Future of Postal Services

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tahir Ali]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which has been echoed in previous interventions. We will be calling on the Minister to go back to the Royal Mail board and stress the need to resolve this issue, because it is not one of affordability.

Royal Mail has, through thick and thin, managed to provide a truly excellent and universal service. Despite the shambolic privatisation of Royal Mail, the ethos of those working within it is still one of public service. Royal Mail was founded on the principle of universal service, and its staff still stand by that principle today. However, the current leadership of Royal Mail seems to be moving the company further and further away from its public service ethos, and seeking to emulate multinationals such as Amazon, DPD and DHL, where bogus self-employment is rife and pay and working conditions are abysmal.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is making a fantastic speech. Does he agree that if Royal Mail cannot operate without driving down workers’ pay and cutting jobs because its first priority is clearly always its shareholders, it has failed in its stated aim to provide the public service that it is meant to? Does he agree that that is an argument for taking Royal Mail back into public ownership? In my view and the view of the overwhelming majority of the public, that is where it belongs.

[Tahir Ali]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I could not agree more.

I have highlighted a glimpse of the bleak future that the management at Royal Mail want: poorer pay, poorer conditions, overworked staff, a zero-hour workforce and a service that is neither universal nor satisfactory to the customer. That has been seen in the steady erosion of the universal service obligation, along with the recent announcement that Royal Mail will be split into two entities and potentially sold off to the asset-stripping company Vesa Equity Investment, which is currently its largest shareholder.

It is evident from this that Royal Mail profiteering is becoming the name of the game. The billions in revenue generated by Royal Mail staff are eaten up by shareholders and management, who pay themselves huge bonuses while staff struggle to make ends meet. Instead of being reinvested to truly modernise and improve Royal Mail, this revenue is being used to pay off shareholders.

It is clear to me, therefore, that there are two possible futures for Royal Mail: one as a universal public service provided with compassion and dedication by employees who are valued and respected; and the other just as a delivery company, to be pumped for profit and asset-stripped, at the expense of service users and with workers’ pay and conditions eroded. What does all of this signal for the future of postal services in the UK?