Royal Mail: Performance

Sorcha Eastwood Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members who have turned out today. In truth, any one of them could introduce this debate: we face the same issues, no matter where we are in the United Kingdom.

I want to start by recognising the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee and its Chair, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne). In May, the Committee concluded that the Royal Mail service was unacceptable and that Ofcom’s approach had failed to secure the improvement needed. It has kept up the pressure. Its Chair wrote to Ofcom again just yesterday, and I will draw on that letter. At Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister acknowledged the systemic and continued failings of Royal Mail.

In Lagan Valley, the post does not arrive reliably; it comes in batches. People tell me that they get no mail for two or three weeks, and then a whole month’s-worth arrives at once. A letter sent across Lisburn can take over a week to arrive. People tell me that there is no difference between first and second class any more; it just arrives when it arrives. I know that second-class mail can now be delivered every other day. That is fine, but it is still supposed to arrive within three working days. Waiting weeks is not an alternate-day service.

This is causing real harm. Northern Ireland has by far the worst health waiting lists in the UK. Because of postal delays, my constituents are missing MRI and CT scans. The mother of one of my constituents was taken off an orthopaedic waiting list because she never got the letter. These people are already waiting in pain, and when a letter fails to show up, the system blames them, and every missed appointment lengthens the queue for everybody.

This happens elsewhere, too. A constituent got her jury summons after the deadline passed, and she spent days terrified that she would be fined for something that was not her fault. Driving licences, benefit cheques, bank cards and insurance documents just go missing. People pay extra for special delivery but items still sit for days, marked “in office”. Important legal documents go missing or show up opened.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

The hon. Member is giving a great speech. One of my constituents has not received post for an entire month, despite expecting time-sensitive correspondence relating to the death of her partner, who sadly passed away earlier this year. That is totally unacceptable. Does the hon. Member agree that Ofcom needs to be pushing Royal Mail to speed up improvements to regulated delivery? Our residents have waited long enough.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I absolutely do. That is an extremely distressing and poignant example. In Northern Ireland, confidential mail matters. Local groups supporting vulnerable people tell me that they are deeply concerned about letters ending up at the wrong address. A letter in the wrong hands in Northern Ireland can put people in real danger.

Businesses are hurting too. In my constituency of Lagan Valley, we have a fantastic local business called the Pie Shop—it sells pies. It recently had a chance to bid for a contract that would see its products stocked in Harrods and whose commercial value it would be virtually impossible to estimate. But due to the Royal Mail delays, it missed the deadline to participate in the trial and it lost that—a huge blow to that small business. That will be replicated right across the UK.

The real-life impacts of this failing service have been mentioned. A woman recently wrote to me and said that a handwritten card marking the anniversary of her mother’s death took nine days to arrive. For her, that was not minor; it was another blow on a day that was already hard. A sympathy letter, a birthday note or a Christmas card: these are careful, deliberate actions that we make to say, “I care about you. You matter. I love you. You aren’t alone.” When the post fails, that is what goes missing.

[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I held a similar one earlier this year on 4 February, in which I raised issues regarding Royal Mail, particularly with respect to the WV15 and WV16 postcodes in my constituency, where people are waiting for two, three and sometimes four weeks to receive mail. Does she agree that that situation is completely unacceptable and must change, because my constituents, like many other people, feel that they really do not matter to Royal Mail?

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Indeed. I thank the hon. Member for his work on this subject to date—it is very much valued and appreciated by all of us in this House—and I think that he has just illustrated the point perfectly.

We have had the discussion and the debate around which items matter in terms of Royal Mail’s service. Parcels still manage to turn up on time and online orders arrive straight away, while letters sit in sorting offices. Everyone can see what Royal Mail is prioritising.

[Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for making such a powerful testimony about the impact of letters being lost or delayed by Royal Mail. I have been flagging up issues in the BH11, BH10 and BH9 postcodes, which are in my constituency, just as many other hon. Members here today have been flagging up issues about the postcodes in their constituencies. What concerns me most is that the Royal Mail responses to the issues we raise are at best generic and at worst deceptive. Does she agree that that is totally unacceptable and that Royal Mail needs to do better?

[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.

[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.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley) (Lab)]

Before joining Parliament in 2019, I had 22 years of service with Royal Mail as an engineer, and I can tell the hon. Lady that working conditions were in decline then. We now hear that more than 400 postal workers are leaving the business every week. That is due to workload and working conditions. A two-tier workforce cannot work for any organisation; the workforce need to be rewarded accordingly. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I really feel that he has hit upon the crux of the matter here. We are being told that Royal Mail has identified issues that it is now trying to rectify through recruitment and so on, but if people already know that the workers holding up this once-great British institution are being treated in the way that they are, that will not be an advertisement for anybody to work for that organisation. That troubles me.

Our postal workers are not the problem. Our posties are doing their absolute best to hold things together but, as has just been highlighted, they are leaving in their droves.

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

On the issue of postwomen and postmen, in areas such as mine, the most rural areas of our country, those people are a lifeline. They are often the only people whom older people meet in a day, but a postman in my constituency has been taken to an employment tribunal because he helped to deliver a local parish magazine in the middle of nowhere —just to be a help. Those are sometimes the only people my constituents meet, so as the hon. Lady campaigns on this issue, will she press for recognition of the social role that postwomen and postmen play throughout the country, on behalf of many of our constituents?

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Absolutely. My constituency is actually still classed as a rural constituency, so I think that the right hon. Member’s point is really well made. We have already discussed the delays in the actual letters arriving, but in this day and age, when so many people are isolated, sending an old-fashioned letter is in itself almost an act of rebellion against such an impersonal society. Indeed, for some people right across the UK, in every constituency, their postie will be their only point of contact. It would be an absolute shame if we lost sight of that in all of this.

Postal workers are seriously worried. Some of my own constituents who work for Royal Mail tell me that management simply are not listening. Experienced staff are gone, and new workers are brought in on worse terms, as we have already heard. Workers have ideas to fix that, but they are being shut out and treated as if they are part of the problem.

[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?

[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.

[Helen Grant (Maidstone and Malling) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing us a really important debate. This issue is clearly affecting us all, and Royal Mail is certainly also badly failing constituents in my Kent constituency. I feel the affection for our posties, which she touched on when she spoke about the red post boxes and so on; Royal Mail should be a national treasure, but it is not. My concern is that the situation is getting worse, not better. Royal Mail has been fined £37 million for poor performance in recent years, and there is an Ofcom investigation. Many of us feel that Royal Mail is not fit for purpose and that no change is happening, so does she agree that the Government need to do more by taking enforcement action and putting some more pressure on the leadership?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I wholeheartedly agree. Royal Mail says quality is improving, believe it or not. To be fair, recent quarterly figures showed a slight pick-up, but it has not met its annual delivery targets in six years. My constituents do not read quarterly reports; they rely on social media to see whether the postie is coming. It is a completely unacceptable situation. We also hear that stamp prices keep going up. Citizens Advice suggested capping stamp prices if delivery targets are not met. It is a simple rule: if you don’t deliver the service, you can’t raise your prices. Will the Government back that plan?

Who is supposed to fix this issue? Ofcom, as we have heard, has fined Royal Mail more than £37 million in three years. If fines changed behaviour, things would be fixed by now. Even Ofcom says that

“persistent failure…may raise…fundamental questions about the long-term provision of the universal service”.

I agree. We are at that point. As the BIST Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, put it, the current position

“leaves unanswered who will take responsibility for identifying and closing the gaps in postal regulation”.

Ofcom points to the Government, the Government point at Ofcom and the post sits in the delivery office. The BIST Committee gave Royal Mail and Ofcom until 22 November to show real improvement. If they do not, the Secretary of State should consult on changing Ofcom’s powers.

[Tahir Ali]

Would the hon. Lady agree that Ofcom needs further powers to bring about the change that is necessary, because it is limited in what it can do? For the record, Ms Lewell, I worked at Royal Mail for 30 years, not 22.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

That is a real question that we must seriously investigate. I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members across the House would attest to wanting further robust mechanisms to challenge many of Ofcom’s other remits successfully. I wonder whether the Minister will commit today to consult on changing Ofcom’s powers.

Finally, I turn to the bigger picture. As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members in the debate, this issue is about much more than just simply Royal Mail and letters. For the first time in its 500-year history, Royal Mail is owned by an overseas company—the highly profitable EP Group. The Government approved the takeover, but serious questions remain about our sovereignty. Royal Mail is a British institution. It delivers to every address in the UK for the same price, whether to a farm in Northern Ireland, a flat in Cardiff or a college in Scotland. It is as much critical infrastructure as any road or cable. When it was privatised in 2013, we were promised better service and investment. Instead, we have had six years of missed targets. A company unanswerable to its owners will always be tempted to favour its most profitable work. The universal service obligation is meant to guard against that.

Fines have not been enough. Other countries subsidise their postal providers or bring them into public ownership, as Ofcom notes. I go further here than the Committee has, but I believe it is time to review Royal Mail’s ownership and governance, so that the universal service obligation is protected in the public interest.

I ask the House: who do we want to be as a society? Do we want to be a country that can no longer promise that a card will reach a grieving daughter, or a hospital letter will reach a patient? Or do we want to be a country that treats the post as what it has always been—a promise to every address— and protects it?

As I said earlier, this is about more than just letters. What are we as a country, if we can no longer rely upon a service that is nearly as old as time itself? Given current geopolitical instability, it would also be remiss of me not to put on the record the grave concerns that I have about critical national infrastructure being owned overseas, rather than in our own country.

For my final requests, I am asking the Government for four things. First, will the Government consult on changing Ofcom’s powers, if service has not improved by the Committee’s 22 November deadline? Secondly, will the Government consider linking stamp prices to delivery performance, as Citizens Advice has proposed? Thirdly, what guarantees do we have for Christmas deliveries this year? Fourthly, and finally, will the Government review Royal Mail’s ownership model, to protect the universal service for the long term?

The public hold up their end of the bargain: they buy the stamps, post letters in time and wait. The system is letting them down. My constituents want to trust the post again. The Government, Ofcom and Royal Mail all have the power to put that right, and this Christmas is the time to show it.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

With a time limit of three and a half minutes, I call Anneliese Dodds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister, the Lib Dem spokesperson and all right hon. and hon. Members who contributed to this really good debate. We have fleshed out some of the core issues, and colleagues across the Chamber have made helpful suggestions on the price of stamps, the link to targets, the payment of executive bonuses when targets continue to be missed and the fact that we need to give serious consideration to whether Royal Mail should have been privatised at all.

This issue is absolutely not the fault of posties, and I thank them for their service. It is incumbent on us all to listen to them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.