Royal Mail and the Post Office

It is a pleasure, Mr. Weir, to serve under your chairmanship. It is also a pleasure to be here in Westminster Hall, in my usual place, discussing the Post Office. Members who are really keen can see me in action again in half an hour, in a debate on post office services in Stafford. However, it is always a pleasure to debate the wider issues, which is just as well, as we do so with some frequency. Today's debate is not quite like the usual post office debates, which are normally about the closures taking place in various parts of the country. Although some hon. Members took the opportunity this afternoon to mention the various local communities in their constituencies to be affected by closures, our debate has ranged more widely. It focused particularly on the Hooper review, which was set in train by the Government just before Christmas. The Hooper review arose from a manifesto commitment to undertake a review of the liberalised market during this Parliament. The timing is right, because something significant is happening in the mail market, but I do not think that it was referred to during the debate. Many Members spoke about the inequities of competition—about creaming off the more profitable parts of the mails market and about the evil nature of various companies that have come into the market. I have to tell them that those companies will be employing people in their constituencies, so I urge caution. However, that was the tone of the debate. No one mentioned the wider changes in the mails market. It would be complacent to say that the problems and challenges facing Royal Mail are due only to competition from other mail providers. There is competition, but it is hugely and significantly additional competition. It comes not from TNT or UK Mail, or the other operators at the access pricing end of the market, but from Google. That is not only my verdict; it is the verdict also of the chief executive of Royal Mail. The competition is the internet. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr. Brown) said, it is about the capacity to put services online. It is popular and is used by 1 million people a month.