Royal Mail: Performance

David Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I want to ask everyone to go along with me for a few seconds by closing their eyes and visualising what the Royal Mail means to them. I picture the intrepid and hardy postie battling through snow, hills, rain and fog to ensure that our post is delivered. I picture the regular encounters with my postie wherever I have lived, and the kind, warm and friendly conversations we have had on the doorstep. Members will be happy to know that I am not going to go round the room asking what they visualised, but I imagine it was fairly similar to what I just described.

If there was one word to sum it all up, it would be “trust”—trust in the Royal Mail service and in an institution that has been a constant in British life for over 500 years. But we all know that that trust is waning. We feel it ourselves, and we hear it from our constituents, families and friends. The institution that so many of us have known, valued and trusted is changing, and something must be done by us in this House to stop the decline.

Before I turn to some of the issues and recommendations, I want to address the elephant in the room: Royal Mail is facing significant external pressures—we all know that. Modern technology such as email and online messaging has gradually sidelined traditional letter mail. Royal Mail itself often says that it used to be a letters organisation that delivered parcels, and now it is a parcels organisation that still delivers letters. This challenge is not unique to the United Kingdom. Our friends in Denmark, for example, saw their state postal operator, PostNord, deliver its final traditional letter in December 2025, ending more than 400 years of national letter delivery. From 2026 onwards, PostNord will focus solely on parcel delivery, after letter volumes fell by around 90% since 2000. We have faced a similar trend here in the UK.

For all of us here, that raises a broader question for our country: in this increasingly digital world, do we still value physical letters? My answer—I imagine it is the same as that of everyone else here today—is a resounding yes. There is something secure about a letter passing through trusted hands on its journey to its destination. As we all know, digital systems can fail or be hacked or manipulated. At a time of growing international uncertainty and environmental disruption, it is imperative that we maintain a strong and resilient network of physical mail delivery. In this new era, with Royal Mail now operating as a privately owned company with overseas ownership, we must work with the company to ensure that the universal service obligation is fit for purpose and, crucially—this is the key point—understood by the British public.

I am sure this will come up in many Members’ speeches, but the failure to meet delivery targets is a significant problem. Under the current USO, Royal Mail is required to deliver 93% of first-class letters the next working day and 98.5% of second-class letters within three working days.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. The timelines he is outlining have not been met, but that has coincided with a remarkable increase in the cost, particularly of first-class stamps, in the past five years. Does he agree that that is what drives the downward trend in the community’s trust in Royal Mail to deliver, and it needs to modernise and be more efficient?

[David Reed]

I have been looking at the numbers over the last few years, and Royal Mail has gone from significant losses of about £400 million three years ago, to £200 million losses, to making a £14 million profit last year. Because it is a privately owned company—we will come on to that—it has cut a lot of fat away, but it has also cut away muscle. Prices have increased, but the service has gone down. That is completely unacceptable, and it is probably the reason why we are all here today.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. A recent Gallup meta-analysis of about 1.8 million employers found that a meaningful increase in employees’ wellbeing leads on average to a 10% increase in productivity. In the light of that evidence, does he agree that it would be beneficial for the chief executive of Royal Mail to meet urgently with the Communication Workers Union to ensure that existing agreements are honoured and that the wellbeing of the workforce is genuinely prioritised?

[David Reed]

That is a serious point. We can talk about the Royal Mail service for our constituents, but the posties themselves are experiencing significant trouble at the moment. I am sure we have all heard about it in our inboxes recently. I will come to the issue later in my speech, and I am sure other Members will raise it, but I do agree with the hon. Member.

Royal Mail has failed to meet both those delivery targets for three consecutive years, and I have very little confidence in when a letter would arrive if I sent one today. If anyone could give me an insight into that, I would be very happy to hear it. Furthermore, Royal Mail offers economy access mail, a non-priority service for bulk non-time-critical letters that provides savings compared with first and second-class services. It typically delivers within four working days, often arriving alongside other post, but it can take up to five days or more. The fact that companies or organisations such as banks and the NHS use that product helps to explain the correspondence in our inboxes and the conversations we have in our constituencies, in which people ask why their post seems to disappear for weeks only to arrive all at once. That crucial point has not been communicated to the public in any meaningful way.

Set against the backdrop that competitors can offer reliable same-day or next-day parcel delivery, it is easy to understand why public confidence in Royal Mail has declined. At the same time, as the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) alluded to, our local posties are under significant pressure, working in an increasingly demanding environment in what I am sure can feel to them like a thankless job. Members will, like me, have received emails from local postal workers asking for support and for their concerns to be heard. It is right that we give them a voice in this conversation.

I have no doubt that Members will set out a wide range of issues that they and their constituents have experienced. I want to leave ample time for those contributions, but I do want to share one example of poor delivery service that I have experienced with Royal Mail. It reflects what many of my constituents have been dealing with for some time; it is clear that the problems are not isolated, but getting a straight answer about them is far harder than it should be. In my case, public money was involved: every Member knows that they can produce a non-partisan, publicly funded annual report to communicate with constituents, yet in parts of my constituency that report simply was not delivered. I pressed Royal Mail on what went wrong and did not receive a proper answer. I am still waiting to receive one. When public money is used, there should be clear accountability, but that has not happened here.

The same applies to those paying out of their own pockets. Our constituents are paying increasing amounts for stamps and not getting the service they have paid for. Again, there is little accountability. I am sure we will hear similar experiences from colleagues today. If Royal Mail cannot provide an answer to a Member of Parliament about delivery failures—I gave it ample opportunity to do so, on many occasions—it raises serious questions about what an ordinary member of the public can expect to experience when they ask the same questions.

This is the United Kingdom, not Russia or North Korea. When people pay for a service, they rightly expect it to be delivered well. When it is not, they expect, at the very least, a clear explanation and reassurance that the problem will not happen again.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I send my commiserations to the hon. Member’s constituents for not receiving his newsletter. On a wider point, I have visited the hard-working postal workers at the Garforth and Seacroft delivery offices in in my constituency and, as he says, they work hard and take pride in their work. Does he agree that the fault does not lie with them? There is a toxic culture at the top of Royal Mail. It needs to work with the Communication Workers Union and the Government to sort things out and protect the universal service obligation.

[David Reed]

At no point have I laid any blame at the posties’ feet; this is a structural issue. The point that I am making—this is important, because it is affects all of us in this House—is that Royal Mail underpins a large part of our democracy. At the time of elections, we all expect election leaflets to be delivered. That is part of our democracy; it is an obligation that Royal Mail has to us, and we expect it to be upheld. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that these are structural problems. I want Royal Mail to meet the union and have those conversations. It is no fault of the posties, who work very hard—as does everyone in this House.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. We have been talking about this issue for many months, and yet there has been no improvement. There are still delays. In one office in my constituency, there is a staffing shortage of 10, so there is a fundamental problem with motivation and staff feeling valued. Does he agree that this cannot go on? People are missing hospital appointments and essential mail. The Government need to fix it sooner rather than later.

[David Reed]

The hon. Lady makes a serious point, and I hope the Minister will address it. Bear in mind that Royal Mail is a private company. Many organisations choose the deferred mail option—the economy of economies option—because it is the cheapest. Why would they not? But because they choose that option, people do not receive their post for a long time. Many of my constituents are fairly elderly and rely on letters for NHS appointments or bank statements. If they receive nothing for two weeks and then get it all at once, they find that difficult to understand. It has not been communicated meaningfully, so Royal Mail needs to do that very quickly.

I was grateful to sit down with the Royal Mail leadership last week. We broke bread and discussed the serious challenges that the organisation faces, as well as the shortcomings in the services that many of our constituents experience. From my conversations, I believe there is a genuine desire to improve and an acknowledgement of the scale of the challenge ahead. However, given the volume of correspondence that flows into Members’ offices on this issue, it is vital that we convey our constituents’ strength of feeling. The message must be heard loud and clear: people are not satisfied, and they expect the service to improve quickly.

My message to Royal Mail is this. You are not just a company; you are a British national institution. Do not wait to be criticised in the press, complained about by customers across the country or summoned before Select Committees or the Secretary of State. Be proactive. Communicate clearly what you are doing to improve the service. Most importantly, begin an honest national conversation with the British public about what they can expect. Only then can trust begin to be rebuilt.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[David Reed]

I thank the Speaker’s Office for granting this important and timely debate. Most importantly, I thank right hon. and hon. Members for turning up this morning and making their constituent’s voices heard.

A number of wide-ranging issues have been brought forward. It has been a productive debate, and it is clear that we all want to retain a letter postal delivery service in the UK. However, as many Members have said, there are structural issues across the service, and we are going through a period of unprecedented technological change. Those changes are affecting people up and down the country. People are not receiving post such as NHS letters or important legal documents. These issues are affecting posties’ morale, they are affecting recruitment and retention, and they are affecting our democracy and the use of public money.

I thank the Minister for his speech and the points that he raised. I know that he and his team are working very hard with the Secretary of State to make Royal Mail accountable for a lot of those issues. I hope that the Business and Trade Committee can bring forward an inquiry to look into this issue in a granular way and report those findings back to the House. Looking across Westminster Hall today, it is clear that there is cross-party support to improve the situation, and this has been a productive conversation.

I say to Royal Mail, “We are getting on the job; we are going to improve this service, and we will enforce the USO and make sure that it is fit for purpose, because we all deserve this service that we are paying for.” I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to make sure that that happens.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.