Royal Mail: Performance

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a member of the CWU. I thank the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) for securing this important debate. Of course, Ms Lewell, it is a pleasure to serve in this debate with you in the Chair.

If we need an example of disaster and chaos in privatising a public asset, we need look no further than Royal Mail. The water industry is a close challenger, but we would have an even longer debate if we were to discuss the issues in Royal Mail versus the issues in the privatised water industry. We need to recognise that in 2013 Royal Mail was privatised by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition. It is important to know that the root cause of the issues is that privatisation, which has been a disaster. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) mentioned that one option we should consider is renationalising Royal Mail, and I support that.

In my constituency of Stockport, I conducted an online survey—I do not need to reiterate the points about doing postal surveys, which would probably never get there or come back in time—and 89% of respondents experienced a service disruption or delays to Royal Mail deliveries and were dissatisfied with Royal Mail. I do not want to repeat the points that have already been made, but I have also been to my local delivery office on numerous occasions and the postal men and women do a fantastic job. None of us in this House on a cross-party basis has issues with our postal workers. The issue is with the toxic management, how the business is run and the lack of governance. It could be argued that Royal Mail management is better off paying the fine than actually meeting its obligations to the public. Stamp prices keep going up, but letter deliveries keep getting worse. The hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) suggested that there should be no further rises in the price of stamps until Royal Mail can demonstrate on a long-term basis that it has consistently improved letter delivery standards.

Just this week a resident reported that a first-class letter took over 10 days to arrive and they received birthday cards a week late. Another constituent, from Ainsdale Grove in Reddish in my constituency, contacted me to say that their entire street received large batches of delayed post, with some letters dating back to 25 September. That is completely unacceptable. As I said, I am a proud member of the CWU, but I want to see Royal Mail management working with the CWU. There have been reports that almost 400 postal workers are leaving their jobs at Royal Mail—there must be an extremely toxic culture for that number of people to be leaving. I could say a lot more, but time is limited.