment that no regulator will solve the problem and the service has to be brought back into public control? Is that something she would consider?

[Claire Young]

I do not think we can say that regulation has failed at this point, when effectively what we have been doing is using the same battering ram again and again. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and wondering why it leads to the same result. I think there are other things that we can explore first.

Last week during PMQs, the Prime Minister stated that if Royal Mail does not improve, further measures will be taken. Can the Minister now reveal what those measures are and assure the House that this company will face serious consequences for failing all our constituents?