Postal Services Bill

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. The problem is that it is not at all clear what mutuality means. If I understood the Minister correctly in Committee, what is being mutualised is not the post office network, but Post Office Ltd—the management of the Post Office—so the individual post offices would not be in a mutual network, but continue as individual businesses. I struggle to see how that is going to improve the situation.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Post Office Ltd is the junior partner in relation to some retail outlets, where it has an upstairs or downstairs location? It has to go through the footprint of the retail store, so it is not able to provide adequate facilities or the same kind of facilities that it did before as the Crown Post Office.

[Mr Weir]

I made that point with respect to my own constituency earlier and the hon. Gentleman is quite right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Colchester, the post office network is unique. Over the past few years, however, we have let the country down by allowing it to be weakened. I must admit that I have argued against that in the House: I have argued against my own Government. The network is being offered a huge opportunity, but the security of being in the public sector will make it even more possible for it to succeed. If it is allowed to leave that sector and to face unbridled competition, it will fall apart.

[Lindsay Roy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that subsidy is often viewed in a negative context, and that profit is gauged not in social terms but solely in a financial context? In fact, it is about dividends for communities. That kind of social investment is vital to our nation.

[Mr Anderson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is strange to hear Liberal Democrats who, justifiably, used to make that case say that it no longer holds water. The Minister mentioned the cost of the United States social service, but the United States Government obviously decided that the cost of providing a service that they believed to be second to none was money well spent. Perhaps we should take a lesson from them. There are not many lessons that I want to take from the Americans, but that may be one worth considering.

The truth is that we have been here before. There has been compulsory competitive tendering. There has been the privatisation of cleaning services, when we were told, “You’re not allowed to build into contracts clauses that prevent some people from bidding for them.” However, there were discussions between employers and trade unions after both sides found that the cowboy contractors were undercutting the service and not delivering what they were supposed to, and we ended up with an agreement between contractors and the trade union side that there would be a baseline that nobody would be allowed to go below.

We could have a similar agreement. We want protection for people, so they know where they are going and they have the strength of knowing that they have the security of this agreement behind them to make sure that things are right. Otherwise, the only people who will benefit will be those who want to take over the post offices: the international companies who want to come here and make money out of public services. It is a disgrace that the Liberal Democrats have given cover to the Tories to push this through.