Brown lashed over Royal Mail plans

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A union leader has hit out at the Prime Minister's proposed part-privatisation of the postal service.

07 March 2009 13:52 PM

Further signs of internal divisions within the Labour Party have burst into the open as a union leader attacked Gordon Brown over plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail.

The criticism came from a union official who also publicly congratulated a Scottish Labour MP for resigning from a junior Government post over the issue.

Mr Brown made his keynote speech to the Scottish conference on Friday.

However, on Saturday he sustained an attack from the Left over his proposals for the Royal Mail.

John Brown, Scottish secretary of the Communications Workers Union, reminded the conference that the Prime Minister had told them privatisation and deregulation were not the answers to economic problems.

"So why is Gordon, Gordon's Government, going to legislate to privatise Royal Mail in the teeth of these economic problems?" he demanded.

"Gordon further went on to say that the Government is going to put a large amount of money into job creation projects," he added.

"So why is the Government legislating to privatise the Royal Mail, which will ultimately lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs across the UK?"

The union boss argued that a state-owned, integrated Royal Mail was still party policy. "So what's changed since then?" he asked.

"Why do we now have legislation brought before us that seeks to privatise the Royal Mail in some sort of capitalisation process?"

He reminded activists that Jim McGovern, Labour MP for Dundee West, had resigned as an aide to minister Pat McFadden - "the minister whose task it is, under the whip hand of Peter Mandelson, to get this legislation through the House of Commons."

"On behalf of the CWU, I would like to publicly congratulate Jim McGovern on his principled stance on this issue."

Mr Brown's comments were met with applause from Labour delegates.

Last updated: 07 March 2009, 13:54