Will taxpayers lose out on the Royal Mail again?

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Repeatedly, ministers assured us that the the privatisation of the Royal Mail posed no threat to the universal, six-days-a-week postal service.

The obligation to deliver letters at a flat rate, anywhere in the country, was enshrined in law, said the then Business Minister Michael Fallon, ‘and that protection will continue to apply’.

Yet just 13 months after the company was sold to get-rich-quick hedge funds and other investors – at a knockdown price that cheated taxpayers out of at least £1billion – this cast-iron pledge is already falling apart.

Pulling a rabbit out of the hat, and pleading stiff competition from rivals such as Whistl, formerly TNT Post, Royal Mail cites a convenient legal loophole guaranteeing that the universal service will be kept ‘financially sustainable’, whoever has to pay.

Says the company’s chief executive Moya Greene: ‘The threat is now.’ Has so much really changed in so short a time?

Is it unduly cynical of this paper to suggest that investors – greedily eyeing Royal Mail’s lucrative parcels business and its vast, underpriced property holdings – planned from the start to shuffle off their responsibility to serve remote towns and villages at the same price as the rest of the country?


AT the time of the bungled sale, Royal Mail’s bosses and share-buyers ran rings round the Business Department under its hopelessly incompetent boss, Vince Cable.

Today, as they demand tough curbs on their rivals – or taxpayer subsidies for the universal service – they seek to do the same again.

As long as Dr Cable is in charge, the bitter truth is they have every chance of success.