Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
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Postal Services Bill
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Laird
My Lords, I have two amendments in this grouping. I propose, with the permission of your Lordships, to refer first to Amendment 24L. The purpose of this amendment is simple; by delaying the ability of Ofcom to review the universal postal service, the current minimum requirements of the universal postal service will be protected for six years.
It is not my intention to go over a lot of the information so excellently put on the record today by the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, so I shall try to be brief. The universal postal service is a part of life for small businesses, rural communities, pensioners and others who value the six days a week, one price goes anywhere service.
As noble Lords have already said, the universal postal service and the post office network are part of our nation’s infrastructure and must be protected following the privatisation of Royal Mail. By moving this amendment, I wish to ensure that the current levels of service we enjoy are maintained for six years. The British public do not want to see their service watered down. I believe that guaranteeing the service for six years, while not ideal, offers sufficient compromise for the Government to accept without discouraging any potential new provider of the postal service.
Let us be under no illusions; our postal service is a national treasure. While the financial difficulties it has faced in recent years have led to a need for significant investment from the private sector, this should not be at a cost to the public, as is often the case with privatisation. If this House allows the universal service to be unprotected, the most vulnerable in our society will see increased prices and reduced services. This is not acceptable.
With your Lordships’ permission, I turn to Amendment 24M. I believe that this amendment, and others like it, reflects deeper concerns about the impact that the privatisation of Royal Mail will have on services in our communities, particularly in rural areas. Noble Lords have set out in Committee a number of worries that they have about the lack of commitment from the Government to use this Bill to ensure that postal services are continued at a level that users currently enjoy. There is also a worry about the effect that this privatisation will have on the network of post offices, which are so essential to rural communities across the United Kingdom.
I am instinctively nervous about this privatisation. I am not against privatisation per se but I believe that in this case the test of whether a transfer of ownership is successful is if those who need the service most see it improve. So far more questions have been asked than answered about the long-term future of postal services in rural areas, which in reality are never going to be anything other than a cash drain on Royal Mail. These concerns have been rejected by the Minister, who prefers to hand over responsibility for the maintenance of the universal postal service obligation to a regulator, whose remit is to promote competition to ensure that it reflects the reasonable needs of users.
This amendment aims to slow down any attempt by the regulator to denude the service that users in rural areas enjoy. As the noble Viscount has already pointed out, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have similar characteristics in that the majority of their populations live in towns and cities and there is a substantial land mass that is sparsely populated. I ask the Minister of the day to report to Parliament on the impact of any review of the universal postal service on those areas to ensure that the people who rely on the postal service are not the first to suffer in the new age of Royal Mail commercialisation. That is why I have tabled these amendments.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, in responding to the last two groups of amendments, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, said that the Government would consider strengthening the protection for the maintenance of the current universal service. We welcome that, and thank him. This group of amendments, as we have just heard, contains a number of rather interesting suggestions for how the Government might go about that.
Clause 33(5) would permit the Secretary of State to amend the minimum requirements of the universal postal service provided for in Clause 30, which, as we are well aware, provides a mail service six days a week at affordable, uniform prices throughout the United Kingdom. Under Clause 33(7)(a), such an order would be subject to an affirmative resolution procedure. Amendment 24LZA would delete Clause 33(5) in its current guise and ensure that the European Communities Act 1972, which would otherwise permit the Secretary of State to alter the minimum requirements for the universal service through the negative resolution procedure, cannot be used to reduce the universal service.
The Government have stated that the protection of the universal service is at the centre of the Bill and in particular underpins the privatisation proposed for Royal Mail. On Second Reading in this House, the Minister emphasised this, saying:
“The purpose of the Bill is to secure the future of the universal service. The Government are committed to the existing service—six days a week collection and delivery of letters, at uniform and affordable prices, for all the United Kingdom's 28 million addresses. This is at the heart of our legislation. We have no intention of downgrading the minimum requirements of the universal service”.
She continued:
“Crucially, this Bill gives both Houses of Parliament a say in whether the universal service can be amended in the future”.—[Official Report, 16/2/11; col. 776-77.]
Our concern is that although the Government say that they have no intention of downgrading the minimum requirements of the universal service and, indeed, have repeated that intention today, the Bill brings in a procedure for the amendment of the universal service not previously contemplated in legislation. This seems to be a bit of a problem, which we should address. Our amendment seeks to ensure that any amendment of the minimum universal service requirements can take place only as a result of primary legislation and not through an order brought in by the Secretary of State.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee expressed concern at the way in which Clause 33(5) contains a significant power that would allow the Secretary of State to alter the minimum requirements for a universal postal service set out in Clause 30. It is worth quoting a little more of this passage in full:
“Clause 29(1) requires OFCOM by order (subject to no Parliamentary procedure) to set out the services which a universal postal service should provide. Clause 29(2) requires the service to include, as a minimum, the services set out in clause 30”.
We have touched on that before. It continues:
“The order by OFCOM cannot alter the minimum requirements”.
That is a very important safeguard. The committee then says that,
“clause 33 provides a power for OFCOM to review the extent to which the minimum requirements reflect the needs of users of postal services. If OFCOM carry out a review (and they may be directed by the Secretary of State to do so) the Secretary of State may then, by order subject to affirmative procedure, amend clause 30. The Secretary of State is not constrained necessarily to follow any conclusions of the review”.
The committee makes no recommendation on Clause 33(5), but draws it to the attention of the House as a significant power that would allow the Secretary of State to alter the minimum requirements for the universal postal service set out in Clause 30. We will come on to some elements of this in later amendments, but I want to pick out a particular aspect.
“( ) OFCOM must designate a postal operator as universal service provider.”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I shall speak also to Amendment 24AHA. All the amendments in this group have a common theme. Amendment 24NZA seeks to maintain the integrity of the universal service obligation by maintaining one universal service provider. Amendment 24AHA provides that consumer protection conditions should apply not just to the UPS at the discretion of Ofcom but to all postal operators as is appropriate to the postal service that each provides.
There are several points where the Bill provides for more than one universal service provider. One example is where Ofcom makes a procurement determination under Clause 43 and decides to hand the provision to another operator. We do not know how rare an occasion that might be, although we hope that it would not be regular. The second is where the USP has been taken into administration under Part 4. We hope that this will not happen but, again, we do not know whether it will occur. Our basic contention is that the universal service should be delivered by one provider and that the only provider capable of delivering this is Royal Mail.
The provision of a daily collection and delivery service covering 28.4 million addresses in the UK requires a very large capital infrastructure and a large and skilful workforce. Because it constantly deploys such an array of capital and workers, Royal Mail is able to sustain an extraordinary turnover of mail. In the first half of 2010-11, the average daily mailbag contained around 68 million letters, packets and parcels. In 2009-10, Royal Mail carried 6.3 billion items of USO mail, 6.4 billion items of downstream access mail, and around 18.7 billion items in total.
No other company has ever delivered such a service in the United Kingdom and it is our view that no other company could do it going forward. However, surely the danger is that some companies think that they can provide parts of a universal service in certain geographically restricted areas. These areas are likely to be highly urbanised and, as was explained in our earlier debates, potentially very profitable for the provider. Therefore, we could envisage a competitor to Royal Mail offering to be a universal service provider for a city such as Birmingham. However, we could also envisage a situation where that competitor could not offer an alternative to the rural areas in the West Midlands.
Should that happen, there would be some huge problems. First, the areas surrounding Birmingham would have to continue to be serviced by Royal Mail. This would inevitably be loss-making, and Royal Mail would either have to bear the costs or increase stamp prices to compensate.
Secondly, the Birmingham provider would require a much more comprehensive access arrangement to Royal Mail’s network than exists under current downstream access arrangements. Not only would this create the basis for large-scale friction between the two networks but it would almost certainly create new costs, as the interaction between the two networks would have to be supervised.
Thirdly, there is no evidence in the EU of any other country currently operating with more than one USO provider. In Germany, at the moment there is no designated USP at all and it is all left to the market. Deutsche Post, however, is the effective provider, offering services six days a week nationwide and benefiting, by the way, from VAT exemptions in order to do this. The regulator in Germany has the power to arrange for the USP to be provided through public procurement if the market does not deliver a universal service but, as the market in the form of Deutsche Post is delivering a universal service, this has not happened to date. In the Netherlands, TNT can apply for a partial repeal of its designation as the USP, which perhaps could allow more than one USP to be designated but, again, that is not taking place.
It is noticeable in the legislation that there are two options under which we could see more than one USO provider in the UK. The first is a possible case of bankruptcy of Royal Mail and an interim administrative regime that would follow from that. The second is the case of the regulator making a procurement determination. On the first point, there has been no serious study of Royal Mail which suggests that its delivery of the universal service obligation has been malfunctioning to date; indeed, some earlier speakers have praised its operations, and I agree with that. Perhaps this lack of academic study is just an oversight of generations of academics and economists. Perhaps it is a tribute to the excellent staff and management of Royal Mail. Or perhaps it is really an acknowledgement that there is great effectiveness in the manner in which the USO has existed in Royal Mail—and, after all, if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
The second case in which more than one USO provider is provided for in the Bill is where Ofcom decides to allow for such a development by making a procurement determination. That is a power and not an instruction. We would argue that there is no reason why Ofcom should engage in such a move. We are all worried that there will be pressure from Royal Mail's competitors to secure such a procurement determination. That is why we think that, rather than experiment with the USO, it would be wise of the Government to secure its future without a gamble. The USO is a very complex operation to maintain, and ill-thought out ambitions are no alternative to the present provision.
On Amendment 24ABA, Clause 43 deals with how the universal service should be dealt with should Ofcom find that it constitutes a financial burden on Royal Mail. If it is found to be a burden, Ofcom has three options open to it. First, it can undertake a review of the minimum requirements of the universal service under Section 33; secondly, it can require that contributions be made from other postal operators towards the maintenance of the USO; or, thirdly, it can make a procurement determination, allowing part or all of the USO to be provided by a company other than Royal Mail. This amendment requires that a minimum of three years’ notice be given before any other operator can begin to provide postal services required under a universal service obligation.
As I have just argued, there are serious concerns about the potential impact of breaking up the USO through a procurement determination. It is questionable whether a multiple-provider USO could guarantee consistent levels of service across the country. We do not know what it might mean for the financing of the USO if the more profitable and easier-to-complete parts of the service go to competitors and Royal Mail is left servicing the more expensive, hard-to-deliver-to parts of the country. In a time of great change and economic flux, Royal Mail and the postal industry desperately need stability. Royal Mail is in the middle of a major programme of modernisation, including more than £2 billion of investment. That process, combined with an unloved regulatory regime, means that the company is facing a very restrictive financial position. Further major upheaval through the potential loss of the USO threatens the viability of such a programme. Any change to the USO provider must surely not come before Royal Mail has completed its modernisation and is financially secure. Moreover, the loss of any part of the universal service via procurement determination would have a major impact on Royal Mail’s business model and the viability of the business.
Royal Mail successfully delivers mail across the UK at an affordable, uniform tariff by taking advantage of the considerable economies of scale that it is able to access. The business must be given sufficient notice of any change if it is to be able to plan effectively and to continue to provide the service that we expect of it. A procurement determination is a very real possibility and inquiry into whether the universal service is a financial burden on Royal Mail would very likely find that it is a burden. For example, in evidence to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, Tim Brown, the chief executive of Postcomm, stated that, a number of years ago,
“Royal Mail lost about £350 million on the universal service products”.
The postal industry has suffered from a lack of stability in recent years. The potential break-up of the universal service would exacerbate the problem. The most important element in the future of the postal services in the UK is the successful investment programme and the modernisation of Royal Mail. Long-term investment in postal infrastructure should not be compromised in order to make short-term savings via what would essentially be the franchising of elements of a profitable universal service. I beg to move.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, Amendment 24X suggests that the proposed period for the review of the universal service provider by Ofcom be extended from three years to four years. The Bill gives Ofcom a series of different powers to review the financial burden and how it is to be calculated through various recommendations. It has a lot to consider in the review and it is vital that the matters are considered in the correct manner. Ofcom must look at and assess the cost of the service provided both to the generator and to the consumer. We need to make sure that that is examined correctly to ensure that further losses are not made by Royal Mail. In view of the diversity and depth that are needed for the review to ensure the success of the universal service provided, why not allow an extra year for the evidence to be collected and presented? We need a comprehensive review that gives detailed examination to ensure that all aspects of the universal service provider are examined and given consideration. An extra year would ensure that all aspects were considered in such a way. I maintain that it is quite clear that more time is needed for the review of the universal service provider by Ofcom.
Baroness Wilcox
I apologise. Scrap that. How about Amendment 24NZA? This amendment is tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and is concerned with removing the ability to designate, in extremely limited circumstances, more than one company as a universal service provider. The intention of Clause 34 is to give Ofcom the power to designate more than one universal service provider in two specific circumstances only in order to ensure the provision of the universal service. As with other elements of the Bill, Clause 34 has been drafted to ensure that the Bill is future-proofed. It enables the regulatory regime to adapt when it needs to in order to ensure the continued and long-term provision of the universal service. The measures that we are taking are designed to put Royal Mail on a sustainable footing so that it can continue to provide the universal service that we all value so highly. However, it makes sense to future-proof the legislation in this way to ensure that the universal service could continue to be provided in two specific and extreme circumstances.
Clause 34 will allow Ofcom to designate more than one provider in only two specific cases. The first case is where providing the universal service is found to represent an unfair financial burden on the universal service provider. The Secretary of State agreed with Ofcom’s advice that the best way of addressing that burden was through a procurement exercise provided for by Clause 43. This would assess whether another company could provide the relevant part of the universal service with less of a burden. In that event, that company could be designated the universal service provider for that part of the universal service.
The second circumstance is where Royal Mail has become insolvent and has entered special administration. Where a postal administration order has been made under Part 4 and it is not possible to rescue Royal Mail as a going concern, some of its activities could be transferred to another company. Ofcom could then designate that company as a universal service provider as well in order to secure the universal service.
As I said, the full package of measures in this Bill is designed to secure the future of Royal Mail and the universal service and therefore to ensure that we do not end up in either of these scenarios. Both the procurement process and the special administration provisions are backstops to be used only—I repeat, only—if the future of the universal service is at risk. However, as I mentioned, having the ability to make multiple designations in these specific cases is a sensible and pragmatic safeguard.
It is also important to make it clear that having more than one designated universal service provider in no way provides for or permits a varying level of minimum service across the country. Provisions elsewhere in Part 3 have the effect of guaranteeing that the minimum requirements of the universal service must remain uniform. Given these assurances, I hope that noble Lords who tabled these amendments will feel able not to press them.
Amendment 24AHA, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, relates to the power that Ofcom has under Clause 49 to impose a consumer protection condition on either,
“every postal operator, or … every postal operator of a specified description”.
The amendment would replace these categories with a single category that allows for the imposition of consumer protection on,
“every operator appropriate to the postal service each provides”.
The intention of this amendment may be to ensure that regulation can be applied with greater precision or to ensure that all circumstances are captured by regulation and that none falls through a perceived loophole. However, I hope that I can reassure noble Lords that it is unnecessary and has the potential to create confusion for the regulator and postal operators.
Giving Ofcom the power to describe separate categories of operator enables it to direct the consumer protection conditions very precisely. This follows the model in Section 52 of the Communications Act in relation to Ofcom’s functions in other regulated sectors. This approach is consistent with other parts of the Bill and allows for the clear and effective targeting of regulation to where it is required. I can therefore assure noble Lords that there are no loopholes.
I do not believe that this amendment would help Ofcom to regulate, nor would it offer any greater protection to consumers than is already provided for by Clause 49. However, it might leave the regulatory system open to challenge and confusion, which I believe all involved will wish to avoid. With these reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, will feel free to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for her full reply. It was good of her to take the time to go through the detail we have raised because some of these are very technical points. Obviously we will need time to read through what she has said because she covered a lot of ground. I have not been keeping score, but my sense is that rather a lot of concessions were emerging in the previous two or three groups, which we are pleased about. We seek no vainglorious victory on this, but simply to improve the legislation, which is always the role of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition in these matters. However, I am pleased that we are beginning to see a degree of discussion and debate around the issues that is not on the lines of “We have made the legislation and we will keep it”. We look forward to seeing what the Minister brings forward on Report.
Most of what has been said in this debate and in the debates on the two previous groups has really been about the type of regulation that must apply to the universal service provision and to the universal service obligation within that. There is bound to be tension between economic regulation on the one hand, which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, spoke to very fully, and the more social regulation which this side of the Committee wishes to see strengthened in order to ensure that the citizenship approach to the service is preserved. As many noble Lords have said, this is in a sense a fault-line across all the regulation that applies to former public utilities. I do not think that anyone has got it right yet and that there are going to be tensions. You cannot have at the same time the best possible public provision and the most profit-generating and economically appropriate way of doing these things because the two are in conflict. Profit will often—not always, but often—drive out the best. We have to live with that, and as the Minister said, we have to find a judgment that will work not only now but in the long term.
Although noble Lords who have spoken in the debate come from different places, we are all trying to seek one thing, which is that in times of change there will be some stability in the processes we are engaging with in this Bill. I felt that the Minister did respond in a way that gives us some assurance that on Report we will be able to see that built into the Bill. She also tried to explain why the Bill spends a lot of time future-proofing the arrangements. This may be simply because the advice she is getting from her civil servants is that, having gone through this in 2009, having walked up the aisle towards the altar and having been jilted at that point, they are experienced in these issues and therefore able to work towards producing what could be a divorce-proof marriage going forward. Perhaps there is a pre-nup situation here that we should be thinking about and using in other places, or perhaps not.
Having said that, the last part of the Minister’s speech stressed that future-proofing does not necessarily open loopholes, but we feel a little sceptical about that. We would like to look at it in some detail and I suspect that it will form one of our debates on Report. However, given what the Minister has said and the assurances we have received, which are extremely welcome, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for introducing these amendments. We on this side have no objection to them. They carry forward sensible recommendations from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee which we support in relation to these amendments and the subsequent amendment to the Government of Wales Act.
“( ) the rescue as a going concern of the company subject to the order,”
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
The amendment introduces an additional objective for the postal administration so that the main aim should be to rescue as a going concern the company that is subject to that order. This means that, instead of staying neutral as to whether the current universal service provider should be allowed to fail and should be replaced by an alternative or whether the company should be saved, the postal administrator would have a primary duty to seek to save the company.
When this issue was raised in the House of Commons Public Bill Committee, Mr Ed Davey said:
“We hope that we never find ourselves in either of those scenarios, and we do not expect that we will. Both procurement determination and the special administration provisions are genuine backstops, only to be used if the future of the universal service is at risk”.—[Official Report, 7/12/10; Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, col. 602.]
While it is reassuring to read what the Minister said and that backstops will exist, it is essential that the Bill properly reflects this intention.
Transferring all or part of the universal service provider to another company, should it find itself in financial difficulty and subject to a postal administration order, would be hugely disruptive to customers, to service provision, to the company and to its staff. While it may not always be possible to support the company and help it become a going concern, there should surely be a presumption that this is the first and least disruptive course of action to be pursued. If this is not possible, the option to pursue a relevant transfer of course remains.
Royal Mail operates on a huge scale. While the business is modernising successfully, should it find itself in financial difficulty, this would likely be attributable to significant market changes and potentially an unsympathetic regulatory regime which exacerbated the problem rather than supported the company as a universal service provider. Therefore, we propose a further amendment, Amendment 25E, to ensure that the postal administrator takes into account the interests of employees of the company. Should the business go into administration, it is hard to see that passing all or some of the business to an alternative mail operator would be good for the employees. It would clearly, where possible, be preferable to re-establish the business as a going concern, and that is why we make these proposals.
Amendment 26A refers to the regulatory powers exercisable during postal administration. We note that Clause 80 creates a huge power, including in Clause 80(5), which says:
“The Secretary of State may by order amend section 30”.
The regulatory regime—in particular, access pricing—has been one of the most contentious areas of regulation since the introduction of competition into the United Kingdom. Indeed, the updated Hooper review of 2010 recommended the introduction of a new access regime to ensure the right balance between competition and the financial sustainability of the universal service.
It is rare for regulators to be loved and it is clear that Postcomm did not get the balance right. Among the outcomes of its tenure is the fact that Royal Mail’s competitors now have more than 60 per cent of the pre-sorted, “upstream”, bulk mail market, the most profitable business sector of the letters market. So we can certainly see how regulation can go wrong.
Unless the right balance is struck in pricing, there are likely to be further reductions in the universal service, at great cost to the public. The amendment would restrict the Secretary of State's hand so that an order to amend Section 30 may not do so in way which reduced the extent of the minimum requirements of the universal postal service. We hope that the Government will see this is a reasonable provision and support it.
Amendment 25F deals with postal transfer schemes and stems from the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of this House, which invited the House to consider whether the Secretary of State’s approval, so far as it relates to the exercise of power in paragraph 9 of Schedule 11, should be subject to the negative procedure. Schedule 11 contains provisions for transfer schemes to achieve the objective of a postal administration. New paragraph 9(4), proposed by the amendment, would set out the conditions for approval and modification of a postal transfer scheme by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has to have regard to the public interest and must consult Ofcom prior to any modification of the scheme, but there is no requirement to consult Parliament. The amendment would therefore strengthen oversight and accountability for the Secretary of State’s approval or modification of postal transfer schemes. As the Bill stands, the Secretary of State has complete discretion to approve or modify a postal transfer order without any reference back to Parliament. The amendment would make such a decision subject to the negative resolution procedure as recommended by the committee. I beg to move.
Lord Christopher
These amendments certainly deserve support. One of the problems with writing the law is that you do not necessarily relate it to what is going on in the global economy. As I have said before, one should not rule out the prospect that whoever buys Royal Mail may get into difficulties and present you with considerable problems.
There are two examples at the moment, one of which is certainly ongoing and the other is, apparently, temporarily resolved. Not many people know that all the fire engines in London are owned by a company called AssetCo, which recently got into significant financial difficulties. I am told that it will be all right on the night but I have never seen anything to give me assurances about that. It certainly begs a question in my mind as to what would have happened if AssetCo had gone into administration or whatever. The other case, which is certainly continuing, concerns Southern Cross, one of the largest care home companies in Britain, with 31,000 residents in 750 homes. As I understand it, it is owned to a substantial degree by a company in the Middle East. I am not sure what would happen if the worst came to the worst in respect of these. It is therefore appropriate for the Government to place within the Bill sufficient provision to ensure not only that the service continues but that the staff are looked after and their future provided for. I can see no reason why these amendments should not be accepted.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister very much for his comments. He came up to us at the end of day three of the Committee stage, with a more mournful expression than he sometimes has on his face, saying that we had cheated him of his moment of glory because we had withdrawn our amendment at quite short notice. It was the only amendment that he was down to speak to that day, and we took it away from him. Now here he is, irresistibly back in the Box, popping up all the time. So it does come back; it goes in rounds.
Quite a lot of what we have talked about today are what could be described as mop-up provisions and backstops—things that are very unlikely to occur. The Minister argued that, as a result, we did not really need to put them in the Bill, because they were so unlikely that it would be a waste of our time to spend our precious moments on them. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book that I am sure all noble Lords have read, or listened to the programmes, there is a vehicle driven by a thing called the improbability drive, which has the result of making the space travellers turn up in the least likely situation that can be imagined at the time of their arriving. In a situation where they are being threatened by giants and attacked from all sides, they think of something completely unlikely and are immediately transported there. I simply say this because sometimes the impossible and the improbable does happen; we should not be deluded into thinking that it is so remote that we should not have provisions for it. That was what inspired us to put forward these proposals, some of which the Minister looked at sympathetically and some of which he did not.
It is important to have contingency provisions, and we are not arguing against that, but if we are going to do that we should be consistent. I hope that on reflection the Minister might accept that there were one or two points in what we said that might be worthy of a little bit more consideration. The principle on which we have been working is that if the aim is continuity, the going-concern process would be the least disruptive. That is why our amendments are framed as they are. I do not think that anything the Minister said is against what we are trying to achieve. My sense is that the whole process of going into administration would be such a major issue that making sure that there was greater concern than currently expressed in the statute for going concern would be helpful. But we would not push that at this stage.
As we reach the end of our discussions here, I wanted to say that, particularly today but as mentioned on a number of occasions in Committee, we have been a little unkind about Postcomm. We had a quotation from the noble Viscount that expressed in its own terms what it felt about itself. Even so, I am sure that the people at Postcomm have done what they could with possibly difficult ammunition to achieve what Parliament wanted them to do, and no personal criticism should be implied by what we or anybody else has said. On the other hand, the Minister kindly pointed out what the framework was for the new regulatory structure and expressed various options and hopes for that, but he did not say that Ofcom would not be an unsympathetic regulator in the same way as Postcomm was. We should bear that in mind. Having said that, we register our support for government Amendment 26.
Viscount Eccles
I intended no criticism of the individuals in Postcomm. We need to remember that regulators have only a limited amount of independence. We are inclined to talk as though they had a rather larger amount of independence than they actually have. When I look at the 2000 Act and think about the policy intentions behind it and the interpretation of them, I am not entirely surprised that Postcomm got itself into what it admits is a very difficult position. In any evaluation of how the present situation comes about, we have to remember—and that is exactly why I intervened on Schedule 9—that the Government of the day are in the final analysis the accountable body and Parliament with it, and the regulator is trying to carry out their wishes as it interprets them, with a certain amount of independence, but only a certain amount.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I must confess to never having read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I do have my own personal copy of the law of unintended consequences, which was passed many aeons go. I am happy to have further discussions with the noble Lord offline and we take on board his comments about Postcomm.