Royal Mail

David Johnston Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. In some ways, I wish this debate about the performance of Royal Mail was not necessary, and I want to be crystal clear at the outset that I do not think that the problems I will describe are the fault of Royal Mail’s workers. I live in the Didcot area and I have experienced some of these problems, although not nearly as badly as some of my constituents have. I have also seen how hard Royal Mail staff have all been working in my area and right across the constituency. Indeed, when my constituents complain to me, they often say the same thing. They do not blame Royal Mail’s workers, and they have huge admiration for them. However, I have had more complaints about Royal Mail than about any other company or organisation in my time as an MP, so I thought it was important to have this debate.

My constituents have been complaining since 10 August 2020; that was when I got my first complaint. My most recent complaint was on Monday just gone. During that time, my constituents complained about all sorts of post not arriving, and I will give some examples in a minute to illustrate the problem. I think it is right that we take that seriously, because what they have experienced has caused great distress. I naively hoped that when I called a meeting with Royal Mail headquarters towards the end of last year, that would resolve it. I had no idea how widespread the problem was and how many areas of the country were affected, albeit that it is not all areas.

To give a sense of what has been happening, the complaints in my constituency have been concentrated in the Didcot area, the Wantage and Grove area and some of the villages surrounding Wantage, and there have been bits in Cholsey and Wallingford, too. The very first complaint that I got on 10 August was from a man called Sean, who lives in Didcot. He wrote to me because he has a two-year-old son who is deaf. Sean relies on the post because he regularly needs moulds that hold his two-year-old son’s hearing aids. His family also have a series of hospital appointments that they need to attend, and he has found himself in the situation both of missing hospital appointments because the letters did not arrive on time, and of turning up at the hospital for appointments that were not happening, because he did not get the cancellation letters on time. We can understand how distressing that is, and it is having a knock-on effect on services such as the NHS.

My constituent Ann and her husband, who live in Wantage, did not get their 65th wedding anniversary cards. As I have said in the House before, anyone who gets to 65 years of marriage ought to be getting their anniversary cards on time. Much more sadly, my constituent Matthew’s wife died last year and he did not receive the condolence cards or the death certificates on time.

I have constituents who have not had their insurance renewals, meaning they have ended up having to pay more for their insurance. One did not get his bank card, so he could not pay for anything when he was out and about, and had to go online each time he made a payment. Constituents have complained that they have not received mail for one, two or three weeks, and they sometimes go to the sorting office and are handed that mail. One recent complainant has still not had her Christmas post.

It is common for constituents to downplay such situations and say, “I suppose it’s only trivial, you know. I haven’t had my Christmas cards but it is only trivial.” I do not think it is trivial at all. We all appreciate the importance of medical appointments arriving by post, but things such as magazine subscriptions really matter as well. They bring joy to people, and cards are also hugely important to mark occasions. A whole range of constituents have not had birthday cards arrive, often for significant birthdays.

This is clearly not happening in all areas of the country. Royal Mail’s recently published official figures say that on their first class delivery target, which is 93%, they actually hit 74.7%. In the figures I have looked at, that is the lowest level for a considerable time. Covid is part of that, but I do not think it is only covid. I have given Royal Mail a right of reply, so I will come to what it feels the problems are later. Royal Mail’s national complaint figures also show a huge spike in complaints.

I do not think covid is the only reason for that. When we look at the data, Royal Mail has not hit that first-class delivery figure in six of the last 10 years. It has not hit its delivery completion target in nine of the last 10 years. It is even the same with special delivery. We have all been to the post office and had that talk from the person behind the counter, who says, “Well, if you really want it to get there on time and if you really want to make sure that it gets there, you should go special delivery, although it is lot more expensive.” However, Royal Mail has not hit that target in the past 10 years, although admittedly that is a much higher target to hit and it hits the target a high proportion of the time.

The experience of the past year is particularly frustrating as the Royal Mail has just recorded record profits. I was not eating cornflakes that I could choke on at the time, but I was surprised to open the newspaper and see the headline, “Royal Mail profits treble.” The price of a first-class stamp has gone up a third in the last five years, including a rise of 12% this year. The fall in service is difficult to reconcile with the increase in Royal Mail’s profits.

I do not work for Royal Mail, so I cannot say exactly what the problem is, but I think part of it is to do with its prioritising parcels. When I met Royal Mail representatives last year, they said to me, “We have gone from being a letter service that delivers parcels, to a parcel service that delivers letters.” They said that if I had been able to visit the sorting office, I would have seen things like washing machines and big screen TVs being delivered.

That is a business decision for them, but it is frustrating for constituents, who have reported to me that they have not had any mail for two or three weeks, but they have seen Royal Mail staff and vans delivering parcels and much bigger items. A number of them have spoken to their local postmen and women, and been told confidentially, off the record, that they have been told to prioritise parcels over other mail.

We have to work out what the problem is, and ensure that Royal Mail deals with it and that we do not just write it off as being something to do with covid. I contacted Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union to ask for their opinions. Royal Mail says that the issue is a combination of covid-related absences, the social distancing requirements—meaning that it cannot have as many people in its buildings—and the increase in the number of parcels. That increase has been of 32%, in part because everyone is at home and sending each other stuff, although that might in part be the Royal Mail business decision to develop that aspect of its work, no doubt contributing to its profitability in the past year. That cuts both ways.

I wanted to have this debate because my constituents often feel fobbed off when they complain to Royal Mail directly. They do not get something that answers the question. One constituent told me that one response it got amounted to, “We’re trying but it’s not our fault.” I wanted the debate so that I can ensure that Ministers are aware of what is going on and of my constituents’ experience. In my constituency alone, I would like Royal Mail to review the operation and perhaps invest some of its profits in it. Do we need more staff? Do we need bigger service centres? If parcels are taking up too much space, so they have to get them out, do they need bigger delivery centres? We certainly need to work out what is going wrong.

We could have a simpler process for compensating constituents, perhaps an automatic one—Royal Mail knows when it is delivering something very late, because it has to report on that figure. It should therefore know when those people ought to be compensated automatically. It is important that Ofcom does not allow that to be written off as, “Well, it’s covid, don’t worry about it.” I understand why it has given a dispensation to Royal Mail this year to say that covid has imposed a particular burden, so it will not be held to that 93%” but some of my constituents would say that it had problems before covid. It is not good enough to write it off as covid.

In the end, Royal Mail has a near monopoly on that type of post. Our constituents cannot go anywhere else—they can with parcels, but not with the things involved in the problems they have been experiencing. Again, I do not hold Royal Mail’s workers responsible, but Royal Mail HQ—under pressure from the Government and Ofcom—needs to provide the service that our constituents are paying an increasing amount for all the time.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in the debate this afternoon. It has been a good debate. The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) spoke for all of us when she said that we owe our postal workers a huge debt of gratitude for the work they have done during this period. She was quite right to say there is a difference between pausing deliveries on Saturdays and not delivering anything for weeks at a time, which has been the experience in Wantage and Didcot. I support her request for postcode-level data on deliveries.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) detailed very well the impact of delays and the sorts of things that have been delayed, from shielding letters to vaccination letters. It was a very good idea that Royal Mail should create more apprenticeship positions and support young people, thereby also improving the service.

I am grateful to the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). He and I do not agree on the number of British institutions that are worthy of high regard—I am sure that is no surprise. We also do not agree on the privatisation, because there are some public services that I could complain about today, but where I do agree with him is, if Royal Mail’s priorities have changed to parcels, it is important that it is honest about that. That is what my constituents feel they can see, but it is not something that Royal Mail has admitted.

I am also grateful to the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). She was exactly right about the important role that Royal Mail has played in the pandemic in delivering PPE and so on, and also—a point I do not think the rest of us made—that postal workers were often the only human contact for people who were shielding. She reminded me that people had hugely appreciated that, because it was often the only conversation they had with anybody during that period.

I am very grateful to the Minister for engaging with the issue seriously and for understanding the distress that it is causing and for providing the data that he did. He is right to say that Royal Mail did some Sunday services—it shocked constituents to get post on a Sunday—so it was trying. The Minister provided important delivery round data as well.

One of his most important points was that fewer people are relying on the service, but for those that do, it is incredibly important. That is the same debate as for the use of cheques or the use of cash, or people who do not have smartphones. We forget sometimes—we think there is this relentless progress of technology, but it can leave people very vulnerable. People not receiving the things they should have been has been very difficult for them.

The Minister is quite right to say that tomorrow I am visiting one of the service centres, so I will be able to get under the skin of the issue. Royal Mail has told me that it has hired more staff and bought more vehicles, so the test will be whether it gets better this year. If it does not, I will be back on the Minister’s case and on Royal Mail’s case, because it is important that constituents get the service they are paying for.

Thank you very much, Ms McDonagh, for chairing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.