Royal Mail

My Lords, in the three minutes left before I am advised this debate has to conclude, I want to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in what I consider to be an important and interesting debate. My colleagues on this side of the House will understand if I do not refer to their individual contributions, but simply say how grateful I am to them. I will be saying something about one of those speeches, though, if my time does not run out. I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, for the way he was able to put the case for the magazine publishers that I had to cut out of my original speech. That will be helpful for them, and will be helpful for me to go back to it when I read the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, is a great friend of the Post Office. I well remember the millionth packet she posted from her company, and the silver salver that was presented to staff at the time. It still resides on the windowsill of my old office—or the office I would have if I were still doing that job. I would like to go back to the days when we had 18 deliveries a week—even though they would stop when we went to the Arsenal on a Saturday afternoon when I had to deliver up Finchley Road, where the noble Baroness lives—and six collections a day, but those days have gone, and I accept the need for change. I found the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, of the social needs of our rural communities very moving. It set the scene for a number of other speakers. I will not list them all, but many speakers in this debate have mentioned this important issue. I am delighted that this House takes seriously the need to maintain the social fabric in communities. Politics aside, we have a system in this country we should be proud of, and we should do our best to maintain it. I was pleased to hear the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, the only other post office worker in this debate—the noble Lord, Lord Young, was a telecoms man. The words of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, are always wise, although they were not accepted as such when we were on the other side of the table trying to get an extra half per cent on our pay claims. I am sure the points he has raised have given food for thought. I shall mention just one person on this side of the House, and that is the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. I do not know whether it was offensive or I am being over-sensitive, but to describe Post Office managers in the past as not being competent, and then to pray in aid the change, is a bit unfair. No Post Office chief executive or chairman ever had the scope they have had since Allan Leighton came on the scene. No one else cut the deliveries down to one a day. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, mentioned that by the time you get the mail now, it is time to go home. And he talks about change. I was part of the working projects on automated letter-facing, mechanisation, and optical character recognition. Many things were developed by technicians in the Post Office research department that were foreseeing the future, and other countries have benefited from them. It would be unfair to draw any distinction about what happened in those days, because the money was not there to continue with that research. In conclusion, thanks again to everyone who has taken part in this debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers. Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.