Royal Mail

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Members must ask questions and leave short speeches for another day if we are to allow everybody to contribute to the statement. Quick questions and short answers will help us enormously.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot have a regulatory regime that allows services to be cherry-picked where profitable by the jackals that will buy Royal Mail, and then say they will protect the universal service. We all know it will be broken up, but will the Minister say whether his description of the universal service requires people to collect their mail from a central collection point, rather than its being delivered door to door?

[Michael Fallon]

The universal obligation is set out by the regulator and is not—and cannot be—affected by the change in ownership. Any change to the universal obligation would be made by this House, and as I have said, we have no plans to change that. On cherry-picking and so on, it is for the regulator to police the market and ensure there are no unfair practices.