Enjoy(if you can)
*S3M-2731 Kenneth Gibson: Universal Service Obligation—That the Parliament commends the Communication Workers Union for its ongoing campaign to save the universal service obligation (USO) for the benefit of Royal Mail, its customers and its employees; looks forward to the final report from the review of the UK postal services sector, an independent panel headed by Richard Hooper, formerly Deputy Chairman of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), to be published in the autumn; notes that the review team’s initial response in May 2008 stated that competition within the sector had "brought no significant benefits" to either the public or small businesses and went on to express its view that "there is now a substantial threat to Royal Mail’s financial stability and therefore, the universal service obligation…the status quo is not tenable. It will not deliver our shared vision for the postal sector and there is a strong case for action"; considers that the UK Government rushed into market liberalisation too quickly – some five years earlier than required by European Union legislation and some way ahead of the rest of the continent; believes that the decision to advance liberalisation together with the pro-competition brief given to industry regulator Postcomm and the operating restrictions that it has imposed on Royal Mail have combined to create a fundamentally skewed UK postal market, which unfairly advantages new competitor companies at the expense of the incumbent; is concerned that, while Royal Mail is obliged by law to provide a universal service and is subject to crippling price and product innovation restrictions, new market entrants are allowed, even encouraged, to cherry-pick business from the more profitable parts of the industry therefore eating into Royal Mail’s traditional revenues while adding zero value to the service as a whole; is alarmed that the universal service recorded a loss of the first time in 2007-08 of around £100 million compared to a profit of £2 million the previous year, that Royal Mail’s regulated business, which includes the USO, made a loss of over £200 million in 2007-08 compared to a loss of £69 million the previous year and that the Royal Mail’s overall letter business also made a loss last year of £3 million, down from a profit of £136 million the previous year; understands that the USO is vital for Scotland, particularly with regard to the many rural and remote areas where communities are dependent on reliable postal services; concurs with the view that it is absolutely crucial that the Royal Mail remains a wholly publicly-owned, integrated company and that any moves towards privatisation, share flotation or joint venture with private capital or any separation of Post Office Limited from the Royal Mail Group by the UK Government must be resisted, and calls for Postcomm and its remit to be fundamentally reformed to refocus on defending the UK’s postal services to the public, for USO to be supported, ensuring that it is funded by all who use the service so that it can then be protected and extended to cover small to medium-sized businesses and to preserve our post office network, and for the Royal Mail to be able to exercise more freedom over pricing and new product and service innovation in order to operate successfully and, in particular, to take advantage of the expanding parcels and packages market while understanding that modernisation must not become a code word for cuts and terminal decline.
2 comments:
I'm sorry I dozed off.
you are not the first.
Id wager many of his colleagues did too.
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