Green Paper on Postal Reform
It met with support from Post Office managers, who advocated full sale because in their view this was the only way to achieve commercial freedom.
The issue was taken up in Prime Minister's Question Time by Margaret Beckett as leader of the Labour Party opposition.
Friend the President of the Board of Trade will make a full statement to the House about the Government's proposals in just a few moments.
The Government therefore made their consideration of the future of the Post Office subject to three vital and non-negotiable commitments, all of which we clearly set out in our manifesto.
Post Office Counters and its clients see the nationwide network not as a liability, but as an asset which enables it to provide a unique service to villages and hamlets throughout the land.
It enables the Benefits Agency, for example, to provide a service for the millions of people who have no bank accounts and live in remote areas.
It is the most efficient postal service in Europe…’[3] ...any legislation would set up a regulatory system to ensure that those obligations were properly defined and policed.
The Government’s commitments to universal delivery, six days a week to every household, with a uniform and affordable tariff remain non-negotiable and would be written on the face of the legislation.
I announced on 15 July 1992 the Government’s intention to privatise Parcelforce, which already operates in a fully competitive market… First… I can assure the House that, under any proposals that we finally adopt, stamps will continue to be exempt from value added tax.
There is common accord that major chance is needed if the Royal Mail is to meet the growing competitive threat that it faces.’[4]Then followed the debate, opened to the floor of the whole house.
[6] Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery): Before selling the depiction of Her Majesty's head to the highest bidder, will he explain how he proposes to guarantee the integrity of the delivery service in rural areas?
If there is to be competition within localities, how on earth will the regulator be able to ensure a daily delivery by a postman or a postwoman for people living in remote rural areas?
It is very important that, whatever we decide to do, the public should be assured, from the very beginning, of the absolute sine qua non: there will be a regular six-day-a-week delivery at a uniform tariff across the country.
[8] Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield): Is the Minister aware that, for 334 years since 1660, the Royal Mail has been a public service, not only through the counters until quite recently, but through the people who called at everybody's house every day, and were a form of contact; that there is no justification for privatisation for commercial freedom, because, over the years, as he will know, the Post Office has developed, as with the giro, a completely new bank from within which was so successful that the Government sold it off; that the consequences of privatisation will be higher salaries for the management, which is why they want it, and poorer services and redundancies?
Many people, and I am one of them, think that the sale of this asset to Tory businesses that funded the Conservatives' campaign will have a sniff of corruption about it from the very outset.
