Jim Dickson

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) on securing this debate and on making such an excellent speech. My constituents in Dartford welcome today’s debate. The performance of Royal Mail has been a running sore for many residents in Dartford and the surrounding towns and villages, and the growing delays are having a real-world impact on their lives. This is not about the hard work of staff at the Dartford delivery office. As we all know, Royal Mail has targets for local performance—in our case, it is for 87% of first-class mail to be delivered the next working day—that are palpably not being met. For the DA postcode that covers Dartford, the figure for 2025-26 was well below that at 74.6%. That is by no means the worst performance in the country but still a long way off hitting the target. Given that we know that the performance of Royal Mail in Dartford, as in most of the country, is well below that expected, I want to share one notable example of the impact. I recently received an email from the manager of the North Kent community diagnostic centre on East Hill, who has seen a significant increase in the number of patients not attending appointments, with many saying they are not receiving their appointment letters, notwithstanding the priority supposedly given to NHS correspondence. In one weekend earlier this month, almost half of the 90 patients booked in for appointments, with letters sent three weeks in advance, did not arrive. Those are people missing scans and critical tests vital for their journey to treatment and their pathway to better health. That is the real-world impact on people who are unable to receive the urgent treatment they need. What is the cause? Clearly, the changing structure of the postal and parcel market is causing problems for Royal Mail. Some of that is clearly about Ofcom’s lack of powers or ability to use them. Much of it is about the culture and management of Royal Mail. Whichever combination of those issues it is, we need the Government to address the problem and sort it out on behalf of my constituents.