Royal Mail: Performance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Dave Robertson
Main Page: Dave Robertson (Labour - Lichfield)Department Debates - View all Dave Robertson's debates with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Royal Mail: Performance
Dave Robertson Excerpts(1 day, 20 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sorcha Eastwood
The hon. Member makes an excellent suggestion, and he is quite right that it should not be on Members of this House to conduct such an extensive and ongoing campaign, almost fielding the complaints, as it were. I thank him for his leadership on that.
Speaking of leadership, I now turn to the leadership of Royal Mail. I want to be fair to Royal Mail—it deserves a right of reply—but I cannot say what its leadership thinks, because its leaders will not meet me. I wonder why.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
Following a meeting that I held with other Labour MPs and the head of Ofcom this week, the CEO of Royal Mail has invited a number of us to meet him off-site at 9.30 am on a random Wednesday in a couple of weeks’ time. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be much better for him to recognise that MPs from across the House and representing every single type of constituency have major concerns about Royal Mail, and that he needs to get himself into Parliament to listen to our questions directly, rather than suggesting that we traipse halfway across London to go into a room that he is in charge of on the basis of an agenda that is entirely his, rather than the one that our constituents want to discuss?
Sorcha Eastwood
Hear, hear—I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. In all honesty, I was reluctant today to say that Royal Mail was continuing not to engage with me; I felt that it was gaslighting and I was scared to mention that. It did manage to meet some of my colleagues in Northern Ireland at a local level, which I thought was generous. However, this matter is a reserved matter, it does sit within this House, and I think that right hon. and hon. Members, including Front Benchers, have gone an awfully long way to accommodate Royal Mail when, as the hon. Member has just said, its representatives should be presenting themselves in this House, not the other way around.
I want to turn now to the posties. I declare an interest: my stepdad was a postman many years ago in Sheffield, and he has permanent back problems as a result. I think many people underestimate just how difficult a job that was, at any time. But now? I dread to think about the stress and pressure that those posties are under.