Peers must challenge the government's risky plan for RM

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Peers must challenge the government's risky plan for Royal Mail
The bill, which makes huge assumptions and is vague in key areas, puts a great public service in danger

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The last of the great privatisations is being prepared with remarkably little public concern. Today the House of Lords will examine the postal services bill to sell off Royal Mail and radically change the Post Office network.

The government's aim is to sell off Royal Mail whether in parts or in whole, on the grounds that it is unaffordable because our communication habits are changing – letter writing is a lost art – and there is a vast pension deficit. It's not proposing to sell off the Post Office (which last year made a small profit) but to turn it into a mutualised organisation.

But these bald facts hide some colossal assumptions on the part of the government as well as likely consequences for our Post Office network, the reliability of our mail services, the working conditions for Royal Mail employees after privatisation, the cost of mail services in the future, not to mention the wisdom of breaking up a public service which has changed and responded to national need over four centuries.

At the start of the committee stage last week their lordships raised questions about the assumptions of the government. It was noted that since the management/union agreement last year Royal Mail business practices are so improved that the mantra of injecting private capital and business experience seems out of date. Royal Mail has never been given a monetary value – is it sensible to put something so valuable up for sale, asked Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, without stating a price? Would Royal Mail be sold to any company with an asset-stripping reputation, asked Lord Christopher Monckton (no shortage of such companies and no shortage either of valuable Royal Mail properties in all our cities and towns).

Since the bill was published – and without any consultation period – the government has barely budged on the bill's main provisions. There is crossbench anxiety in both Houses about how the bill will affect the quality of mail service we all receive wherever we live in the UK, and great anxiety about the future health of the Post Office network.

One peer said last week that if shire Tories knew how endangered their local post offices were by this bill they would be dreading their next election campaign.

The break-up of Royal Mail – is it too late for peers to ask the basic question of why it is being broken up and for whom? – will have a huge impact on its workforce and on the standards of mail service delivery. The workforce will certainly be cut, and lose out on terms and conditions (it's a sign of the future that Lord Myners' amendment asking for worker representation on Royal Mail boards didn't attract any government enthusiasm).

Consumer Focus, the excellent quango which oversees postal services on behalf of consumers (and is itself being axed), says that a much looser regulatory regime will be set up as a result of the bill which could lead, in effect, to the dropping of standards by post companies without consumers being able to do anything about it.

But it is the impact of the bill on the 11,800-strong Post Office network that will be most immediately apparent to UK citizens. There are two key pieces of business which enable the Post Office network to survive. Crucially they provide the key public service of keeping us connected in an efficient way – as citizens and not simply consumers. These are the inter-business agreement between the Post Office and Royal Mail, by which the Post Office receives and delivers Royal Mail traffic, and the function of being "front office" for government business.

The inter-business agreement is the Post Office network's main source of income. The bill is startlingly vague about how it will be protected as it pushes for the rights of private operators. Following privatisation of Royal Mail, subsequent contracts will require a competitive tender process with no guarantee that the Post Office would retain this contract.

Nor has the government budged on MPs' and peers' attempts to insist on a decent time scale for the contract so that the Post Office can build up other possible sources of revenue. It's hard not to sympathise with the peer who last week asked plaintively if "the interests of the British people" could perhaps be mentioned in the discussion around this bill.

The government is proud that the bill flags up the mutualisation of the Post Office. But a third of post offices already are in the red; the Post Office faces the loss of its biggest source of income; there is no business plan available that paints a picture of how a vigorous network of small businesses can be grown and nourished, and the government last month awarded its first big contract for benefits payments to a private company, taking it away from the Post Office. Co-operatives UK, which is modelling the mutualisation project, says that it is not, and cannot, be a substitute for a revenue-raising development plan.

Peers this week have an important task in probing fully the government's intent behind this bill, and in trying to safeguard the great public service that is the combined Royal Mail and Post Office network. But all the signs are that their communications to government may simply be returned to sender.

[DirtyHarry]

The landed gentry polluting the House of Commons are determined to destroy, once and for all, this nation's postal system.
And yet, we have people, adults I'm presuming, who are pinning their faint hopes on the landed gentry idling away their days in the House of Lords, to save our cherished institution.

Now, I'm all for being optimistic, but bugger me, that just about takes the biscuit.

[borders]

one can only read that article with despair not hope .