Royal Mail: Performance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Calum Miller
Main Page: Calum Miller (Liberal Democrat - Bicester and Woodstock)Department Debates - View all Calum Miller's debates with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Royal Mail: Performance
Calum Miller Excerpts(1 day, 23 hours ago)
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Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
The hon. Lady is giving a typically powerful and empathetic speech. Amid the deluge of letters failing to arrive in my constituency, one constituent was waiting 12 days for an important letter. They went to the sorting office and were told that it had not been delivered, along with another pile of mail, because the postie was on leave. That kind of management at the local level, never mind among the leadership of the organisation, shows me that there is not adequate support behind our postal workers. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need a reset in the culture, so that there is not this division between postal workers, many of whom have great ideas to improve the quality of service, and management, who seem to be pressing new reforms down on them without a real understanding of the challenges of the role?
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?