Royal Mail: Performance

Adam Dance Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members who have turned out today. In truth, any one of them could introduce this debate: we face the same issues, no matter where we are in the United Kingdom.

I want to start by recognising the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee and its Chair, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne). In May, the Committee concluded that the Royal Mail service was unacceptable and that Ofcom’s approach had failed to secure the improvement needed. It has kept up the pressure. Its Chair wrote to Ofcom again just yesterday, and I will draw on that letter. At Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister acknowledged the systemic and continued failings of Royal Mail.

In Lagan Valley, the post does not arrive reliably; it comes in batches. People tell me that they get no mail for two or three weeks, and then a whole month’s-worth arrives at once. A letter sent across Lisburn can take over a week to arrive. People tell me that there is no difference between first and second class any more; it just arrives when it arrives. I know that second-class mail can now be delivered every other day. That is fine, but it is still supposed to arrive within three working days. Waiting weeks is not an alternate-day service.

This is causing real harm. Northern Ireland has by far the worst health waiting lists in the UK. Because of postal delays, my constituents are missing MRI and CT scans. The mother of one of my constituents was taken off an orthopaedic waiting list because she never got the letter. These people are already waiting in pain, and when a letter fails to show up, the system blames them, and every missed appointment lengthens the queue for everybody.

This happens elsewhere, too. A constituent got her jury summons after the deadline passed, and she spent days terrified that she would be fined for something that was not her fault. Driving licences, benefit cheques, bank cards and insurance documents just go missing. People pay extra for special delivery but items still sit for days, marked “in office”. Important legal documents go missing or show up opened.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

The hon. Member is giving a great speech. One of my constituents has not received post for an entire month, despite expecting time-sensitive correspondence relating to the death of her partner, who sadly passed away earlier this year. That is totally unacceptable. Does the hon. Member agree that Ofcom needs to be pushing Royal Mail to speed up improvements to regulated delivery? Our residents have waited long enough.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I absolutely do. That is an extremely distressing and poignant example. In Northern Ireland, confidential mail matters. Local groups supporting vulnerable people tell me that they are deeply concerned about letters ending up at the wrong address. A letter in the wrong hands in Northern Ireland can put people in real danger.

Businesses are hurting too. In my constituency of Lagan Valley, we have a fantastic local business called the Pie Shop—it sells pies. It recently had a chance to bid for a contract that would see its products stocked in Harrods and whose commercial value it would be virtually impossible to estimate. But due to the Royal Mail delays, it missed the deadline to participate in the trial and it lost that—a huge blow to that small business. That will be replicated right across the UK.

The real-life impacts of this failing service have been mentioned. A woman recently wrote to me and said that a handwritten card marking the anniversary of her mother’s death took nine days to arrive. For her, that was not minor; it was another blow on a day that was already hard. A sympathy letter, a birthday note or a Christmas card: these are careful, deliberate actions that we make to say, “I care about you. You matter. I love you. You aren’t alone.” When the post fails, that is what goes missing.