Chris Ward

I am afraid it does. As my hon. Friend’s intervention shows, some constituents are now routinely missing letters—letters informing them of NHS appointments, legal affairs, fines and so on. One even contacted me on Saturday to say that he had only just received his Labour party conference pass, some four weeks late. Members might think that a blessing in disguise and that we should be praising Royal Mail, but he was not too pleased. We are now in a cycle of despair with Royal Mail, where constituents report unacceptable delays all the time and MPs from across the House come here to raise them. Successive Governments will say how terrible it all is and demand that Ofcom acts and Royal Mail improves, but Ofcom does not have the powers it needs and keeps fining Royal Mail for failure, despite the fact that Royal Mail cannot make a profit anyway. Royal Mail has no chance of hitting its legally mandated targets and no hope of competing on a level playing field, because operators in the same sector simply do not have the same regulatory or employment standards that we ask of Royal Mail. The result is rising anger on all sides, a loss of faith in our national delivery service and, frankly, a belief that we cannot even get the post to run on time in this country. I know that the Minister cares deeply about the issue and is working hard on it, so I urge her to break that cycle: look at what more we can do in Parliament to level the playing field for Royal Mail, empower the regulator more, and give Royal Mail staff the opportunity they need to improve and modernise the service. If we do that in this Parliament—there is a majority for it and cross-party support—then we can finally get our national postal service back on track and serving our constituents as it should be.