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Ministers told: Stop blackmailing post workers over sell-off
Nicholas Cecil, Chief Political Correspondent24 Feb 2009
MINISTERS were warned today not to try to "blackmail" postal workers into supporting part-privatisation of the Royal Mail.
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson faced a backlash after a letter was leaked raising fears that pensions could be slashed if the Government's proposed sell-off of the organisation is blocked.
Former minister and Vauxhall Labour MP Kate Hoey said: "People will feel that there is an attempt to blackmail them into supporting part-privatisation.
"This sort of tactic will backfire and lead to more opposition."
Hundreds of postal workers were set to join a protest outside Westminster today at the privatisation plan.
The Department for Business insisted the letter, from the pension trustees, had not been leaked but had been put out because it highlighted the seriousness of the situation facing Royal Mail.
Postal affairs minister Pat McFadden this morning stressed that the universal postal service, including Saturday delivery, is under threat. He said: "We go into this because we care about the Royal Mail. We don't want to see the universal service downgraded."
However, Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, accused the Government of using a false argument to push the case for part-privatisation and criticised the Royal Mail pension trustees.
He said: "You don't need to privatise the Royal Mail to resolve the pensions issue. The Government has a moral responsibility to tackle the pensions deficit. The pension fund is a complete red herring designed to scare people."
Former Cabinet minister Peter Hain warned that many backbenchers were worried the plan would lead to "full-bloodied privatisation".
"The Government has a problem in taking this bill through in Parliamentary terms, which is there's big opposition among Labour MPs who don't like part-privatisation and there's big opposition among Tory and Liberal MPs who want full privatisation," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
Mr Hain lambasted the regulator Postcomm for "dumping" the most expensive deliveries on Royal Mail while allowing the private sector to take lucrative business post contracts. "We've had a ludicrous and unfair system of competition which I'm afraid our Government has been responsible for.
"The private couriers have come in and taken the profitable mail: London to Birmingham to Manchester to Glasgow, that's easy stuff, it's pre-sorted business mail. Whilst the letter to an individual grandmother in a rural area has been picked up by the Royal Mail."
Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton and chief executive Adam Crozier were also due to be questioned today by the all-party Commons business committee about the organisation's future.
The chairman of the organisation's pension trustees, Jane Newell, said there would be "devastating consequences" if more investment was not found.
She wrote that the fund's deficit was "significantly higher" than the £5.9billion envisaged in the Hooper Report into the postal service's future.
"At present, in a winding up, the plan would not even be able to provide as much as 50 per cent of members' benefits," she warned.
Reader views (3)
Frankly the Royal Mail needs dragging into the 21st Century, the manangement are ex-civil servants who need to hold 15 meetings to work out the best way to sharpen a pencil. This in turn has a knock on effect to the staff who don't know whether they're coming or going. Selling it off to a more competant company such as TNT sounds like a sound idea, it might actually get somne decent management and technology in place.
- Bob, Cheam, 25/02/2009 09:53
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Postmen, welcome to the real world. What a farce that they expect the taxpayer to pick up the tab for the shortfall in their scheme. Ask the Labour Party to return all the millions you paid to them, that might help but stop keep asking everyone else to bail you out. No-one ask you to be a postman. If you don't like it get another job like anyone else has too. Please stop whinging.
- Tony Williams, Sidcup Kent, 25/02/2009 08:38
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Why don't people wake up?
Pensions are funded by a PROFITABLE business. You need to keep pace with the global economy to remain profitable, and to be able to pay off your pensions.
If I can board a short-haul flight in the USA after just 10-seconds of contact time with flight staff at the departure gate (machine-automated check-in and machine-automated bag weigh-in means I do not even have to go to a check-in desk), why does it take 25 minutes of queuing and back-and-forth over the counter of a British Post Office to post a small packet?
Inefficiency. A woeful lack of investment in technology (automated parcel size/weight scanning, etc), and employment of far too many manual labourers.
This is by no means the only British industry to suffer from lack of investment (greed and complacency).
Wake up people and adapt, before we are bankrupted and left in the stone age.
- Simon Luckhurst, Gravesend, 24/02/2009 11:14
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