It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Ms Ali. I have spoken about Royal Mail quite a bit in this place—I have secured my own Westminster Hall debate about it, I have had meetings with HQ and arranged meetings for constituents
with HQ, and I have visited a delivery office—so I am not planning to make a long speech. However, each time I have spoken about Royal Mail, I have been clear that our individual postmen and women work very hard. There is a problem in the management of the service. I totally accept the changing nature of the service, with us sending far fewer letters now and sending many more parcels, and I also accept that there have been staffing issues.
Nevertheless, I started getting complaints about Royal Mail in August 2020, and I am afraid that I have had more complaints about it than about any other organisation. They are sometimes about things such as cards and magazine subscriptions not arriving for several weeks, but the much more serious ones are about bank cards, insurance renewals and hospital appointments that are missed. My constituents feel very much that they are being fobbed off by Royal Mail. One of them said, “I feel like they’re saying, ‘We’re trying, but it’s not our fault.’” That is the reason why I have spoken so much about Royal Mail in the House, held my own debate about it and so on. I have experienced the issues myself, living in Didcot. Recently, constituents such as Keith McEwen and Sarah Trinder have written to me about things that have taken three or three and a half weeks to arrive.
Specifically on the universal service obligation, I may be the only one in the room who is agnostic about whether there is a five-day or a six-day delivery. The reason is that my constituents are complaining of not getting things for two or three weeks. I asked my constituents on Facebook what they would think if Royal Mail moved from six-day to five-day delivery. I did not get a huge number of responses to that poll, but 72% said they would be quite happy with a five-day service if—this is what they kept saying in their comments—that service was reliable. If they actually got the five-day service, they would be relaxed about not having the Saturday service.
I totally hear what the Minister says about the six days, but I am personally agnostic about that. My constituents are most concerned about ensuring that delivery is reliable, however many days it happens on, that they get things in a timely fashion and that they do not miss serious things they should have taken part in or done, because that can sometimes have a financial or a health cost. However many days the Government agree should be delivered on, I would be grateful if the Minister could outline how we will drive up the reliability of the service, because we cannot keep seeing stamp price increases for a service that is not being delivered.
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