I beg to move,
That this House has considered the universal postal service order in Rhondda constituency.
It is a delight to see you in the Chair for the first time, Mr Henderson. Congratulations on your elevation—some have greatness thrust upon them. I should say that I am here as a Back Bencher, although I am quite often up against the Minister from the Front Bench. It is a different kind of arrangement today.
The universal service obligation, which is an essential part of delivering many public services up and down the land, says that there should be letter delivery six days a week, next-day delivery for first-class letters—which we all know are now quite expensive—and delivery within three days for second-class letters. I fully understand that recent years have been tough for Royal Mail. Letters are down from 14.3 billion in 2011-12 to 7.3 billion in 2022-23, and parcels are up from 2.6 billion in 2018-19 to 3.6 billion in 2022-23. It would be very easy for Royal Mail to conclude that its future lies in parcels, not in letters, but I want to say on behalf of my constituents in the Rhondda—I suspect that MPs from every constituency in the land would say the same—that the service they are getting at the moment does not meet the universal service obligation. That is a problem for individuals, our public services and our economy.
Let me talk through some of the issues that my constituents have faced. In the past three years, my office has dealt with a vast number of cases that have come in by email, letter and phone. We have created more than 100 individual pieces of casework relating to Royal Mail issues. All those cases share some very specific issues: sporadic arrival of mail, sometimes no mail at all received for weeks, and large bundles arriving at once. These are not people complaining that they are not getting any letters from anybody because nobody loves them; they are people saying they know a letter is due and it does not arrive, even when it has a first-class stamp on it. The most common complaint is late delivery, resulting in missed hospital appointments and fines.
These are not isolated locations in the Rhondda; the issue affects the whole of the constituency. It is a persistent problem that residents have been reporting since 2019. I have tried regularly to get to the nub of these issues with local managers. I am endlessly promised that they will be sorted, and they never are.
Of course, all my constituents are full of praise for their local postal workers, who deliver in rain and sunshine—I worry about sunshine because I have had melanoma and I know the dangers of skin cancer, so I want to make sure there is proper protection for postal workers. Many of the issues that postal workers face are the same ones that my constituents complain about.
Postal workers have told us about the following issues. There are not enough base staff to cover all rounds. Staff holidays and staff sickness come at peak times, making it impossible to maintain the USO. Management prioritises parcels over post—I know the Business and Trade Committee has looked at that closely. There is clear evidence that that is still happening, and it is problematic. Rounds are far too big and undeliverable. Vans are not large enough for parcels and the post, so postal workers have to go back to the sorting office and make multiple trips, and no overtime is offered for that.
I have met the Royal Mail management team at the sorting offices multiple times, and they always say that it is a matter of staff sicknesses and that it is all going to be sorted next time, but it never is. I have also been told anonymously that staff are paid overtime to clear the mail before I get there so that when I arrive at the sorting office, it is all perfect and there is no mail waiting to go out, but once I have gone somebody gets back in the van and it goes back into the sorting office. If that is true, it is obviously a deliberate attempt to mislead the Member of Parliament, and I am sure the Minister would want to condemn it.
I will just go through some of the specific cases we have had—