Royal Mail: Performance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Jessica Toale
Main Page: Jessica Toale (Labour - Bournemouth West)Department Debates - View all Jessica Toale's debates with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Royal Mail: Performance
Jessica Toale Excerpts(1 day, 20 hours ago)
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Sorcha Eastwood
Indeed. I thank the hon. Member for his work on this subject to date—it is very much valued and appreciated by all of us in this House—and I think that he has just illustrated the point perfectly.
We have had the discussion and the debate around which items matter in terms of Royal Mail’s service. Parcels still manage to turn up on time and online orders arrive straight away, while letters sit in sorting offices. Everyone can see what Royal Mail is prioritising.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for making such a powerful testimony about the impact of letters being lost or delayed by Royal Mail. I have been flagging up issues in the BH11, BH10 and BH9 postcodes, which are in my constituency, just as many other hon. Members here today have been flagging up issues about the postcodes in their constituencies. What concerns me most is that the Royal Mail responses to the issues we raise are at best generic and at worst deceptive. Does she agree that that is totally unacceptable and that Royal Mail needs to do better?
Sorcha Eastwood
I think the hon. Lady has perfectly anticipated the next paragraph of my speech. She is absolutely right that such responses make an already bad situation even worse. If we knew that our business or organisation was already under fire—for the life of me, I cannot understand why Royal Mail simply has not sought to improve how it responds to complaints.
Indeed, some of my constituents have told me what happens whenever they try to complain. The online complaints form has gone. As already suggested by the hon. Lady, the phoneline is a generic national number and it can take up to an hour to get through. If someone does get through, they are given a complaint number and promised a reply within three days, but weeks later they are still waiting for an answer. They use the email address provided, diligently setting out the issue once more, and eventually get a reply saying that the address is no longer monitored. A complaints system that tells you nobody is listening is not a complaints system.