Royal Mail And The Universal Postal Delivery

EDM number 1642 in 2007-08, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 22/05/2008.
Categorised under the topics of Postal services and Service industries.

That this House supports the Royal Mail in its mission to maintain a universal delivery service; considers shocking the announcement by the Chairman of Postcomm that Royal Mail needs an infusion of private capital if it is to be able to maintain the universal service and that this announcement was made immediately after his Chief Executive had told the Public Accounts Committee that Royal Mail was profitable and well able to sustain the universal service despite Postcomm's policy of bringing in private operators to take over profitable services, leaving Royal Mail with the less profitable final mile delivery at imposed prices too low to sustain that service; is further dismayed by the Chairman's proposal that Royal Mail should be subject to VAT as an extra charge on its users and his insistence that competition is more effective in sustaining competitive delivery services than proper regulation; suggests that Postcomm is taking an ideological view which bears no relationship to the public service responsibilities of the Royal Mail; therefore laments the fact that the Postal Services Act of 2000 was the prelude to breaking down Great Britain's integrated postal service, splitting the Royal Mail and the Post Office and reducing the profitability of both; and points out to the Government that the Bolkestein Directive of 2006 which extends these follies to the whole of the European Union will not be implemented by Germany and Holland until 2013, prompting the question, What's the rush?

This motion has been signed by a total of 51 MPs.