No to Royal Mail Privatisation

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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend Katy Clark on securing this debate. I suppose that I should declare an interest as the proud parent of a Royal Mail employee.

For me, this goes back to the 1980s, the last time a Conservative Government decided to go on a privatisation binge.

I saw it up close, personal and at first hand when I was an employee of British Telecom and the Conservative Government at that time decided to sell it off, supposedly to make it leaner and more competitive.

I saw job losses, closed depots and lost opportunities for a future generation to secure good employment in my neck of the woods.

Like the last time, these sell-offs have been driven by a desperate need for money to plug a gap left by failing Government policies and to pay for the rising number of unemployed.

The current group of state-owned businesses proposed for privatisation could fetch nearly £9 billion, £3 billion of which would come from the sale of Royal Mail.

The original rationale for privatising the Royal Mail was that it was making a loss. We now know that that is no longer true. Annual profits are up more than 60%, and figures show that the amount of mail being sent has risen

Royal Mail still needs investment.

The coalition’s policy does not make economic, political or social sense. Ministers are motivated by ideological blinkers and the desire to make a quick buck, not by the long-term best interests of the taxpayer, the Royal Mail or the public.

Under privatisation, there will be no obligation to deliver the 26 million letters a day that Royal Mail currently handles.

Service will worsen, especially in rural areas.

Red pillar boxes are a symbol of Britain and give people a connection to the past not only of the GPO and the Royal Mail, but of their own community.

There are no Government safeguards to prevent the organisation from falling into foreign hands.

Royal Mail is more than a business; it is a service.

To cite only one of the services provided, I can identify our posties, who we see every day up and down the country. They do more than just deliver mail, and they go in early to set out their walks and deliver their full mail sack; some of the private sector firms, however, after too much time into the day will take the mail back and not deliver the full amount.

Posties are the ones who we see in the community and who are recognised as part of the community; they are the ones who see that the curtains are still closed and that the milk is on the doorstep.

They provide more than a mail service; they are part of the community, which would not be the case under privatisation.



ENDS