Despite its annual profits showing that the Royal Mail is viable as a publicly-owned service, the coalition government seem determined to push ahead with privatisation.
Privatisation of the Royal Mail will mean:-
Prices will go up
Until 2012 stamp prices were subject to regulatory control. This meant that people and businesses were protected from excessive price rises. But to make Royal Mail more attractive to potential investors the government removed those controls. Overnight the price of a first class stamp rose from 46p to 60p – a whopping 30% increase and the biggest since 1975.
As a private company, focused on increasing shareholder returns, Royal Mail will want more significant price increases. To make matters worse a privatised Royal Mail will be eventually be obliged to charge VAT on its services adding 12p to the cost of a first class stamp.
With politicians unable to exert influence over a privatised Royal Mail just one more increase similar to the 2012 price rise will make a first class stamp 94p. So the £1 letter really will not be far off.
Business will be squeezed
For many small businesses, especially those in rural areas there is often no alternative to the Royal Mail. Suffering from high energy bills and other overheads, businesses can ill afford to see the cost of using the postal service shoot up. Yet that is precisely what will happen if Royal Mail is sold off.
The countryside will be isolated
Royal Mail provides a lifeline to people and businesses in rural areas. It will go where its competitors fear to tread and it charges the same to deliver a letter to the North of Scotland as it does to London.
And it does so just as often.
Everyone understands that it costs more than the price of a stamp to deliver a letter to a rural address.
That is why, despite assurances to the contrary, the postal services regulator is working to determine the real cost for deliveries to rural areas. It has also looked recently at how it can reduce the daily delivery service to addresses in the countryside.
Post Offices will close
The local post office is a focal point for the life of so many small towns and villages across the UK. Where pubs and other shops have disappeared, the post office has remained. But when that goes, the life of a village often disappears with it.
Many small post offices have a fragile existence and rely upon Royal Mail for business to survive. Yet the 2001 Postal Services Act fully separates the Post Office Counters’ network from Royal Mail. The government will point to a recently signed business agreement between the two. But that cannot guarantee that a new, private owner, free to do as they choose, will honour that agreement in full. For example they may wish to re-negotiate its terms or move more of its business to other retail outlets.
And the more cash that Royal Mail takes from post offices, the more will close.
Free post for HM Armed Forces will be stopped
Royal Mail provides a freepost service for British forces personnel. These letters and parcels from loved ones are vital for our armed forces. To receive personal items including cherished family photographs provides a major boost for those in combat.
But a privately owned Royal Mail will not want to maintain this non-profit making service – and neither can it be compelled to. If we do not protect the public service ethos of Royal Mail, the free post lifeline to HM Forces will be scrapped.
Support the campaign to Save our Royal Mail !- visit the website here and sign the petition.
SIGN- The campaign is adding signatures to the World's Biggest Postcard, demanding the return of full maternity services to Eastbourne DGH. The signatures are being collected and then will be stuck to the card: you can download a signature sheet here- and get all of your friends and colleagues to sign !
SUPPORT the Trades Council's Trade Unionists for the DGH and our NHS campaign. We are asking local trade union members and reps to publicly express their support for the campaign- by signing up here.
