Royal Mail and the Post Office

I did not intend to make a contribution, so I shall keep what I am about to say as brief as possible. I thank the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) for securing the debate. As the Minister knows, this issue is just not going to go away, whether we are talking about the mail delivery service or our network of post offices. The current situation gives no one any pleasure. In that respect, I am looking to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who sat in a room with me on more than one occasion as we tried to tell the first regulator that the liberalisation of the market would be a disaster. Everyone hates to say, ““Well, we told you so.”” What has happened in the past couple of years is what the regulator anticipated might happen over five or seven years, but sometimes people will not take a telling. I must have a slight go at our Liberal Democrat colleagues—