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The Death of a Post Office

How the government and the EU is killing our postal system

The last couple of years have seen the closure of local sub post offices, steep increases in the cost of stamps, and increasing discontent over job losses and increasingly poor customer service. Why? Here some of the causes are outlined and explained.

As it used to be the Post Office had a monopoly on mail services, a situation current for generations to allow for a universal service where sending a letter cost the same whether it went to the next street or to the Scottish Highlands. It was deemed necessary that in order for all to obtain a reasonable service that this cross subsidy existed. At the same time there were 20,000 local main and sub post offices to serve every community, not only selling stamps but also telly licences, road tax and paying out a variety of benefits. Under this arrangement the Post Office made a decent profit, which as a state owned entity got either reinvested in services or used for other public good.

Then came along 'New Labour' and the EU. The big blow to delivery services came in hidden EU directive 97/67/EC which stripped the post office of its monopoly on postal services. This enabled foreign companies such as DHL and and TNT to cherry pick the best mail contracts which were then secured by undercutting the post office, which still had to offer the universal service. With the post office left with unprofitable services such as remote villages and letters from individuals this meant that big losses ensued because there was no longer any bulk business mail to subsidise these. It was argued that the problems were because of inefficiency, but the only reason that the competition is more commercially efficient is that they won't collect mail from remote areas or deal in any public mail service that is unprofitable.

'New Labour' has produced a hammer blow to the post office retail arm in the form of stripping the post office of numerous services in the name of efficiency. Examples include benefits, telly licences and road tax. Of these to be paid benefit you have to have a bank account (no option given), the TV licence contract is with another organisation (and just try and find a shop that will let you pay for a telly licence - its a challenge). For road tax it is still possible to pay at a post office but this is made harder by the introduction of electronic records meaning that it is more difficult to use a post office and present all your documents compared to paying online or by phone which have automatic records of insurance, MOT etc.

In addition to the above there is the problem of technological change (e.g. use of email), however the EU and our current crop of politicians have made a problem far, far worse. Hence we have the situation where the post office loses money at much public cost (so much for saving money by taking away government contracts), we also have prices of stamps going up again next year and there are strikes by posties because the management is desperate to do something about the losses. So we all lose - the customer, the taxpayer and the postal staff.

What to do about it.....The problem of unfair competition can only be removed by escaping from the clutches of the EU, and to do this UKIP is the only major political party pledged to remove Britain from the EU. In the case of issues related to post office shops it is the role of government to ensure that public services are channeled through them so that the customer at least has the choice to use a post office. At UKIP we are not generally in favour of protectionist policy, but in the case of the post office the benefits of a monopoly outweigh the disadvantage. Whilst sympathetic to the postmen involved in the recent strike, I personally do not think that striking will help since the problems as briefly outlined above are not the fault of the management. We have to get rid of Labour and bin the EU - perhaps we should post some of the politicians and officials one way to Timbuktu (parcel special delivey), as I am sure there are some postmen that would help!

Warren Hendon 19/11/09