Royal Mail: Performance

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Absolutely; again, the hon. Member has got to the real nub of the issue. It almost feels as though it is handy and convenient for Royal Mail to pit worker against worker and person against person. By doing so, I think it is seeking to evade its responsibility and role in all of this, and we must not lose sight of that.

Royal Mail is rolling out a new delivery model by Christmas, apparently, which the Communication Workers Union reports is causing huge problems in hundreds of offices right across the country. Is it not better to fix what is broken before making it bigger? Why roll it out right before the busiest time of the year?

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. I recently visited a delivery office in Bradford that serves my Shipley constituents, to understand how the new delivery model will work. The management reassured me that it would solve much of the litany of complaints about the late and infrequent deliveries experienced by my constituents, along with those represented by many of the Members present. Does the hon. Lady agree that, if the new delivery model does not lead to more reliable postal services, we need to look at other options, including the renationalisation of Royal Mail?

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I absolutely agree. I may be pre-empting the conclusion of my remarks, but I think that is something we all now have to consider.

Royal Mail is more than simply a postal service. It is the red pillar box and the wee red van going up and down country lanes to our small family farm. It is more than just a letter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) for securing this debate. Like many colleagues from across the House, I have received a litany of complaints from constituents. I visited my local delivery office back in the summer with a massive dossier of those complaints. That was just at the beginning of the roll-out of the new delivery model known as DM26, which the management there reassured me would solve all my constituents’ postal delays. Unfortunately, I continue to receive testimonies from constituents about the impact of late deliveries. I will share a couple of the most impactful ones.

One constituent’s elderly parents live in Cottingley. The father is 82 and the mother has dementia at 79. They do not use a computer. They have missed three NHS appointments and incurred additional charges on mobile phones, and when their children tried to raise a complaint online, they found it very difficult. The second area is Crossflatts. A constituent there has had three hospital appointment letters delivered after the appointment date, and as we have heard from other Members, birthday cards have gone missing too.

None of us blames the posties. They do a fantastic job, but we need to make sure that they are working in an environment that supports their health and wellbeing. We can see that there is low morale and there are high rates of sickness absence, which I hope the Minister will address in her remarks. We must also not level down. There is a real problem with the wider gig economy, and I echo my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) in asking how the Minister will address bogus self-employment in the wider parcel delivery market so that Royal Mail and its workers have a chance.

I urge the Minister to really focus her remarks on the fact that Royal Mail is a failing company. It is in financial distress. We have a regulatory model with Ofcom that is clearly not working. The financial penalties are not working. Ofcom is almost at the limit of its powers to force Royal Mail management to get its act together and address these problems. We have changed the universal service obligation once. We have introduced this new delivery model, or at least Royal Mail is introducing this new delivery model. If we get to April next year and there is still a failure to meet that USO, will the Minister look at radical options, including the nationalisation of Royal Mail?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) for securing this important debate. She is clearly delivering for her constituents in a way that Royal Mail is not.

Royal Mail is clearly failing in its universal service obligation, and it is clear from comments across the House that there is universality in those failings. From my own casework, I came into this debate well aware of the widespread failures affecting our postal services and knowing that action is long overdue. After hearing the compelling story shared by Members from across the House, I believe it is undeniable that we cannot wait any longer, and that answers are well overdue.

It is only 65 days until Christmas. It is not quite time to put the tree up, but for service providers and logistics teams, it is right around the corner, and mailbags will surge. We all know that Christmas is one of the most demanding times of the year for the postal services, especially for our hard-working postmen and women. I too want to express my thanks to them. I do not think any of us are frustrated with our hard-working posties. There are failings with management. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) pointed out, all year round, posties are a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and sometimes they are the only person they will see or have social contact with.

[Anna Dixon]

In rural areas, posties are often already doing extremely long routes. Does the shadow Minister recognise that the new delivery model is breaking up some of the continuity that postal workers have with their communities and making some rural rounds less manageable for them?

[Bradley Thomas]

The hon. Member is correct. The current model is not working as it should, which is having social implications and, clearly, adversely affecting the service even further. It is crucial that that is addressed.

As we get close to the Christmas period, the busiest time of the year—as shoppers complete their final online orders and families send gifts and cards to loved ones, friends and family—the country needs confidence that postal services will deliver. If they can deliver, that is one worry ticked off the list at a busy time of year, but in recent years, many of us and our constituents have found that there is a certain elusiveness to the post all year round. My constituents have the recurring experience of receiving no post for two weeks, followed by a large bundle of outdated letters, with hospital appointments missed—we have heard many stories on that theme today—DVLA reminders overdue, credit cards reported lost in the mail, and even legal issues rumbling on because court summons and other documents are not received in time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Dearden]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his intervention. I will very shortly turn in more detail to my engagement with Royal Mail, and the expectations that I have put to it for how it should engage with us in this House with appropriate detail and information.

The consequences of delays can be especially significant when correspondence is important and time-sensitive, such as correspondence regarding hospital appointments, bills, legal documents, benefit correspondence or letters containing driving licences. I share the frustrations and concerns of hon. Members and their constituents. That is exactly why Royal Mail must do more to deliver a reliable service.

Before I reflect on my engagements with the chief executive and my correspondence with hon. Members in this Chamber and outside, I will turn to Ofcom. As the independent regulator for postal services, Ofcom is responsible for setting and enforcing Royal Mail’s service standards. I met Ofcom yesterday to share the feedback I received from hon. Members across the House ahead of this debate—I will also reflect on today’s contributions—and to discuss the wider postal sector. Ofcom has fined Royal Mail £37 million over three years for not meeting quality-of-service targets. Ofcom assured me and the Government that it continues to monitor Royal Mail service data closely and will take further regulatory action, where needed, to hold the company to account.

Ofcom is also investigating Royal Mail’s performance against quality-of-service targets in the last financial year. I know that several hon. Members, some of them in the Chamber, met Ofcom on Wednesday 14 October to raise their frustrations about the continued poor service from Royal Mail. Ofcom has shared the key themes from that discussion with me and my officials. I thank colleagues for taking the time last week. I have no doubt that Ofcom will have heard and understood the strength of feeling about the service that our constituents have experienced.

I will turn briefly to costs, particularly the cost of stamps, which lots of colleagues have mentioned. Last week, Ofcom launched a consultation on extending the current second-class letter price cap until 2028. Of course, every pound counts when people are still struggling with the cost of living crisis, yet they are not getting a reliable postal service. I hope that will be a key consideration, but I recognise that it is for Royal Mail, as an independent business, to set the price of stamps. Ofcom and I discussed that yesterday.

The regulator sponsorship charter, which the Government published in July, reaffirms our role in setting regulators’ strategic direction and holding them to account. We will continue to work closely with Ofcom on its approach to regulation and the outcomes it delivers for customers. We would pragmatically consider any future requests for additional powers where they are needed to support improved outcomes for customers and our constituents. We will actively hold Ofcom and other regulators to account, as appropriate.

[Anna Dixon]

In addition to meeting Ofcom, as the Minister mentioned, we also met the leadership of the CWU. It is clear that postal workers are coming forward with ideas about how the business could be reformed. I hope the Minister will assure us that she is urging Royal Mail’s leadership to sit down with the CWU to consider some of the more radical, long-term options for reforming our Royal Mail.

[Kate Dearden]

I will provide an update on our next steps, and our engagement with the unions and Royal Mail, very shortly. All hon. Members present agree that Royal Mail needs to step up and improve its performance. Colleagues reflected on the improvement plan published by Royal Mail to address the primary cause of service issues. It has committed to invest £500 million to increase its frontline resourcing and the availability of working hours for part-time employees. I reflect on the point about suitable sorting offices, using modern technology. We have secured legally binding commitments from the new owners for sufficient investment to ensure that the USO can be delivered.