Postal Services Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 9 November 2010.

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Ed Richards: From our perspective, the change from the current regime for post to the one proposed in the Bill is definitely a significant improvement. If we were merely inheriting the regime that Postcomm is currently working with, my reaction would be that it would give us a lot of problems. The new regime that is proposed in the Bill is a huge improvement on a whole range of fronts: the scope for us to make economic judgments about regulation and also deregulation; the fact that we would have concurrent powers under the Bill which Postcomm does not have, which we find extremely effective and very important in the rest of the communications sector; the information gathering powers which I think are essential if we are, for example, to get underneath the issue of how much the USO truly costs and therefore be able to assess whether there is an efficiency opportunity or whether the scope for competitive entry is, in fact, more limited. All those areas are significant improvements and give us a framework with which I absolutely think we could work.