Meeting urges MP to protect future of our post offices

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RURAL postal services in West Wales could be harmed by a proposed new law, a public meeting heard.

About 50 people, including two leading politicians and postal workers, attended the meeting and called on Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire MP Simon Hart to support amendments to the law to protect rural services.

The parliamentary Bill proposes keeping the Post Office in public ownership and privatising Royal Mail.

Opponents fear the move could see post offices shut if the privatised Royal Mail decides not to use them and makes it easier to change the universal service obligation to deliver to all parts of the UK for a fixed price.

But Mr Hart believes the new legislation will preserve and strengthen universal and rural postal services.

Communication Workers Union official Carl Maden told the meeting: "Many people don't understand that if the new owners of Royal Mail decide not to use our post offices for Royal Mail products and services it will spell the end of post offices, especially in rural areas.

"We are also concerned that daily deliveries of mail to domestic and business customers in rural areas will be seen as too expensive by new owners who will be looking to make money on their investment."

Labour Assembly candidate Christine Gwyther said audience members understood Royal Mail subsidised the Post Office and both organisations helped each other under the existing arrangements.

But she added: "The privatisation proposals, as they stand, would jeopardise all that, with 90 per cent of Royal Mail being privatised and therefore the business decision-making taken out of public hands."

Plaid Assembly candidate Nerys Evans called postal services the "life blood" of many rural communities.

"It's vital that the Royal Mail stays public as it provides such an important service to our rural communities," she said.

Mr Hart could not attend the meeting in Whitland because it clashed with a Westminster debate about the Coastguard service. But the Tory MP later said: "The Postal Services Bill will see universal service and rural postal services preserved and strengthened, not downgraded.

"An injection of private capital will end the dependence on funding from the taxpayer and Royal Mail will be relieved of its enormous historic pension deficit by the Government.

"We will not repeat the previous Government's post office closure programmes."