Royal Mail: Performance Debate
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John Slinger
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Royal Mail: Performance
John Slinger Excerpts(1 day, 19 hours ago)
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Sorcha Eastwood
I think the hon. Lady has perfectly anticipated the next paragraph of my speech. She is absolutely right that such responses make an already bad situation even worse. If we knew that our business or organisation was already under fire—for the life of me, I cannot understand why Royal Mail simply has not sought to improve how it responds to complaints.
Indeed, some of my constituents have told me what happens whenever they try to complain. The online complaints form has gone. As already suggested by the hon. Lady, the phoneline is a generic national number and it can take up to an hour to get through. If someone does get through, they are given a complaint number and promised a reply within three days, but weeks later they are still waiting for an answer. They use the email address provided, diligently setting out the issue once more, and eventually get a reply saying that the address is no longer monitored. A complaints system that tells you nobody is listening is not a complaints system.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Lady for making such an excellent speech. Regarding the way that Royal Mail deals with complaints via email and via its website, does she agree that we as Members of the House of Commons seem to be doing a better job of identifying the problems than Royal Mail itself? Thanks to the excellent work of my brilliant team, there is a page on my website where people can plot where they live and the type of problem they have been having, which strikes me as something that Royal Mail ought to be doing itself—perhaps we should encourage it to do so.
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.