Performance of Royal Mail

Julie Minns Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dave Robertson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the value that posties have in our communities not just in delivering post, but more widely. We saw it over covid where the only person a lot of vulnerable residents would see in a week would be their postie. She makes an important point about their importance to our communities.

Returning to Royal Mail’s inability to grasp the nettle and to the fact that it sends us emails saying, “Everything’s fine,” “Don’t worry,” and “Nothing to see here,” that is tantamount to telling every single MP it has sent that communication to that our constituents are lying. Royal Mail needs to change its approach radically and rapidly.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dave Robertson]

I will make some progress.

Royal Mail needs to own the true scale of the problem and the genuinely felt anger—that is essential. I look forward to discussing this with the Royal Mail CEO when he meets Labour MPs in Parliament next month. Labour Members do not want to stand up in this Chamber and attack Royal Mail, and we are certainly not attacking postal workers.

We recognise the scale of the challenge facing the industry. The number of letters sent in the UK has halved since the company was privatised, while the number of parcels has risen dramatically, fuelled in many cases by the growth in online shopping. Virtually all the parcel companies competing with Royal Mail, and oftentimes using its network, use a bogus self-employment model for their workers. That means Royal Mail is competing in a market where it has a fundamental disadvantage, and we should not want to encourage the model that these parcel companies are using—it is bad for workers, consumers and the taxpayer. Too many parcel companies pay a pittance for an unmanageable workload, exhausting drivers who cannot provide a quality service to customers as they race to complete rounds that are frankly impossible, and the public purse is ripped off in the process. While Royal Mail pays £650 million a year in national insurance contributions, many of these companies do not pay a penny.

The Government are now consulting on upgrading the rights of these parcel delivery drivers, and it is a start, but we need to go further. We need true parity between Royal Mail and its competitors, a level playing field where every company pays a fair price if it chooses to use the Royal Mail network. We need Royal Mail to take a long-term view of its workforce. New entrants get far worse terms, and that is fuelling a retention crisis with a staggering 400 posties leaving the company every week. It may help pinch a few pennies now, but if Royal Mail cannot keep its hard-working staff, the business is destined to fail.

I am sorry to say that we need to look again at the delivery model. Royal Mail is currently rolling out DM26, as it calls it, but our posties tell us the process is already chaotic, the workload is unmanageable and it is not a long-term solution. We need to heed the recommendation of the Business and Trade Committee to look at giving Ofcom stronger powers to regulate Royal Mail. It concerns me that the regulator has no solution beyond more fines for Royal Mail, which are clearly not working. We need to build on the Government’s “golden share” in Royal Mail and think about an ownership model for the future, with the voices of customers and workers right at its heart.