Speech to the Scottish Labour Party, Saturday 30 Oct 2010

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Contemporary Resolution on Royal Mail Oban

The Coalition Government is pushing forward its Postal Services Bill which will privatise Royal Mail. Inside Parliament the Bill is being opposed by the Labour Party. Indeed, all the opposition parties with MPs are opposing the Bill. Every opinion poll in the last twenty years has shown a big majority of public opinion against Royal Mail privatisation. A most recent poll of Lib Dem and Conservative voters on the 1st October, showed more Tories and Liberals opposing privatisation than supporting it.

Yet, despite this – the Coalition Government appears very determined. But we are convinced that the Coalition Government can be defeated by a broad-based campaign of all those who want to Keep our Post Public. We are convinced because the more the arguments are made for privatisation, the less they stand up. Take the Bill itself – for the first time in legislation we have proposals to permit Royal Mail to become bankrupt. So privatisation brings the possibility of Royal Mail going bankrupt. Should a privatised Royal Mail go bankrupt, the universal service will still need to be provided.

You will be pleased to hear that the Secretary of State will be able to make loans and grants to bail out a privatised Royal Mail. Wonderful logic. A privatised Royal Mail – legislate for the possibility of bankruptcy – guarantee that the tax payer will bail it out of bankruptcy. The Coalition is making much about the safe guards offered for the universal service obligation.

But the Bill only re-states what is already in the Postal Services Act 2000, albeit in different words. What the Government is not making much of is its innovations in the Bill to undermine the universal service. To start with, they are obliging the Regulator, OFCOM, to review the standards in the universal service within eighteen months of the Bill becoming law. This is simply a case of getting someone else to do your dirty work. Proposals from the Regulator to reduce the service would be supposedly ‘independent of the Government’.

Yet we know from the leaked letter sent by Vince Cable to the Chancellor, that the Government is already promoting the idea of reducing the services to a minimum. The legislation also introduces into legislation, for the first time, the need for the universal service to be ‘financially sustainable’ and ‘efficient’. These are our criteria external to the existing service – and merely tools to downgrade its scale and scope. So we know the Bill does not guarantee the universal service – it places it in jeopardy.

The Government is also trying to calm fears about the future of the Post Office Counters – your local Post Office Branches. But it cannot – because once you separate Post Office Counters from a privatised Royal Mail you are pronouncing a death sentence. The only question is when it is carried out. A privatised Royal Mail will not want to be associated with a publicly owned, loss making, Post Office Counters. It will want to use other private retail outlets.

POL received £343m in services from Royal Mail in 2009/10. POL’s reliance upon Royal Mail has increased from 27.5% in 2003/4 to 35% in 2009/10. And POL receives around £150m a year in central service support from Royal Mail. With separation the plug will be pulled. No matter what the Government say now, there will be massive numbers of Post Office closures as a result.

So for these – and many other reasons – we must campaign against Royal Mail privatisation.

As part of the campaign, the CWU has identified the 71 marginal seats of the Coalition Government where they have a 10% or less majority. We will be organising many actions in these constituencies to turn up the heat where the Coalition is vulnerable.

In Scotland these seats are:

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale – held by David Mundell for the Conservatives.

Argyll and Bute held by Alan Reid for the Liberal Democrats.

Dunbartonshire East held by Jo Swinson for the Liberal Democrats
And
Edinburgh West held by Michael Crockart for the Liberal Democrats.

We must make a big push in these constituencies so these MPs understand that supporting the Government on this question will result in them losing their seats.

This is a campaign that we can win – we have a lot of work in front of

[dvbuk55]

Great - just the very audience you need to get on side coals to Newcastle anyone.

[Big Daz]

Billys got a cushy job, national political officer disguised as a GS.

[dvbuk55]

Billys got a cushy job, national political officer disguised as a GS.

Nice work if you can get it for a 100k plus perks and a final salary pension.........works out at a tidy sum nicht wahr.