MPs have accused Royal Mail of “lying” about its performance and “pretending” not to prioritise parcels over letters.
It comes after concerns Royal Mail is not meeting Ofcom targets for timeliness in its deliveries, potentially leading to millions of letters arriving late.
Labour MP Dave Robertson said people in his constituency are “sick of being lied to by Royal Mail”.
The Lichfield MP said on Wednesday: “I met Royal Mail just before Christmas to complain to them about the total lack of a postal service that we have in Lichfield. We were probably the worst area in the country at that point.
“I was told when I had that meeting that all of the first class mail went out that week. That is a lie, it is an absolute lie, because my constituents told me. Royal Mail clearly don’t have a handle on this – they are either not measuring their performance or they are covering up their performance.”
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He called on the government to force Royal Mail to “be honest, ‘fess up and fix it”.
Business minister Blair McDougall said he understands how “frustrating” it is for MPs to “raise a problem and be told that it doesn’t exist”.
“Royal Mail have a responsibility absolutely to address that in a direct and straightforward manner, because if we aren’t recognising the problem, we’ll not deal with it,” he added.
Several MPs alleged Royal Mail prioritises parcels, contributing to the late delivery of letters and leading to some customers missing important information, such as medical appointments.
In a letter published this week by the Commons Business and Trade Committee, chief executive Alistair Cochrane said Royal Mail does not “operate a general policy of prioritising parcel deliveries over letters”.
He said delivering parcels before letters was only prioritised during busy periods like Christmas to avoid them overcrowding delivery offices, but admitted the company does not keep specific data on the number of letters de-prioritised for parcels during these periods.
Liberal Democrat MP Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) said the blame for failures "doesn’t lie with postal workers" who are "doing all they can to deliver a service".
“But it lies with a private company that is telling their staff to prioritise parcels and then pretending that that’s not their policy. Constituents in my area of Chichester have received hospital appointments four days after the appointment was due to take place,” she said.
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Labour MP Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington), who had raised the urgent question on the matter, said Royal Mail's denial over operating a parcels-first policy was "contradicting repeated internal testimonies" and "flies in the face of local evidence from the workforce”.
It is "a standing joke that the quickest way to get a letter delivered is to put it inside of a parcel", Labour MP Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) said.
Responding, Mr McDougall said: “On the issue of the prioritisation of parcels, Ofcom had examined this a few years ago and had found that there wasn’t evidence of it as a policy centrally.
“But I’ve heard from so many members' stories about the prioritisation of parcels, and so it’s something I intend to raise with Ofcom later this afternoon.”