Sorcha Eastwood

That is a real question that we must seriously investigate. I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members across the House would attest to wanting further robust mechanisms to challenge many of Ofcom’s other remits successfully. I wonder whether the Minister will commit today to consult on changing Ofcom’s powers. Finally, I turn to the bigger picture. As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members in the debate, this issue is about much more than just simply Royal Mail and letters. For the first time in its 500-year history, Royal Mail is owned by an overseas company—the highly profitable EP Group. The Government approved the takeover, but serious questions remain about our sovereignty. Royal Mail is a British institution. It delivers to every address in the UK for the same price, whether to a farm in Northern Ireland, a flat in Cardiff or a college in Scotland. It is as much critical infrastructure as any road or cable. When it was privatised in 2013, we were promised better service and investment. Instead, we have had six years of missed targets. A company unanswerable to its owners will always be tempted to favour its most profitable work. The universal service obligation is meant to guard against that. Fines have not been enough. Other countries subsidise their postal providers or bring them into public ownership, as Ofcom notes. I go further here than the Committee has, but I believe it is time to review Royal Mail’s ownership and governance, so that the universal service obligation is protected in the public interest. I ask the House: who do we want to be as a society? Do we want to be a country that can no longer promise that a card will reach a grieving daughter, or a hospital letter will reach a patient? Or do we want to be a country that treats the post as what it has always been—a promise to every address— and protects it? As I said earlier, this is about more than just letters. What are we as a country, if we can no longer rely upon a service that is nearly as old as time itself? Given current geopolitical instability, it would also be remiss of me not to put on the record the grave concerns that I have about critical national infrastructure being owned overseas, rather than in our own country. For my final requests, I am asking the Government for four things. First, will the Government consult on changing Ofcom’s powers, if service has not improved by the Committee’s 22 November deadline? Secondly, will the Government consider linking stamp prices to delivery performance, as Citizens Advice has proposed? Thirdly, what guarantees do we have for Christmas deliveries this year? Fourthly, and finally, will the Government review Royal Mail’s ownership model, to protect the universal service for the long term? The public hold up their end of the bargain: they buy the stamps, post letters in time and wait. The system is letting them down. My constituents want to trust the post again. The Government, Ofcom and Royal Mail all have the power to put that right, and this Christmas is the time to show it.