Ian Murray
Main Page: Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Vince Cable
The process will be competitive, as is right, and designed to achieve value for money for the taxpayer. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, it is practice to enclose details of those fees in the prospectus, and he will see that in due course.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating all Royal Mail staff for producing a doubling of profits this year, and we send our best wishes to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), for a speedy recovery.
The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks, who I am surprised is not answering this question, is seen as a fire fighter in Government, but rather than putting out the fire at Royal Mail, he has lit the fuse and put the fire sale signs up. He is, of course, rushing that through to spare the blushes of his Chancellor, who is borrowing £245 billion more than he said in 2010 and is desperate for pre-election cash in the coffers. The Minister signed a letter in 2009 in which he said he was opposed to privatisation, so why are the Government now rushing a sell-off that is opposed by right-wing think-tanks, the unions, the National Federation of SubPostmasters, small businesses, the Liberal Democrats, and people up and down this country who will receive a poorer postal service as a result?
Vince Cable
The Opposition have a strange but perhaps rather revealing idea of speedy decision making. The process of bringing private capital into the Post Office started in 2008 under my Labour predecessor. It was one of our first pieces of legislation—I introduced it in the House, it was agreed, and we are now following through in an orderly way designed to get good value for the taxpayer and a good outcome for Royal Mail.