Royal Mail must modernise if it is to maintain traditional

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Royal Mail must modernise if it is to maintain traditional and values

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/let ... ervice.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Some important points need to be made in response to your editorial ("Royal Mail's future - this is not the time to sell public institution", April 21).

The government's proposals have at their heart maintenance of the six-day-a-week, one-price-goes-anywhere universal postal service. This is of particular value in many parts of Scotland. The Hooper Report, which gave rise to the government's proposals, said that, without action, the universal service would be under threat. For the first time in its history, it is loss-making.

The government wishes to secure the pensions of hard-working men and women at Royal Mail, but it is not the case that the government and taxpayer would have to take over responsibility for the multi-billion-pound pension deficit in all circumstances.

The government can only ask the taxpayer to take on this deficit if Royal Mail is also put on a path to modernisation in the face of technological change and the shift from mail to e-mail, the internet and social networking. Otherwise, the decline in mail volumes, which is happening across the world, will simply eat away at Royal Mail's revenues.

That is why reform is a package.

Pensions, modernisation and regulation of Royal Mail and its competitors all need to be considered.

Of course the government must pay heed to value for money for the taxpayer, but the argument about the government's proposals is no longer that they are wrong but that they should have been carried through long before now.

Pat McFadden MP, Minister for Postal Affairs, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 1 Victoria Street, London.