I beg to move,
That this House has considered excess delivery charges in rural Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. The word “rural” can sometimes conjure up an image of a far-flung place, but this issue affects many communities in Moray. Although it is a rural constituency, it is also made up of substantial towns, such as Elgin, Forres, Lossie, Buckie and Keith. This is an issue that also affects the city of Inverness, the capital of the highlands, as well as many communities, towns, villages and cities north of Perth. Although we are talking about rural delivery charges, they have a big impact on many urban areas as well.
I want to start by giving a little background on this issue, which I have raised in the main Chamber and Westminster Hall on many occasions, including during Prime Minister’s questions. Indeed, almost three years ago to the day, I led a similar debate in Westminster Hall. It was a 90-minute debate, and the room was full of Scottish and Northern Irish MPs raising concerns on behalf of their local constituents. Had today’s debate not been a 30-minute debate, we would have seen similar attendance by MPs from across the north of Scotland and other parts of the country, whose constituents continue to suffer as a result of excess charges for delivery.
This is also something on which I got the Scottish Affairs Committee to have an inquiry. I was pleased that companies such as Amazon came along to give evidence and commit to tackling any issues that were reported to them about delivery charges being added after a sale had apparently been completed. Indeed, with one sale that I reported, the seller ended up being brought to task and punished by Amazon for adding a surcharge to delivery after a purchase had been made. I will mention later the work I have been doing with the Advertising Standards Authority, which has done a lot of work to tackle this problem and to take enforcement action against companies and couriers who add excessive charges.
I would like to praise Citizens Advice Scotland, which has done a tremendous amount of detailed research and work on this subject. The briefing that it provided ahead of the debate sums up a lot of the issues that we face. Research by Citizens Advice Scotland has found that consumers living in affected areas pay on average 30% to 50% more for delivery of goods bought online than consumers in other parts of Great Britain. Sometimes we think this is just about consumers sitting at home and making individual purchases from online retailers, but the problem also affects many small and medium-sized enterprises in Scotland. The report goes on to say that one in four of the Scottish SMEs that were questioned about this said that they had ordered items online for businesses and were asked to pay an additional charge, so it is affecting our businesses as well as individual consumers.
Clearly, the covid pandemic has increased awareness of this issue. For weeks in the early stage of the pandemic, people across the country were asked to stay at home and go out as little as possible, so many turned to online retailers for purchases. That has led to a surge in online shopping and more parcel deliveries. As I have mentioned parcels and we are in December, it is only right to mention the outstanding work that our posties up and down the country are doing at this extremely busy time of the year and, indeed, all year round. Sadly, unlike in every other year since I have been an MP, we cannot go and thank them in person in the run-up to the Christmas period, but I am sure the Minister and the whole House agree that they do incredible work at this busy time of the year. They have our greatest thanks for that.
It is not surprising that in the early months of the lockdown during the covid pandemic, when people had more time on their hands and were at home rather than getting out and about, they were shopping more online. For people in Moray and other parts of Scotland, however, the ease of online shopping comes with a heavy price: the surcharge they have to pay. If someone has a postcode in Moray, the Highlands or parts of Aberdeenshire, they face a familiar problem. They try to make a purchase, look for a product, browse and then when they put in the postcode or address, they are suddenly faced with an additional charge simply to have it delivered. Now, hon. Members do not need to be experts in geography to know that Moray, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire are all part of mainland UK. They are part of the mainland, yet we are often charged as an island community. Moray is attached to the rest of the United Kingdom in the same way that Highlands and Aberdeenshire are, yet we are faced with charges because some companies do not believe we are part of mainland United Kingdom.
A recent paper published by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre estimated that shoppers had paid an extra £43.1 million for parcels to be delivered in 2020, up from £40 million in 2019 and £38 million in 2018. That is not the cost of the purchases—that is simply the cost to have these parcels delivered to parts of Scotland. That is the surcharge for my constituents and constituents across the north of Scotland.
The report found that the covid-19 lockdown led to a big increase in online shopping, which is not surprising. People had no choice in many cases but to shop online, given they were told to stay at home. Once again, the worst-affected areas were Moray, Highlands and Aberdeenshire. Moray constituents purchasing online paid an extra delivery charge that has mounted up to £3 million.
Unfortunately this is nothing new; I have a long list of constituency cases of people who have tried to challenge these rip-off fees—I will go into more detail later—but many people feel like they are banging their head against a brick wall. When complaints are made to stores or online outlets, courier companies are often blamed. Taking the courier companies to task can be tricky. Often, they simply state that their policy is to charge more for deliveries to certain locations. That in itself should be open to challenge, and I hope that the Minister can look at what the Government can do with couriers and retailers to try and get some form of balance in the charges that they are imposing.
It is not all doom and gloom. We have made some progress in the time that I have been working on this issue, particularly where companies advertise that they say they will deliver for free—no charge at all—or a flat rate everywhere in the United Kingdom, only for a surcharge to be added. Where it has been clearly defined that they offer free delivery or a set charge across mainland United Kingdom, if that is not the case when someone goes to make a purchase, I routinely take up cases with the Advertising Standards Authority.
One recent case involved a constituent who was getting a package from a gin distiller in another part of Scotland. His home is in Spey Bay in Moray, 130 miles away from the retailer, and he was told he did not qualify for free delivery, despite it being explained on their site. However, if he had sent the package to his friend, for whom he was buying the product, in Truro in Cornwall— 596 miles away—it would be shipped free of charge. There is no rational way to explain that disparity. It simply cannot be right.
I was recently passed an email exchange between a customer and a business, and it transpired, as it often does, that the blame for the extra charges was laid at the door of the courier. Again, I raised it with the Advertising Standards Authority, which I am pleased to say responded quickly and has told me that an enforcement notice will now be issued. Citizens Advice Scotland note that enforcement notices were issued to
“almost 300 online retailers during 2018/19”
and that work resulted in a “97% compliance rate.” So we are making some progress.
Sadly, it is not enough, because constituents and individuals are still suffering. People go around in circles trying to claim money back for the extra charges. In one case, a constituent complained that he had been hit with an additional charge of £60 for delivery of a package that weighed less than a pound. In many other cases, people do not complain to their MP; they just grin and bear it, as they feel they have no choice. It is clearly not fair to ask anyone to pay more for delivery of a parcel because they happen to live in the northern half of mainland Scotland. It has gone on for far too long and needs to stop.
Up to now, there have been efforts to give regulators in this area more teeth. In 2018, the Committee of Advertising Practice, which sets the rules that the Advertising Standards Authority enforces, made very clear that it would act to ensure a level playing field across the United Kingdom. It said that companies selling goods online had to abide by its guidance, and it specifically ruled out misleading claims of UK-wide delivery if that is not what they offer. Any surcharges applying to parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland should be clear and up front so that the buyer knows before he or she pays what the final cost will be. That is even meant to apply where there is a headline claim of free UK delivery, for example, but the small print might say something like, “exemptions for north of Perth”. Even in those cases, a company would be found to be misleading customers. The problem is that, two years on, it is still happening and, as far as I am concerned, if a company advertises free delivery or a flat-rate delivery all over the UK, it should stick to that.
Another example is from a constituent in Fochabers who had found what he was looking for and had seen “free UK delivery”, but when he put in his postcode, he was hit with a £75 delivery charge. There are more cases like that. If the companies do not stick to their promises, considerable penalties should be applied. Any repeat offenders should be hit with an increasing severity of sanctions. It is clear that a letter being sent to say that this should not happen again does not do any good. Let us be clear. The industry should not have to wait for Government intervention before doing what is right; it should be able to come up with the solutions to avoid the extra charges. That applies to retailers as well as couriers.
Any online retailer should be keen to keep customers onside. They should not simply shrug their shoulders and say that the charges are set in stone when they clearly are not. If enough companies decide to do something about it, we could finally make some progress.
Likewise, the courier firms could work together to come up with a plan to reduce the burden on buyers to pay unnecessary surcharges. That could take the shape of a shared distribution centre in the highlands that reduces the distance between the warehouse and the delivery address, or a simple commitment to treat mainland Scotland in the same way as mainland England and Wales. I do not think we are asking for too much.
As I referred to earlier, in the past three years more than £100 million in additional charges has been paid by shoppers in the north of Scotland—a huge sum of money. At a time when our economy is struggling, people are losing their jobs and seeing their working hours cut, every little helps. That money could go back into the businesses rather than into paying excessive charges. Let us not allow this discriminatory practice to continue. Let us stand up for all the people who are being ripped off in Moray and across parts of Scotland on a daily basis. Let us say that enough is enough. Let us ask the industry—the retailers and the couriers—to get their house in order. If they will not do that, the Government should take steps to address the inherent unfairness.
I held such a debate as this three years ago on 20 December 2017. I remember the date well because it was my wife’s birthday, so I now have 11 days to make sure she gets the right present for this year’s birthday. I will make sure I buy local in Moray to avoid any excessive delivery charges. By having this debate at this time of year once more, we can again impress on the Minister and any businesses or couriers watching that the practice has gone on for far too long. We have suffered for too long in Moray and parts of the north of Scotland because of the disparity affecting people living in different parts of the country. We can end this practice and, with the Minister’s help and some encouragement from the Government, I am sure we can get these businesses to realise the error of their ways. It would be a cheerful festive message to send out that we are once and for all going to deal with this issue.