Sir Ashley Fox

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman will find that if only 20% do not get next-day delivery, they are doing better than average; that does not speak highly of Royal Mail. Since I was elected last year, many of my constituents have told me that Royal Mail is not working as it should. After hearing those concerns first hand, I visited the sorting office in Bridgwater. In January, I ran a sample survey to ascertain the scale of the problem in my constituency. I ensured that each town and village was sampled, as I wanted to ensure that every area was covered. I had hundreds of responses. Only one in three got a delivery every day; 15% said they received post once a week or less frequently. In North Petherton, a constituent repeatedly received a bundle of letters delivered once a week, with no Royal Mail van spotted during the rest of the week. I had a report of no deliveries in Othery for more than a fortnight. My constituents had to travel to the sorting office in Bridgwater to collect post personally. In Cossington, a constituent’s weekend magazine subscription went missing for seven weeks in a row. No one area had a wholly good or wholly bad service. In Burnham-on-Sea, 48% of respondents gave Royal Mail 10 out of 10 for reliability of service, and 30% gave it zero out of 10. It seems that if a household is on a route with a good postie, it gets a great service, but if that route is not allocated, the letters sit in the rack for days on end with nothing happening. That is simply bad management.