Lord Clarke of Hampstead
Main Page: Lord Clarke of Hampstead (Labour - Life peer)Postal Services Bill
Lord Clarke of Hampstead Excerpts“( ) how the Secretary of State will ensure that the provision of universal postal services will be maintained following the disposal;( ) how much of the Royal Mail company’s modernisation budget—( ) has been spent, and( ) remains unspent,at the proposed time of transfer; and( ) what progress has been made towards existing modernisation goals by the proposed time of transfer.”
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
My Lords, I first declare the interest that I declared many times when my party was trying to push through the disposal of Royal Mail. I am a former postman, a former trade union official, a former trustee of the Post Office pension fund, and I have had a few jobs in the Post Office. I am sure that that declaration will suffice as we consider the Bill.
My amendment seeks to add new paragraphs to the part of the Bill that deals with the situation after the Secretary of State has made a decision on the disposal of shares in Royal Mail, and then makes a report to Parliament. My purpose is to require that any report that the Secretary of State may make on the disposal of shares includes the requirements listed in the amendment. It simply asks that in his report the Secretary of State recognises the need for clarity before Parliament is asked to agree to any of his proposals.
The first new paragraph calls for what should be a vital element in any proposal—that there should be a clear understanding of how the Secretary of State proposes to enshrine universal service provision in respect of the new legislation. We have just heard a little about that. The second new paragraph outlines that the necessary information be provided regarding the expenditure of Royal Mail’s modernisation budget and how much of the budget remains unspent at the time of the disposal of shares. Noble Lords who were here a couple of years ago will recall the repeated requests that I and others made for information on what was meant by “modernisation”, what the programme was, and what machines were being talked about. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State at that time did not answer any of those questions. The third new paragraph instructs the Secretary of State to report on how much progress has been made towards the existing goals at the time of the transfer.
Many people would agree that Royal Mail is part of our national infrastructure and cannot be looked at as just another company to be sold off on the Stock Exchange or otherwise. Such a view is shared by me. As the Bill progresses, I shall try very hard not to become too emotional. It hurts me deeply that we are contemplating the destruction of Royal Mail, and it saddens me to the point where I feel that I am witnessing an act of legislative vandalism. When the Minister spoke last week on the first day of the Committee she said:
“I have of course listened to what has been said, and it will of course go on the record. I know that there are Members of your Lordships’ House who would rather that Royal Mail was not sold at all, and I understand people who have been associated with Royal Mail for many years finding all discussions of this sort very difficult, especially having gone through all this a year ago with the previous Government—a Government of their own. Yet that Government, too, could not successfully find a way out”.—[Official Report, 8/3/11; col. 1549.]
I do not know whether the Minister had me in mind when she said that but she can certainly count me in as one of those who are very saddened at what is going on. I would rather Royal Mail was never sold off, and the alternatives should have been examined before rushing into what is happening today.
Before noble Lords opposite remind the House of the role played by the previous Government, perhaps I may say that I and a very few other noble Lords tried to point out the error of their ways at the time. I suppose that a redeeming feature of this Bill is that it is not a direct contradiction of a government manifesto commitment, as was the previous Bill under the Labour Government. It was like a dagger in my heart that the party for which I had worked for so many years proposed to sell off this valuable asset. I am sorry that that Bill ever saw the light of day, especially when my party had promised the British public that they would not make such a sale. I shall say no more on that at this stage.
I believe that this Bill is scant on information regarding the sale of Royal Mail. As the Secretary of State has only to report on his decision, Parliament would merely be noting the sale and would not be able to ensure that it was value for money or that it was in the appropriate format. Later amendments will deal with the need for a proper and thorough valuation of Royal Mail. There is a good argument for ensuring a stronger form of accountability to Parliament by the Secretary of State regarding the terms of the sale. This could be through a variety of methods, including further legislation, the super-affirmative resolution procedure, the affirmative resolution procedure and so on.
The Bill states that the Secretary of State needs only to lay before Parliament a report on the proposed disposal, but unfortunately the requirement to report comes into force only after a decision is made. This seems to close off the opportunity for Parliament to influence how the sale takes place. I hope that, when the Minister replies to this debate, the House will be told exactly what form the report will take. We should consider what the Minister for Postal Services said on the form of that report when he was challenged in the Public Bill Committee in another place. He said that,
“in clause 2, we are putting a requirement on ourselves to report back to Parliament. No doubt, when we debate clause 2, you will want us to do far more than that. I can just imagine the amendments that you will put forward”.
The clause states only that a report will be laid and not how it will be laid. At that time, the Minister was asked whether he intended just to pop it in the Vote Office. He would not be drawn but he did state that,
“there will be a Command Paper”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 11/11/10; cols. 126-27.]
A Command Paper, as this House well knows, can cover a multitude of sins. It is a document issued by the British Government and presented to Parliament. It encompasses a wide range of forms, including White Papers, Green Papers, treaties and reports from royal commissions and various government bodies. Therefore, the House is no further forward in understanding the Government’s intention to allow parliamentarians to arrive at an informed decision on the future of Royal Mail.
I am confident that the House will also agree that any decision to sell off part of such an historic and valued organisation as Royal Mail must, at a minimum, be subject to a vote by the people’s representatives on the value of the deal on the table. A Bill would provide the most certain way of ensuring that objective. I stress to the Minister and the House the importance of bringing before Parliament for approval any proposal to sell Royal Mail. As the Bill stands, the only duty of the Secretary of State after deciding to sell is to lay a Command Paper in the Vote Office. Surely we need a little more detail from the Government, as well as a larger commitment from them to report adequately to Parliament on this vital issue. The people of our nation, in poll after poll, overwhelmingly support the Post Office—that is how they see Royal Mail, whether we like the term or not. The public see the Post Office and Royal Mail as the same thing. They deserve better than the cavalier way in which their Government are proceeding.
Would it not be better to accept the need for clarity now rather than face criticism in the future that not enough consultation has taken place and that the proposals have been rushed through Parliament with indecent haste? I said that a few times about the previous Bill that we discussed. The previous Government broke their neck to try to get these things through. I hope we can learn that lesson and not rush this Bill through. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to ensure that Parliament is properly consulted on the decision to sell a part of the national institution that we all know as Royal Mail.
Baroness Wilcox
On maintaining the universal service, as I said, Ofcom will be watching like a hawk to make sure that there is a fair balance between Royal Mail and the consumers of the products that Royal Mail produces. Ofcom has had a good reputation in the past and we feel confident that in the future it will do its very best to make sure that all is fair.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
My Lords, I start by thanking all those who have taken part in what has been a useful exchange of views on a whole range of subjects. Two noble Lords considered that my earlier comments were more suited to a Second Reading debate. I carefully looked at the background to my amendment and tried to draw from my experience to explain how it would affect the clause in the Bill. If I have offended the noble Lords, Lord Razzall and Lord Skelmersdale, I can only apologise.
Lord Razzall
The noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, could never offend me.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
That is a bonus.
I will briefly try to answer some of the points. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, was the first person to speak in the debate. I recognise that he is a most important person to the people whom I worked with all my working life: he is a user of the Post Office and Royal Mail. Every decent Post Office worker—they are all decent—knows that we rely on customers for our livelihoods. I pay tribute to him because I know from one of my first exchanges some 11 or more years ago that he was in the goods-by-post business. I always respected anybody who did not give work to the cowboys who are trying to undermine the Post Office.
The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked how far people have got towards achieving the goals. I think that they have done pretty well. On the first goal, modernisation, there has been a terrific move. The previous Government could never answer questions about walk-sequencing machines, but we have seen those come in. We have seen changes in attendance patterns. There have been reductions in staff. It hurts when a member of staff loses a job. I would never have dreamt that the modernisation programme could have happened in so short a time as the past year or so.
Industrial relations have never been better in all the years that I have known the Post Office. There is a genuine desire to lift the Post Office and the Royal Mail in particular from the reputation that they were getting that they could not do their job. It is much easier now because there is only one delivery and you might get that in the afternoon. The rules have been changed, so there is bound to be some progress.
One thing that came out of the Hooper report, as has been said many times in previous debates, was the need for expertise in management. Everyone in the Committee will recognise the tremendous influence that Moya Greene has brought from running a big post office network in Canada and using that expertise to help us. Some of us were arguing two years ago that expertise could be found not necessarily in the board members of TNT, Deutsche Post or Federal Express. We found somebody worthy of being the chief executive and I pay tribute to her for the way in which she has welded together various different views.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hoyle for his support. He was one of the two or three of us who sat here night after night trying to get the previous Government to understand where they were going wrong. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked for clarity. That is really all that the amendments seek. What is the intent? Let us have some detail.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally, made an important point about the need for private capital. It has been required for more than 40 years. That is why in my maiden speech in this House I said that we needed access to funds so that we could have automatic letter facing machines and optical character recognition—things that we were desperately trying to get hold of but were stopped by political interference. The external finance limit was always there to prevent us from getting the money that was needed. She is right. This is urgent and it will not stop when this present programme is over. It must keep on going to be successful. I thank her for illustrating that point.
My noble friend Lord Brooke talked about the European Union, but the less I say about that the better. I have perhaps said too much before about the way in which the Government stampeded into liberalisation without thinking it through. They told the world that we would have a Post Office fit for the 21st century. That was Stephen Byers, but I will not abuse this House by going back. I say to my noble friend Lord Brooke that the sooner we start thinking about the British Post Office and the British Royal Mail, the better for all of us, instead of looking over our shoulders at what other people are doing.
The noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, also talked about clarity and the need to be clear about what we mean when we talk about the universal postal service.
The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, talked about the inappropriate regulator and the 40-odd private people who are competing for Post Office work. I am surprised that there are not 140 when they have been subsidised by Royal Mail all these years. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, mentioned the regulator, although I did not introduce it in this sense. The new regulator must start thinking about this issue. The question is not whether this is about Hampstead or Norwood Green. There are parts of Hampstead where you could talk about the final mile, such as North End or Spaniard’s End. You could talk about the places where it takes a lot of time to deliver, such as the 140 flats in South End Close with 1,400 steps to climb. This was not discussed in the Second Reading debate, but as it has been introduced here I have a chance to respond. Thank you very much. As for Tony Young—I mean my noble friend Lord Young—it is wonderful to be on the same side as my own Front Bench. I am pleased to find that he is giving support for these measures.
I am sure that I am leaving out a lot of people, but I address my final remarks to the Minister. I thank her sincerely for her kind words. I know that every endeavour will be made to find accommodation as we go through this Bill. I recognise that she has a bit of a job on her hands, as there are so many competing interests out there, as well as in here. I just wanted to say thank you very much, because it has been a good debate. I shall reflect, as the Minister asked me to do, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.